Emergent & Residual Cultures

In Raymond William's article "Base and Superstructure" he introduces the ideas of emergent and residual cultures. His theory is that within a dominant culture there are emergent and residual cultures present. Emergent being new ideas and cultural values forming in tandem with the dominant culture. Residual being a relic of a past culture that continues to rear it's head in the current culture. After our class discussion on this topic, I began to wonder how I would define the current Opera scene in our dominant culture.

This type of musical entertainment has long since seen it's height of popularity and now functions as a sub-culture (mostly for the bourgeois class) that I imagine could be classified as a residual culture. Since the dominant culture is moving further toward electronically enhanced music and Opera is the quintessential acoustic experience I found it a prime example.

However; recently (and I believe it was briefly brought up in class as well) there has been a new opera composed by John Adams. This modern opera was a radical idea thrown into the nostalgic world of global opera, but much to everyone's surprise it has been accepted by the opera community and joined the ranks of Verdi and Mozart in the operatic cannon.

The question I pose is how can a non-dominant, residual culture, accept something with such clear influence from the dominant culture into it's own value system without being considered part of the dominant culture. Is this some example where an entity can function as both emergent and residual? Even if Opera were a residual culture, it is such a solid institution that there is no chance of it's residue being wiped up completely. It has almost been preserved like a museum exhibit- except for the fact that it is constantly being innovated. For example Julie Taymor (original director of THE LION KING and SPIDERMAN on broadway) recently helmed a production of Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE and created an entirely new puppet-driven production with cutting-edge production value, but "residual" music.

Where is the line (if there is one)?