It's time for some thorough SHAMING! (But to be honest, I only have 7 official followers so...)
For those of you who are new to the opera game, let me give you some background on New York City Opera:
City Opera was founded in 1943 by Mayor Fiorello Laguardia to provide New York City with high-quality and affordable opera productions. The founding of City Opera during World War II it went hand in hand with the nationalist zeitgest. You see, for many years the Metropolitan Opera was a European house in an American city. Many of the singers on the Met roster, beginning in its innaugural season in 1883, were born in Europe, the exceptions being greats like Geraldine Farrar, Rosa Ponselle (a good old Connecticut Italian girl), and others. City Opera gave performance opportunities to American artists and provided a stage for new American works. Whereas the Metropolitan Opera was more expensive and somewhat elitist, City Opera had a more populist vibe, making high culture available to the working class. What could be more American, right? (At least back then!)
City Opera bloomed in the 70s and 80s, launching the career of great American singers like Norman Treigle, Phyllis Curtin, Samuel Ramey, and the iconic Beverly Sills. One could go so far as to say that without City Opera, there would not have been a Beverly Sills! The Metropolitan Opera didn't give her a second glance because she had not been trained in Europe, and her debut at that house came in 1976, just a few years shy of her retirement from the stage!
Where is this American institution now? In the beginning of this decade, City Opera appeared to be flourishing with 20ish productions a year and exciting new productions. (In reality, they were borrowing heavily from their endowment fund to finance these productions.) Then in 2008, a new general manager entered the picture with lavish, expensive, and exciting ideas, but before the season even began he left the comopany without direction and without a season! After two financially tenuous years, the current general manager George Steel decided that it was time to leave the expensive Lincoln Center and venture out into the city.
People were furious! Outcries! Chaos! Protests!
Look, people. CHANGE HAPPENS. It is a fact of life.
What has always surprised me is that intelligent people, aware of the historically proven fact that without change there is no progress, refuse to embrace the possibilities promised by the company's move and reorganization. Yes, this will no longer be the City Opera that audience members enjoyed twenty years ago, but...that was twenty years ago. Opera cannot exist in a vacuum; it cannot wallow in the stagnancy of centuries old traditions, or it will disappear.
And now, the shaming!
Instead of voicing their misgivings with civility, critics have been villifying the company. In the same sentence in which they praise the company's past, they poison its future. In the most recent New York Times article, the author concludes with a quote by conductor Julius Rudel saying that this is the death of the company. YES, it will be if you say and print things like that. It is not so much that Mr. Rudel has said these things, but that the author decided to end his article with it. Seriously? Are we 8? We should be approaching these changes not as the death of a company, but as the reinvention of an American cultural institution that has always been a leader in experimentation and taking chances. When people read "City Opera is dying" then they will think "Oh, City Opera is dying." Such poisonous opinions are not the words of opera lovers, but of myopic curmudgeons who would rather see the death of a familiar company than explore the unchartered world of future possibility.
Is the move from Lincoln Center certain death? Certainly not. Yes, the company is downsizing with fewer performances on a smaller scale. That's not a question of life or death; it is an issue of structure. Had the company insisted on staying at Lincoln Center and performing old warhorses like "Carmen" and "La Boheme" every season, as many have suggested, THEN the company would have died. It costs City Opera $4.5 million a year to exist in Lincoln Center. Productions like "Carmen" and "La Boheme," while popular, also require enormous casts. And, really, how many of these productions can you see? When I went to La Boheme at the Metropolitan this past February, there were many empty seats; however, Boris Godunov, Le Comte Ory, and La Fanciulla were sold out. People want new! People want exciting! People want resurrection!
Opera needs resurrection. In the past four years under Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera has resurrected itself. City Opera is trying to do the same thing, but in its own way. City Opera began as the people's opera, an exciting company that for the past 68 years has managed to stay young and vibrant. To all but insist that City Opera remain as a miniature Metropolitan Opera (in the SHADOW of the Met), is to guarantee a slow, painful dessication of the company.
For those of yinz who know me, you may say "but SJT, you are slightly biased, ain't ya?" Without revealing anything I will admit that yes, I KIND of am; however, my issue does not stop at City Opera but applies to opera in general. In a time when opera companies are closing left and right, let us not triumph in the uncertainty of New York City Opera; instead, let us praise innovation. Perhaps if other companies were willing to say "This isn't working, let's try something new!" they would still be around.
In the world of Theater, you try something, and if it doesn't work then you try something else. Opera IS theater, however, recently, the mentality in opera has been "This is the way it has always been! Don't mess with tradition!" and then we blame empty seats on the audience for not "getting it." Opera will succeed not through an endless recycling of operas and productions that are wrongly perceived as crowd pleasers or by staunchly adhering to the way things always were, but by taking chances, engaging NEW audiences rather than catering to the old, experimenting with space and concepts, and, most importantly of all, by presenting excellent music with singers who know how to communicate.
That's opera. Opera isn't a HOUSE; it isnt' an INSTITUTION; it isn't a BOARD OF DIRECTORS; opera isn't a UNION; opera is expression, a heightened reflection of the human experience. Opera is daring to scream when everyone else would whisper.
When defined as such, opera can exist anywhere. All you need is a voice, a story, and a few open ears.
- sJt
