RAYMOND BEEGLE
Associate Editor,
CLASSICAL VOICE

n often heard comment in the opera house during the 2006-07 season was “There are certainly a lot of empty seats tonight.” Things have changed since then.  For the thirty-two performances I saw in this first year of the new regime, the house was often full to capacity and, around the entire theater, for better or for worse, there was much “life” going on: Operatic arias blare from the crowded boutique competing with the videos blaring in the adjacent box office area just outside the door. The Ivesian sonic effect is quite stunning, a catalyst one supposes, for further ticket sales.

Opera as background music is a new concept implemented by this new administration. The attendant high pitched hubbub it creates  by the crowds talking over this noise bleeds into the theater itself  where one finds  people in shorts and backpacks mingling with and bumping against the more fashionably dressed remnant of by-gone days. The conversations to be heard are generally not about the music or the performers, but train schedules, ball games, Broadway musicals, medications, real estate, restaurant suggestions, and finance. Some of these exchanges are experienced as one sided, conducted, as they are on cell phones. Cameras click, video games flash, blackberries send and receive messages. The opera is inevitably ushered in with closing remarks and people fidgeting with the off switch of their various technological devices.  

‘Where is this audience drawn from, and how was it assembled?’ one might well ask. It seems to be composed of many out-of-town visitors whose tour packages include “a night at the opera,” or those who were reached through a proliferation of broadcasts and newly implemented movies of live performances shown in theaters throughout the country. In regard to New Yorkers, many may have come because of last minute discount tickets donated by wealthy patrons, or because of the large signs flanking our buses that show a disconsolate Natalie Dessay as Lucia whizzing by. There are also posters, and of course a quantity of ads in the local papers, as well as people wearing t-shirts, carrying tote bags and sporting baseball caps advertising some aspect or other of the Metropolitan Opera. If opera is still considered one of the fine arts, it has nevertheless come to be marketed in the same manner as Hollywood movies and rock concerts with a focus on the attractiveness of the artists and the sensational character of the production. Music seems a secondary matter.

In decades past the Metropolitan Opera had a waiting list for subscriptions. Now, like all classical music institutions it is compelled, at staggering cost, to hire a retinue of marketing experts and specialists to advertise, propagandize, attract, entice – lure - enough solvent, live bodies into the theater to replace a cultural community that has dwindled to the proportions of an endangered species. Thomas Mann once made the following notation in his diary: ‘I read in Rostovtzeff* [about] the decline of the culture in antiquity. Central phenomenon: gradual absorption of the educated classes into the masses; simplification of all functions of intellectual life. Barbarization.” The historian goes on to say that “…intellectual efforts were aimed chiefly at influencing the mass of the population, and therefore represented a lowering of the high standards of civilization.” Perhaps this is the principle dilemma of the Metropolitan Opera Company. Perhaps it faces a great demon – our society’s gradual, inexorable slide into ignorance.  Albeit the house is filled again, it is filled with a new, uncultivated audience, and the task at hand is to absorb them, influence them, entertain them sufficiently, to insure their return. The actual singing – the opera, in a word – is not enough.  Therefore a formidable variety of effects such as stunning light shows featured in the Gambler and Macbeth, a bedroom scene to rival daytime television in Romeo et Juliette, and a relentless succession of vaudeville stunts in La Fille de Régiment moves to the forefront in these new productions.  The use of these secondary elements is so disproportionately exploited that the music itself sometimes plays a secondary role. 

In the case of the relatively new theater piece Satyagraha, even the score itself is utterly dependent on the stage spectacle. Phillip Glass once remarked that “The first thing I knew about music was that you sold it.” This is a sharp contrast to Schubert’s words “I shall never turn my inmost feelings to personal or political account; what I feel in my heart I give to the world, and there is an end of it.” But Glass learned his lesson well and Satyahraha proved to be a sensational box office success. It stands perhaps as an index of contemporary public sensibilities. Metropolitan Opera Playbill describes it as a “landmark work, combining video projections, imaginative design, puppetry and the inventive use of newspaper, which have created an operatic equivalent of installation art.”  The melodic material is negligible. The words, which the composer intends “to move center stage,” are detruncated texts from the Bhagavad-Gita in Sanskrit. Designers Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer explain to us in an interview that the projected translations are there “to help the audience follow the story.” I think we all know that. They also tell us that “The idea was to create something that needed people working together – which is what the satyagraha movement is all about.” I think we all know too that all theater productions need people working together. Unlike the works of Mozart, Verdi and Beethoven which demand our utmost concentration, this piece invites us to succumb to a hypnotic monotony of repeated chords and arpeggios. Without the “video projections, imaginative design, and intensive use of newspaper,” the music, standing on its own, although masterfully sung and played, proves to be a very tepid and faceless affair. It seems to be an accompaniment to a multimedia installation art presentation, but hardly an opera score, or hardly music, unless one subscribes to John Cage’s definition of “organized sound.”                            

In regard to the Metropolitan’s purely musical tradition, War and Peace, Il Barbiere di Seviglia, Le Nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte, Macbeth, La Fille de Régiment were wonderful achievements. Many singers and conductors, some of whom are not as publicized as a glamorous few, have brought honor to our theater: Stéphane Degout’s performances of Papageno and Mercutio, Simon Keenlyside’s brilliant portrayal of Mozart’s Count Almaviva, Želko Lučić’s Macbeth, Anja Harteros as the Countess in Figaro, Olga Bordina as Amneris, as well as Laura in La Gioconda, Kathleen Kim as Barbarina, whom I hope to hear in the future as Pamina. Other wonderful voices that deserve more visibility include Krassimira Stoyanova, a beautiful Traviata, Elena Evseeva, a beautiful Mimi, and Gary Lehmann who was a last minute replacement for Tristan. This is not yet a role, for him, at least in our cavernous theater, but he is a first class artist. Maestro Frédéric Chaslin delivered close to perfect performances of Barbiere with the help of a splendid cast, and Valery Gergiev’s conducting of War and Peace was masterful and uplifting.                                                                                                                                

There was much to delight the eye as well. The sets for Romeo et Juliette captured wonderfully the spirit of fourteenth century city o f Verona which was at times set in breathtaking perspective by the appearance of the great starry universe behind and above it. It underscored the truth in story and music of the smallness, the vulnerability of humankind, even of beautiful lovers, and the inevitability of pain in the midst of this magnificent but uncaring celestial machinery.  Also, the whimsical look of Il Barbiere di Seviglia, with its surrealist overtones and minimal sets that moved about with the same agility as the energetic cast was a great pleasure to behold. Even the staging of the famous Lucia sextet as a photographic session served the music well.                                             

Lurking in the back of the mind is the disquieting thought that these artistic accomplishments were made possible by adroit advertising and theatrical maneuvers.  One cannot help but fear the marketing of opera as just another entertainment, and be disquieted by the stifling of Mozart’s and Verdi’s wondrous music by the clamor and din of special effects.  Opera is not just another entertainment. It is a serious matter: a language that gives voice to the deepest, most mysterious issues of the human heart that border on the inexpressible. It is great and it is sublime. I think of Goethe’s observation, “…children and common people are accustomed to transform the great and sublime into a sport, and even a farce; and how indeed could they do otherwise and abide and endure it.” How the new administration will retain its artistic integrity, and not abet this transformation, is to be seen.

Raymond Beegle, Associate Editor of Classical Voice, is Contributing Editor of Opera Quarterly, has written for Fanfare Magazine, the Classic Record Collector (UK), and also appeared on The Today Show (NBC) and Good Morning America (CBS). As an accompanist, he has collaborated with Zinka Milanov and Licia Albanese.  Currently Mr. Beegle serves on the faculty of Manhattan School of Music in New York City.

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