August 2023 – Curtain Going Up!

The Met Opera’s monthly magazine, ‘Opera News’

Three blasts from the horn section, followed by another three blasts. These mark the start of Giuseppe Verdi’s powerful drama La Forza del Destino, or “The Force of Destiny.” A turbulent tale of fate and how it intervenes in the doomed lives of its protagonists, this so-called middle period work was once an opera company staple.

I had Verdi’s opus in mind the other day when I opened my laptop in the morning to read the latest headlines. My mouth dropped in astonishment at the news. Had I read that right? No, it couldn’t be! Let me look at it again…

Hmm…. Uh-huh… Yes, unfortunately, I had read that right.

It seems that The New York Times published a piece, in their online edition, about the Metropolitan Opera’s curtailing of their decades old publication, Opera News. A magazine that I have been reading, admiring and subscribing to for years on end, Opera News became a musical balm to this operatically minded soul, a literary crutch I had found myself leaning on for as long as I can remember.

They say all good things come to an end. And surely this piece of unwelcome news had come at a perilous point for the economically strapped Metropolitan Opera House and the Met Opera Guild in charge of disseminating the monthly magazine.

To say that I was surprised is putting it mildly. Why, I had practically grown up with the periodical, back in the days when it was distributed weekly. I would devour the contents from cover to cover, as any young acolyte would, during a time when one’s interest in the operatic art had burgeoned and flowered to unheard-of heights.

But those were different, more innocent days. And it was quite a different publication back then – with one hand in the present, one hand in the future, and both ears and feet planted firmly in opera’s past.

I am saddened to say that that past has now caught up to itself and become the present, while the future looks dire indeed for the Met Opera as an institution.

Yet, there is a bright side to this story, in a manner of speaking. The Guild has gone out of its way to claim that their magazine (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) will be folded into the pages of the British journal Opera, another publication I used to devour at will on the occasion of my visits to the New York Public Library on 42^nd Street and Fifth Avenue, or to the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts.

Would it suffice to insist that I learned my opera at the altar of Opera News? That, dear readers, is a mild understatement. Certainly, the magazine helped to supplement the weekly transmission of live opera, as it was originally designed to do. As a teenager eager to absorb the drama, the singing, the music, the text, the action, and the star-studded variety of works via successive Saturday afternoon performances, Opera News was, for me, a veritable lifeline. Bringing the art to my eyes, ears and heart was worth the price of admission (a most reasonable one, we assure you!).

In its heyday, the Met Opera broadcasts became instrumental in introducing this novice opera buff (and countless others as well) to the then-contemporary names of Price, Sutherland, Caballé, Tebaldi, Nilsson, Freni, Scotto, Sills, Bumbry, Verrett, Ludwig, Cossotto, Tucker, Corelli, Bergonzi, Vickers, McCracken, Domingo, Carreras, Pavarotti, Merrill, Milnes, Gobbi, MacNeil, Stewart, Siepi, Tozzi, Morris, Ramey… Need I go on? If I have left out any favorites of readers (the diva Callas, for instance), it’s because I never heard them on the air. Records would supplement that shortfall, and then some!

But a magazine is a magazine. And fiscal issues are fiscal issues. As troubling as its curtailment might seem to readers, rest assured that opera will go on as before. Or will it?

Nothing can compare to the fact that the publication itself has become, through the COVID pandemic and beyond, a mere shadow of what it once had been. I wrote about some of the changes to opera a while back. In fact, almost twenty years ago I discussed the myriad problems associated with the operatic art in, of all places, Brazil. Lately, however (and by that, I mean within the last four to five years), Opera News has transitioned into a kind of makeshift pseudo-Cosmopolitan format, something akin to Women’s Wear Daily than to a serious musical tome.

Photo sessions of rising stars and veterans of note, in various modes of dress, fill pages and pages of the latest issues. Decked out in all their finery, the singers are surrounded by what appears to be the lap of luxury (luscious scenery, imposing vistas), positioned for the most part to take advantage of the flattering light. You have to forgive me, but I simply must ask the obvious: “What does all this have to do with opera?”

Am I the only one to have noticed this subtle change in format? Famous artists, some of whom I know for a fact are well along in years, appear to have had their faces airbrushed to death, the very life drained out from their familiar features; the wrinkles of time evaporated before our eyes… Frankly, I don’t get it. While it’s true the discussion gravitates toward and around an artist’s career developments, it takes place amid some of the most luxurious interiors and/or exteriors this side of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

It’s all rather disturbing, I don’t mind telling you. No, it’s more than that: It’s insulting. To whom, you might ask? To the artists themselves, of course. I’m puzzled as to why a supposedly serious art form has morphed into another Facebook page for gawkers. What is the reason behind this? To attract more and younger readers?

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a tad, but the proof is in the substance. Look at the latest magazine’s cover. Now flip to the Contents section. Next, go to Noteworthy & Now. Then, to Sound Bites, Spotlight, and finally the Main Feature. What do you see?

Pages upon pages of polished photo spreads. Of people, places, and things; fashion statements, lavish layouts, and stylish coiffures; fabulous hairstyles, marvelous clothing designed by renowned artisans, crafts folk of the highest order… Where does it end? And, again, we need to inquire: “What do these have to do with opera?”

On one level, I can understand the all-out marketing aspects: Opera, in these financially hard-pressed times, needs all the help and buildup it can get. But is this the right way to go about doing so? From what I have witnessed, these pseudo attempts at “class” and “style” only contribute to the argument that opera is for the wealthy among us, i.e., the elite of society, the well-to-do, the so-called privileged classes.

Well, there’s always been a kernel of truth to that observation, in that opera was, indeed, in its earliest stages (and at other times) an art for the upper strata. Only later, at the smaller regional theaters in, say, Italy, France and Germany, did opera attract the attention of the working class. Eventually, interest in the form reached North American shores by way of European immigration.

But this modern-day appeal to the upwardly mobile, the “well off” among us, in our estimation, is a misguided venture. What this direction will only serve to do is isolate an already isolated art form at exactly the time when funding for the arts is most needed — specifically for music, for literature, for theater, for film, for teaching purposes, and the like.

To these ears, opera singers are not pop stars nor are they hip-hop artists, although past attempts by the likes of the Three Tenors may have jump-started the trend in that direction. True, there have been notable exceptions to the rule, mostly with such past talents as Geraldine Farrar, Grace Moore, Lawrence Tibbett, Jeannette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Rise Stevens, Kathryn Grayson, Mario Lanza, and others. The difference, to be blunt about it, is that they all had that “star quality” about them, the kind that only a rarefied few could claim ownership of.

Producing great art takes work. It also takes passion, devotion, tireless effort, and the utmost dedication to one’s craft. I am not denying that those artists depicted in the current and future pages of Opera News lack any of these attributes. My complaint lies in how external forces, funded by financial factors and needlessly frivolous trimmings, can clutter and obfuscate what should be obvious to the beholder: the art of opera itself.

For it is through the arts that we may see ourselves as we truly are, and that is, as a population in dire need of music in our lives; of art, of singing, of theater, of cinema, and of representation through the pages of a publication that cater to our needs and wants for once.

“Art for the masses.” That’s what they used to say. And it bears repeating.