Wednesday, October 2, 2013

The Dead City



There’s been a lot of mourning for City Opera. It is dead. Various Pollyannas, mostly idiots, think it will rise from its ashes. But our world is now very different than it was in 1944 when the company started performing. Ordinary people with modest incomes could live in Manhattan and the Boroughs. There was proletarian pride, not only in New York. Americans were proud to be workers; they saw their own value and their crucial contribution to a society coming back from a devastating depression. The rich were “other”, not our betters, not our rulers. Most people had known hard times, poverty was no disgrace and there was a pride in America as exemplified by a government that despite politics as usual actually saw its function as being to help people, all people. It had literally saved the lives of families who had seen their lives go up in smoke, and it had also fought a war. The troops were mostly but not only from poor, working class or farming backgrounds but whatever level of society had spawned them, they fought side by side.

The arts were not invisible; they were not impossible. There were a lot of references to “high art” in popular culture. And art was considered an important part of society even by people who really weren’t that interested. Opera was somewhat esoteric, yet a number of opera stars became well known to people through the radio. And the radio provided for a fair number of people those serendipitous, spontaneous experiences of music that could grow, gradually, unexpectedly, almost magically into an interest, even a strong interest. Of course, there were a lot of Americans who were not far from European roots and whose grandparents, if not their parents, had been proud of the music, the visual arts, the poetry, the fiction produced “in the old country.”

Many people knew something about music: from the church choir, from the high school band, from the small orchestras that played in pavilions in parks in the summer (they even gave rise to a vanished style of music called “semi-classical”). And yes, there was a summer, usually not unbearable for long, and there was a fall and very definitely there was a winter. In spring, and there really was something we all knew to be spring, we walked and courted and smiled and danced and there were those orchestras and their semi-classical selections providing the perfect punctuation to a day where it was easy to forget bills and sorrows and worries – to music, lovely, lovely music.

Above all there was a belief in the truth rather than the dress up of art. We saw ourselves and each other at the theater, sitting in the cheap seats and looking down at the “swells”; or sitting downstairs in the wider seats for bigger bottoms and paying the fatter price. We poor people looked down and saw our “betters”, except they were no better than we were. Our "betters" looked up and saw eager faces, sometimes shabby clothes but perceived not an enemy but allies who had fought for them, alongside them or their sons, who had lost loved ones in the war, and if the truth be known, even some of the swells had lived through periods of worried cost cutting in the depths of the Depression. And when the lights went down, distinctions vanished, we laughed or cried, or both, we vibrated to music, were stunned or shocked or thrilled by plays -- as one, as equals, as Americans.

City Opera was founded on the notion that opera, strange as it seems, was for everybody. That it could be given inexpensively, funding – modest – could be found with confidence and in that special theater, the opera house, a kind of magic could happen. Sometimes. If not magic, fun. And if it was one of those evenings that all performing organizations have, it hadn’t cost much to get in, even for the swells. And there was always the amusement of seeing the familiar faces, New York faces, in a shabby but comforting place. At the City Center, where City Opera gave performances for twenty two years, even after the move to Lincoln Center, we would settle back and think, "I'm home."

This was life in New York. And it was destroyed. Nobody poor can live there. We are no longer allies. We are cliques. Nothing brings us together. Even the cliques split. Our government makes war on us: this week they shut down so children with cancer could no longer get treatment, or to be less operatic they were cut off from food, went hungry even though their parents worked for a preposterously low minimum wage, which a segment of our ruling class, their power bought for them by billionaires, wants to lower.

Nobody much goes to the theater, any theater, under any circumstances. The arts were elitist twenty years ago; now they’re invisible. A pop culture driven by incredible stupidity, violence, repetition which exists mainly to sell products has devoured everything that isn’t designed to manipulate people into the mall. News is no longer truly news, but a type of “reality TV” misleading, confusing, incomplete, owned by the greedy and connected, infused with propaganda. 

The radio is for talk, idiotic, moronic, lying, repetitive, agenda driven talk, and for sports, which exist to make huge amounts of money for the very rich. In TV commercials for those who can’t afford the technology to avoid them, perhaps as a background, one will hear a hint of an aria or a few notes from a symphony, no time for those surprising jolts and ear worms, which once, long ago, drove people to find again the magic in the unfolding of those themes, the context of that aria.

Where would a “new” City Opera fit in a metropolis jammed with Russian and Chinese and Batlic billionaires? And oh yes, there no longer is a spring.

There is a complex story about the destruction of City Opera. Profoundly stupid, enormously rich board members raided the endowment, wasted money on a Belgian Manager who never expected to take the job, when he fled, they backed a fool and a fraud and now are standing passively by while bankruptcy ends a company that for most of its existence kept faith with the initiating vision of a mayor named La Guardia, that there was space in New York for a “people’s opera”. But then again, those board members and that fool will simply turn around and run for office, probably as Republicans. And America no longer contains a “people’s” anything, unless it is the unemployment line.

(picture thanks to Simon Rich)

17 comments:

  1. Your extreme pessimism does not resonate so well in the UK, unless I'm being horribly complacent and Londoncentric. Concerts and opera are often packed, and with all ages (and look at the figures for the Proms - 97 per cent capacity for the entire season for a hall that holds 6000, though I wish we had the knock on effect for the rest of the year).

    At the same time it's true that English National Opera is running up a deficit that may see a similar collapse. The two latest new productions have been disastrous on the critical front (I've yet to see them), and I think people are staying away as a result.

    Very sad for NYCO in the light of what they've done even recently. Disgusted to read some of the whoops of delight on Parterre. Do those morons not realise what a precarious bubble of operaqueendom they're living in?

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    1. To perhaps point out the obvious. Herr Blogger was not writing about the UK, he was writing specifically about what's happening in NYC. And he is dead accurate. I moved to NYC in 1969 and everything he says is true. Alas.

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    2. Well aware of that, Paul. Just comparing and balancing.

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  2. Thank you, as always for your comment, and for putting the death of NYCO within the context of what is happening in our culture. It is funny that we live in an age where one has a degree of access to the arts that was not possible a generation ago, and yet, young people are too busy watching the Kardashians to do any exploration. I mean, I tell my students about neoclassical style and get the blankest of stares. All they have to do is search Google images and will find a rich visual record in a second. Popular culture has triumphed, and not necessarily the best of it. People in Parterre argue that the Met is doing what NYCO used to do, as if having a sprinkle of contemporary opera and some watered down Regie productions makes up for the loss of an institution that, at its best, provided a showcase for artists too subtle or too smart for the Met. Cities fall all over themselves giving tax break to rich owners of sports arenas, but the arts have to constantly justify their right to be part of what makes a city civilized. What a depressing world.

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    1. "All they have to do is search Google images and will find a rich visual record in a second. "

      Problem is, a rich visual record that you can find in a second is next to worthless. You can also dump it, replace it or forget it in a second.

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  3. thank you for you brilliant writing. dead on you are.

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  4. How brilliantly said. And you are so right. It's the "culture"! The pity is that 1944 was the year before I was born, and I'm therefore way older than your average Kardashian fan. Much as I love Parterre, I think the position you describe is all wrong. And to paraphrase (or abbreviate) you: CITIES FALL. Period.


    "... as if having a sprinkle of contemporary opera and some watered down Regie productions makes up for the loss of an institution that, at its best, provided a showcase for artists too subtle or too smart for the Met."
    "...As if having a sprinkle of contemporary opera and some watered down Regie productions makes up for the loss of an institution that, at its best, provided a showcase for artists too subtle or too smart for the Met.

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  5. Thanks everybody. David, I appreciate your comment, but virtually no European I've met understands how arts work in America. There are huge differences between subsidized arts and Not for Profit charities which is how arts are identified in USA. Arts are charities and artists are beggars. Moreover, arts must complete with medical research, hospitals, hospices, drives to fight hunger, universities, standard charities, church sponsored charities, underfunded educational initiatives, programs for the disabled that rely on donations, elder care, issues that relate to women's health, rehabilitation of the prison population, ALL of which are begging for the same dime that might go to one of the arts. Moreover ALL arts groups are competing with one another. A large national entity, such as the Metropolitan Opera competes not only in New York but on a national scale with local artistic endeavors, the Philadelphia orchestra is so successful in fund raising that it destroys much of the opportunities smaller and different arts organizations have to raise money in and around the city. Wealthy donors are importuned to such a degree that many are confused and conflicted about where their money should go, and the big foundations that once were a mainstay of support for the arts and occasionally for artists, have re-prioritized their giving to scientific and medical research, hospice care, and education, specifically of young children who unless they are from well to do families can no longer count on ANY education of quality unless an entity OTHER THAN GOVERNMENT is contributing large sums particularly to math, science and reading programs. Government subsidy is not perfect, always efficient, or everywhere honest, but it stems from a belief in the value of art and artists to a society at large, even if a majority of the population has no particular interest in the arts. I know it is in danger, there have been huge cuts (except in Germany, Scandinavia and Finland) but where the government feels some obligation to artistic continuity it will be easier to build on government giving, than it is when arts are just a few of a thousand charities, some of which have a more visible immediate impact on how people live. Because the arts are now invisible they hardly exist in the popular and thus in the political mind, so younger donors who come from an arts friendly class give their money to socially active endeavors, people under forty in America have almost no interest or awareness of arts.

    As someone who has taught now and then, I have had large classes taking arts oriented courses who had never HEARD of Dickens, Austen, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Goethe or Thomas Mann let alone read any of them, even short stories. In desperation in one class I asked who had heard of (not read) Alice in Wonderland or Treasure Island. NO ONE HAD. To refer to music of any kind but the lowest common denominator pop of this instant was to meet glass eyed, sulky incomprehension. To read a bit of Plato was to spend several sessions explaining who "the gods" were, what they signified and why they were referred to before one got to a widespread inability to understand what was being talked about in The Symposium, for example. Though all of this is on line and easy to find in easy to read explanations, in class after class, this had not occurred to students in general, and the few who had gone to Google frequently had no context for understanding what they read there. These were COLLEGE students, not stupid, but part of a culture that has jettisoned everything Western culture is built on.

    Yes, I agree with you others, we need MORE arts institutions, not fewer; the queen's delight in this or that trend of the moment is irrelevant, the more there is the more people it attracts (and this may be the case in London, where there is a lot going on at several levels). But I've said enough. I appreciate all who comment.

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    1. "These were COLLEGE students, not stupid, . . . " Are you sure they're not stupid? Stupidity is epidemic now.

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    2. I think I had a pretty good grasp of that, albeit not on the level of your always admirable chapter and verse. Clearly my colleague Ivan Hewett of the Telegraph doesn't, much as I often like him: his comments on apparently 'overpaid' American orchestral musicians with ref to Minnesota shocked me to the core. £75 000 does not seem to me like overpaying a skilled instrumentalist; it's just that orchestral musicians here are underpaid. And of course in Minnesota the gulf remained between the smug admin, none of whom was being told to take a massive cut, and the people who ARE the Minnesota Orchestra.

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  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  7. I don't know who ME is. I am going to let your snark stand for now, but in general, I delete comments that do not actually contribute anything. Perfidia's comment was perfectly clear and entirely accurate in context. Your response was jejune. And the sad thing about my students was indeed that they were NOT stupid. They did not know how, had not learned how to use their intelligence, nor had they learned how to learn, and finally, the surrounding culture has glorified ignorance to such a degree that they had no idea of the pleasures to be gained easily thanks to technology (Perfidia's point as well). The dim future America faces will not come from stupid people but people who don't know anything, including how to think analytically. If you aren't a troll but want to disagree with or qualify someone's comment or something I have written, I suggest you think about the point you want to make more carefully.

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    1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    2. As I said about ME, above, comments must contribute something. I am not concerned about disagreement but I will delete snark, pointless nastiness and personal attack.

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  8. This post is one stiff drink! Good stuff. Thank you! I offer my own humble effort in the link below.

    http://www.voice-talk.net/2013/09/how-to-kill-opera-company-in-5-easy.html

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  9. As usual you wrote very eloquently and straightforwardly. The "before" was so touching that I was almost moved to tears.
    Everything you say about the decline rings true unfortunately. However I see hope in all the young people that in spite of everything still want to devote their lives to singing, playing an instrument etc. Something must resonate in their souls. As long as that is the case, all is not lost.

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  10. This is BRILLIANT! Okay, maybe not brilliant, but it seems to me that it shines so brightly because it tells the truth, and so few do. Thank you!

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