Les feux d’artifice s’approchent
![Based on an original photo by Clive Barda]](http://parterre.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/prima_donna_nyco.jpg "Based on an original photo by Clive Barda]")
According to the always reliable Zachary Woolfe, among the beans spilled at the NYCO “Koch” Gala last night was the strong suggestion (from no less than Rufus Wainwright himself) that a production of Prima Donna is planned for an upcoming George Steel-planned season. [New York Observer]
Was this ever really a question? Why else would we have to sit through three hours of mediocrity vis-a-vis Wainwright’s “That’s Enteritainment.” Ugh, three minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
Wasn’t too impressed by “Prima Donna” either. It was a kitschy take on Lorin Mazzal’s music.
^ I meant three minutes.
I think I know what you really meant – it just felt like three hours.
Damn it! I meant Maazel!
RANDY DANDY -- Herodias returning from the NYCO Gala
Herod seems to be really expressing ‘let go of my trouser wrench’! As for the wobbles of that supposed Salome….do people really pay good money to dress up to hear such high levels of shit?
Koch comes off as a real putz in the article.
“I have mixed feelings [about public arts funding],” Mr. Koch said. “Of course the money is very welcome, and it helps the performing arts spend more money and do more things. But I tend to think that should be supported by private contributions rather than taxpayers’ money.”
Ok, embedding doesn’t work.
Maury (and all): For a refresher on embedding video, see http://parterre.com/housekeeping-tips-and-tricks
#6: How is he a putz? Even if you don’t agree with his position, that statement isn’t stupid or rude or anything like that. That is the typical conservative stance on arts funding, and though it hurts me to say it, I think it may be right. But anyway, there is relatively little funding for the arts in America, compared to Germany, say. Subsidation is what makes all those atrocious regie disasters possible. US opera houses are under pressure to listen to their public and give them what they want, which is as it should be. On the other hand, non-profit organizations should be helped out to a degree, because they benefit us.
I agree that it is typical, but I for one would welcome more funding from the government and thus more risks in production. Tired of stodgy, old-fashioned productions just to keep the privileged rich and few happy.
I have to agree with Noel Dahling – the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, but Europe has a big problem with its “official” art. Especially in a place like germany where the official position is to be self-deprecating and self-chastising (for certain past political and cultural wrongs) and thus the art which is funded by the state (that is to say, all of it! because no other system exists) tends toward the extremely political or the culturally trendy rather than originating from a personal, aesthetic motive.
The Met gets some measly (less than 15% I think) portion of its mammoth annual budget from private contributions, and while the artistic qualities may be somewhat muted, I wouldn’t say they have been largely directed by the political leanings of the givers.
Sorry- above last paragraph should have read, “The Met gets some measly (less than 15% I think) portion of its mammoth annual budget from PUBLIC FUNDING, the rest coming from PRIVATE contributions, and while the artistic qualities may be somewhat muted, I wouldn’t say they have been largely directed by the political leanings of the givers.
squirrel, I am going to ask you to explain (offer examples, show your work) the following statement: “the art which is funded by the state (that is to say, all of it! because no other system exists) tends toward the extremely political or the culturally trendy rather than originating from a personal, aesthetic motive.”
My real problem here is the segregation of the “political” and “cultural” from the “personal, aesthetic.”
well, er, as a blanket exaggeration, it’s going to be very hard to prove this.. I didn’t keep my receipts, and in some cases the persons involved are no longer living, and in the other cases, I do not recall.
I agree the segregation of… those things… is not entirely fair. But if you take the preponderance of fascist imagery in Regieoper from 1980 to say 2000, it’s obvious that the powers-that-be enjoy seeing nazism punishingly depicted on stage as a method of self-chastisement. That does not imply open and honest creation of theater, it implies a culture of “official apology”.
In the USA, I feel theater and opera far less obviously political in its content and motives. Why?
Noel @9 I guess I find libertarianism has a putzefying effect on my view of anyone. These “mixed feelings” kind of typify the whole libertarian “government is bad (until my house is on fire and I need the fire department)” shtick that for me is the veritable Essence of Putz. I also just find my bullshit detector going off at the “gosh, they done named a buildin’ after little ol’ me?” stuff in the article. But I’m probably being unfair there–I don’t know the guy. Maybe he is this super humble ultra-rich guy. Maybe they make those. I’m just primed to feel disdain toward teabaggers.
I don’t agree with Koch’s statement re: opera companies funded entirely by private donations, but I’ll chalk that up to political differences. I do worry about Noel’s assertion that opera houses “should” always give the public only what they want. Listen to the public? Yes. Give them what they want? Yes. But would any American opera written after 1940 have been commissioned if opera companies only gave the public what it knew it wanted?
p.s. sorry, Ciecuskha, I knew there had been a primer on posting a vid somewhere, but I couldn’t find it.
Well, I agree completely with Noel. As for American composers getting commissions for new operas, those who had shown that they could compose music that the people liked would have been asked. Menotti and Barber are close examples.
Let’s be frank. Opera commissions for the last few decades have been based on the prestige that companies get from having premieres, publicity, etc. For example, did anyone really expect any of operas premiered by the Met in the last twenty years to become a hit, with productions mounted rapidly in many other places, and becoming part of the standard repertoire? We knew the kind of music that these composers wrote and that the odds were very slight that something truly succesful would come out of it. That’s one reason for the lavish productions and star castings. Yes, they may get good reviews; may sell out the inaugural season; may get produced by a couple of other companies; and then they are forgotten. A succes d’estime, that’s all.
Wealthy patrons commissioned Mozart and Beethoven because they knew that they liked the kind of music that they composed and not because it was what the intelligentsia thought they should be doing.
And I don’t believe that a public driven repertoire would be limited to Traviatas and Bohemes. Companies and singers have the capacity to lead the audiences into a wider repertoire. Come on, look at the bel-canto and early Verdi revivals starting in the 50’s. Look at the Janacek and Prokofiev operas being mounted more and more often these days.
I imagine one concern that folks like Mr. Koch have with public funding is that the public just might come right along with it! (and not just the cher public)
Bravo.
Iltenore, WHATZ?!?!?!
So only composers who are already known quantities would have been asked to write operas? That may be true, but should it be? Absolutely not. How do we know whether or not someone can until they are given an opportunity to have their work known? There was a time when Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, et al, were unknown quantities. Otherwise, we’d be singing Paisiello’s Barber Of Seville and Gazzaniga’s Don Giovanni.
No, Sanford, that’s not what he’s saying. Anyway in those days a new work was expected for a theater virtually every night. The idea of warming up leftover stage works from ten years ago was completely foreign.
Let’s face it, if we are really being frank we must admit the opera idiom is dead as a doornail. The post – 1950 opera repertoire that most of us could not live without is slim indeed. Most companies that succeed are thriving on the repertoire which ends with Britten and Janacek.
It’s not these composers’ fault – the musical and theatrical idiom that makes Opera different from musical theater is just not one of our time. To say otherwise, that opera is a “living art form” makes me feel eerily like a marketing guru who just got word that subscription sales are down. Or Alex Ross.
Yes, but these operas weren’t presented because of public demand. Opera companies took risks on them and the audiences were won over. If it had been exclusively up to audience demand, they may have never been staged.
I completely disagree with you, iltenoredigrazia. I’m very glad that opera companies mount a mix of the new and the established. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have seen Dr. Atomic or Appomattox. I agree that these operas aren’t for everyone, but I’m glad they were commissioned and produced. I don’t know if they were commissioned for “prestige” only (this sounds like another word for “vanity project” to me), but I think I would be poorer if they hadn’t been.
BTW, I’m also happy with the proportion of established to new operas. I’m not an all-or-nothing guy.
squirrel wrote: The idea of warming up leftover stage works from ten years ago was completely foreign.
Gatti-Casazza wrote of reviving Verdi and Donizetti works at La Scala, after some years where they hadn’t been staged. And this was in the 1890’s.
Cruz, the 1890s is not the time of Mozart and Beethoven, as the previous poster and I were talking about. The 1880s and onward were the beginning of a concept of “repertory” and, incidentally, “Meisterwerk”
‘Repertory’ starts far, far earlier than that, both in France and Germany.
Well, Mozart and Rossini had stopped composing(and living) long before the 1890’s, which is the period that I beleive Squirell is referring to. And Verdi only had one opera left to write. In general, it is fair to say that in the early 19th century there was much more emphasis on contemporary opera than today.
My apologies, squirrel. I thought you were responding to this by Sanford@19: There was a time when Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, et al, were unknown quantities
which was written in response to this by iltenoredigrazia@17: Come on, look at the bel-canto and early Verdi revivals starting in the 50’s.
I thought that some Mozart operas did languish for decades after he died, although they are now part of the standard repertoire (or “repertory,” if you prefer). And he did compose a few operas that bombed in their first runs. I guess my point here is that if we only commissioned works that we knew would be box office successes from the launch, we would have missed out on some of the much-loved classics.
…But would any American opera written after 1940 have been commissioned if opera companies only gave the public what it knew it wanted?
Actually, there is a parallel universe of music theater works composed entirely for the free market for that very period–the canonical repertory of American musicals from Oklahoma to Sweeney Todd. And it can stand a fair comparison to the American operatic repertory of that period.
However, before we all go off into Ayn Rand-esque ecstasies about the inherent superiority of the free market in providing art, there are a few problems here.
First of all, the American musical has not been in the best of cultural straits these past thirty years; while scattered outstanding works have been produced, the genre is no longer central to American popular culture, and is almost as much subject to crises as is opera.
Second, production costs have been mounting faster than the demand for them. For instance, orchestras have been remorselessly whittled down from forty-odd to twenty if you’re lucky. A grand spectacle like Don Carlos or Die Frau ohne Schatten simply hasn’t been commercially viable for decades; too many people. As a result, the commercial musical theater has come more and more to depend on the nonprofit theater (supported directly or indirectly by the government) for the previews that are so necessary to see what the public really thinks.
no apologies necessary. Yes, I think Cosi was very much out of the repertory of most companies for decades, though the music was played with a different text and plot in Germany for many years. Was Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni ever “out of the repertoire” in Germany? (It makes little sense to look beyond country borders until after 1900 or so).
You’re right, works should be commissioned in good faith, ie: because we want to hear them, but today it’s rarely worth the trouble. Since the commodification of the performing arts in the early 20th century, we have made “museums” out of opera and orchestral institutions. Try as we might to get out of that situation, we can’t because the public is trained to think of them that way. I generally think we should just try to make them the best damned museums we can.
And I don’t believe that a public driven repertoire would be limited to Traviatas and Bohemes. Companies and singers have the capacity to lead the audiences into a wider repertoire. Come on, look at the bel-canto and early Verdi revivals starting in the 50’s. Look at the Janacek and Prokofiev operas being mounted more and more often these days.
Yes, but those revivals all started in Europe with its subsidized houses and its government-run radio stations. You need a solid institutional foundation for that sort of musical entrepreneurship, and the for-profit sector can’t provide it alone. That’s why the United States has always been a bit slow on the uptake with repertory revivals.
squirrel, which was the Mozart opera that bombed in Vienna but was a big hit in Prague the next year or two years later? I’d read about it but don’t remember the specific one — and I don’t have my history books in front of me (if you or anyone else doesn’t know, I’ll consult the books tonight). This one is now a standard. Is it Cosi?
Plus, squirrel, I didn’t want you to think that I didn’t know Mozart & Beethoven were long dead by the 1890’s. I’m not a heathen! (he said nervously)
To even be referencing Verdi, Mozart, etc. in the context of a posting about Rufus’ terribly lame and totally forgettable attempt at opera is just… absurd.
My point was, and I stand by it, is that we can’t know until afterward whether a new composer or work is “worth it”. This is one reason why musicals are in the doldrums on Broadway. It is so expensive to mount a new production that it becomes prohibitive to produce new works, unless they try out Off-Broadway first, such as Next To Normal and Putnam County Spelling Bee (a terrific show by the way) did. When new shows do open on Broadway, they’re so expensive that many shows never make a profit even if they run for several years. It’s why regional theaters, like La Jolla, The Goodman Theater, and the Signature Theater are so important. Next TO Normal started out in Washington and had a chance to not only polish the show but build word of mouth. The solution, I think, would be to not try and spend 10 or 20 million dollars on a musical. Or not produce dreck like Tarzan or The Little Mermaid. But even Shrek, which was wonderful, is closing in January. Thoroughly Modern Milly, with a terrific score by Jeneane Tesori, stunning sets and costumes, great dancing, and Sutton Foster lost money when it closed. Maury Yeston has never had a show run longer than 1000 performances (and the days when a show could run less than that and be considered a smash are looooong gone). Richard Maltby, Jr has only had one original show that was a hit (Miss Saigon); his other big hits wee Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Fosse. Adam Guettel has only had one show on BRoadway (Light In The Piazza) which was beloved of critics but not a huge financial success. Michael John LaChiusa has only had one show on B’Way (only ran 2 months). And John Kander’s first show on B’Way was A Family Affair (65 perfs). Not everyone can be Harold Prince (whose first show was Pajama Game and who, within the next 3 years, also produced Damn Yankees and West Side Story). People start somewhere and virtualkly everyone starts as an unknown.
If we use Verdi as an example, Oberto was not an overwhelming success and Un Giorgno di Regno was a downright flop. Had La Scala decided not to honor their contract with him based on his first two operas, we wouldn’t have Nabucco. And how many productions do we ever see of Mozart’s Apollo And Hyacinth?
Isn’t it better for someone to have tried writing The Letter than not trying new opera at all? For all that we (including me, I might add) squawked about Prima Donna, at least Rufus tried. He wouldn’t be my first choice to write an opera, but he tried.
cruz I think you are thinking of Figaro, which was not exactly a failure in the Vienna premiere but had certain obstacles relating to the State Sponsors who paid for it
sanford: blah blah broadway blah. what’s your point exactly? “at least he tried” is not a good reason to hire someone to write their first opera at the Met.
How do we know if someone is any good as a composer, and whether they will write a good opera? You wait until they’ve done it someplace else first. That’s usually how.
http://www.americansforprosperity.org/about
The cher public is encouraged to use the above link. Mr Koch is a friend of the arts very much in the same way that Joseph Goebbels was a friend of the arts. While such men are too sophisticated to document any quid pro quo for their support, there would of course be a subtle accommodation made to his views without his needing to ask for a thing. His involvement with the theater and the resident companies may become too big too fail, as they would say in the financial industry. At the moment, many people would say that some end justifies the means here, and I am inclined to feel that every dollar spent on decadent art in New York City is one dollar that will not be spent on any of the various anti-gay crusades around the country that are so manipulating our democracy. On the other hand, I don’t think Mr Koch will run out of funds soon, and should the arts be giving him this social legitimacy, which would appear to be motivating his generosity. As for Rufus, may his participation grace every State Theater event, as I think that this might become an embarrassment for Mr Koch. By the way, is it true that his name rhymes with a synonym for rooster? How delicious that would be.
Bravo again.
La Cieca posted about this issue here months ago.
As for me, I look forward to parsing out the subliminal messages they will be inserting in productions of Boheme, Tosca, Giovanni, Barbiere, and the rest of the core repertory.
It will help me stay awake.
squirrel, Figaro might the one I mean.
Sanford, your take on the current state of Broadway (I’ve never been — live on the opposite coast) saddens me, but it does make me think that operas could benefit from a system where new works are premiered at smaller houses so the kinks can be worked and then they’d move on to the bigger places. I understand why new works are so difficult to put on, and it’s not only that traditionalists would balk at paying to see them. They are simply too expensive to produce with a high risk of losing money. A preview system could help, like Sanford writes, to tighten up shows, make them more crowd pleasing, and to build word-of-mouth buzz.
Will such a system form in my lifetime? Probably not.
Oooops, in my previous post I meant “so the kinks can be worked OUT.”
I begin to be most curious who the squirrel is.
why? what did i do?
He isn’t the first person to write their first opera for the Met, nor will he be the last. And you know very well what my point is… don’t make me come over there and slap you upside the head. Why do we “usually” do it that way? And who says we “usually” do it that way? Why is that way better or worse than any other way? Because we didn’t like the product? That’s ridiculous. And just because “we” didn’t like the product doesn’t mean no one did. It got a terrific review in Opera Now (written by Antonia Couling -http://www.rhinegold.co.uk/magazines/opera_now/live_articles/opera_now_live_reviews.asp) and several of the other reviews were mixed, not horrible. Barber’s first opera was written for the Met, and prior success as an orchestral composer didn’t necessarily mean the opera would be successful. Why is there a different standard for composers than there is for singers? Roberta Peters made her opera debut there, as did Rosa Ponselle, Alma Gluck (I’m pretty sure), Grace Moore, Lucine Amara. And in case anyone checks my facts (and I know someone will, since I know I would), I’m not counting vaudeville (Miss Ponselle), Broadway (Grace Moore), or concerts (Lucine Amara). I’m sure there are more, plus conductors, designers, directors, choreographers, general managers, etc. Since none of us can predict the future, past successes elsewhere are no guarantees of success at the Met, anymore than past failures guarantee failure at the Met.
Previous posters overlook the fact that in the US government, both federal and in many places state, make a substantial contribution to funding for the arts, as well as many other institutions including educational, religious, social welfare and medical, through the mechanism of income tax deductilibity for charitable contributions. One may agree or disagree as to whether this is an appropriate way for government to affect the allocation of resources, but it is clearly an important component of the total picture of the financing of many areas of our cultural life. The centrality of tax policy to the perceived welfare of our non-profit charitable organizations is repeatedly demonstrated by their leading role in opposition to any fundamental revision of the basic structure of our system of income taxation.
On a different note, alokimiyeyi’s equating of David Koch to Goebbels (No. 36) is despicable. To liken everyone with whom we may profoundly disagree with the perpetrators of the Nazi horror is an insult to all who suffered during that nightmare. It reflects na immature, intemperate mentality that renders thoughtful political discussion impossible, and has no place on this website.
Bravo! Goebbels and Koch have two totally different relationships to art. Goebbels CREATED art(propaganda furthering the cause of an evil dictator), Koch is FUNDING art, two totally different things, so there is no comparison anyway.
A lot depends on what one considers a “substantial contribution.” Government grants make up two-tenths of 1 percent of the Met’s revenues, according to the latest tax documents available on their website.
My point is that when a wealthy donor makes a $1000 “private” contribution, there is likely a 35 or 40 percent savings on his or her income taxes plus an additional 45 percent saving on potential estate tax if he or she were to leave the remaining money to an individual beneficiary rather than having donated it to a charity. If my analysis is correct, wouldn’t it be the case that of the $1000 in “private” support, something like $650 is essentially government funding,
representing the amount that would otherwise have been paid to the government as higher taxes? I would be interested to read wherein you find this reasoning to be wrong.
Test of reply function.
According to the chapter and verse of 42.3 (test of reply-2)
I would much prefer to be quoted than paraphrased – I did not equate Mr Koch with Herr Goebbels. And I was referring not to the propaganda but to the wider role that Goebbels played in the Nazi policy towards the arts. But now that I consider Noel Dalhings comment, I expand my comment to include the Goebbels’ propaganda role, as the Koch organization has thrown so much mud on the wall in regard to the health care discussions. I think that Koch is a very dangerous man, based on his funding of the anti marriage propositions in both California and Maine, and his despicable role in the right wing push against health care reform. I find not a lot of distance between Nazi horror and the right wing agenda in this country. Accusing me of immature, intemperate mentality seems to me to be directed at stifling my opinion, which certainly would not further thoughtful political discussion on this site.