White man’s burden
Impresarios from Cornwall to Caithness are delighted to hear today that another traditionally Albion-adminstered opera company has begun the succession process with the search for a new heir-presumptive. Or, in other words, Glimmerglass General and Artistic Director Michael MacLeod is out the door at the end of the 2010 season, and now we just have to wait to see which Brit will get the job next. [Opera News]
Except that MacLeod and Robertson are Scottish.
If you’re Scottish, Welsh or Ulster Irish you’re still a fucking Brit.
What if you’re fucking a Brit?
Get into opera performance, production or administration. Apply for any of various openings in the U.S. You’re likely to get the job at triple your Brit salary.
You’re wrong about the applying part. The Brits already here will fall all over themselves to throw dollars at you to hop the pond and be an Assistant to the Associate Artistic Consultant or sing Beppe or Barbarina.
At first, I read Jack Jikes’ advice as directly applicable to That Guy’s question. If it were only that easy!
as always, please wear a condom.
You’d think we’d run out of them by now.
Yeah but no but yeah but no but! I love Little Britain. Xenophobia will get you nowhere.
Didn’t it used to be that it was very difficult if not impossible for Americans to work in the UK? Is that still the case? And why does it seem that it is no problem for UKers to work here?
It is difficult, in as much as the British company has to file all kinds of paperwork, and visa crap making the case why the American is absolutely necessary. I have watched all the European companies, who, like the Americans, have tightened their budgets, become fiercely chauvinistic, tighten ranks, and hire mostly their own. Here in America, the major companies, starting with the Met simply don’t hire the Americans, when they can fill the covers, covers and sings, and small parts with much cheaper foreigners. God bless America, and f-ck the American singer.
On the other hand, I know British artists not working for opera companies who say they can’t even stand the thought of performing here anymore because of the onerous hoops the Feds make them jump through, treating them all as though they are terrorists and taking so long for processing that tours sometimes have to be canceled because of the bureaucratic delay.
They should maybe go into opera administration instead.
I can’t even tell you what a total fucking nightmare the visa process has turned into. We are talking thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours put into the shit that is required to pull together overseas engagements for a full time artist. It is completely ridiculous in every way.
Yes, it has become reminiscent of something like Franco’s Spain or some other xenophobic paranoid fortress society. But of course we have been ruled for years by people who never wanted to travel abroad themselves and considered foreigners of no interest, if not dangerous.
Freedom fries, anyone?
Makes me look with a friendlier eye, come to think of it, on the fucking Brits who do get in.
What people are forgetting is the influence and cosy deals done between international Artist Management groups and Opera compnaies across the World. Leaving it up to those Artist managements ‘to provide and service’/ or get a Opera company out of a jam at short notice: for an available singer, due to another singer’s sudden indisposition. Relying on their services so much, that :’in-house back-up’ with a roster of spares to fill a role, has lessened over the years.
‘Pissing in each others’ pockets’ has become the accepted evolving operating norm.
Such a model then excludes promising artists from banking on starting, continuing and finishing their careers mainly with one Company….unless they quickly relegate themselves to Chorus.
Today sadly, everything is cut and dried: the axiom is :’Start in the chorus and a singer is indelibly stamp branded / tattooed to stay there’. Since they have not taken the other ‘sweeter’ accepted avenue of being mentored, or picked up by agencies who feverishly watch singing competitions looking for ‘fat – busy networking -resume type candidates’ for their books. It suits their Corporate success model….fuck what Opera really needs in the long term….. this is about the year’s balance sheets! It has become a savage ruthless game. I have known of instances where so called Artistic Directors of Opera Companies that took all their advice from particular Artist’s Management consultants, since they were such fuck wits themselves. Virtually cast by the one Artists’ management group. Shit! You wanted to see the fractured results in some cases!!!
The old crisis traditions of grab a promising company singer and let them have the chance to fly by the seat of their pants, is gone. It paid chorus members in the past, to know main roles off by heart, in case they were given the chance to save ‘the Company’s bacon’ one night. That was the old tradition in a crisis….now a Company rings up and ask some Artist Management Co. to fly in someone ‘off their own books’ to walk through the part for a night or two.
The biggest question that is begging to be asked : Why does the U.S with its large population and its vast array of musical training colleges and teachers need to import at all? Granted, a little bit of fair ‘equal 1 for 1 exchange artist program’ would add a little exotica to the mix on that same basis. Then the ‘invasion’ argument disappears between all parties.
Honestly, we need to keep importing foreign singers and musicians to keep competition at the highest levels. I agree with many of your points however we need a Borodina, Frittoli, Stoyanova, Abradzakov, Beczala, Kaufmann, Isokoski, Hvorostovsky, et al.. It keeps us striving for excellence and that is what this field should be about. Whether that comes from natural selection or from training it doesn’t matter, it gives singers inspiration and role models.
Americans sing in British opera companies all the time. Leaving aside our international house, Covent Garden, where all the best US singers – and not a few deadbeats – regularly appear, there are Americans currently singing with ENO: John Tessier as Nemorino, Anna Christy and Brian Mulligan Lucia – in other words three of the leads in two out of three operas presently in the repertoire are taken by US singers. Patricia Racette will make her ENO debut next month as Katya Kabanova, a role for which there are several plausible British or British-based alternatives. I’m not complaining. Racette is a fine singer-actress who derserves to be seen in such a role in London. Welsh National Opera, meanwhile, has Lisette Oropesa making her UK opera debut as Konstanze in a production by an American director.As for Covent Garden, well since the beginning of the year, we’ve had Kyle Ketelsen as Shadow, half the cast of Cosi – Schneiderman, Castronovo, Troy Cook – has been American, Kurt Streit is about to go on as Bajazet in Tamerlano. Indeed there are few operas at Covent Garden in which Americans are not singing. How many Brits are currently singing at the Met?
You could also mention John Easterlin, who is in the cast of the Gambler (alongside Kurt Streit).
This season, Covent Garden has also had Stephen Costello (twice), Zambello (twice), Marcus Haddock, not to mention all the overseas nationals who work on the Covent Garden staff. It’s almost as if the British are out to conquer the whole world!
Marcus Haddock has pulled out of Carmen. He’s very sick apparently and he’s been replaced by Bryan Hymel, who is also replacing him as Enée in Les Troyens in Amsterdam this season.
Is Haddock still ill? Best wishes for a complete recovery for him.
On this season’s roster, according to my Rosenkav playbill, there are 368 singers. Fourteen (Emma Bell, Susan Bullock, Sarah Connolly, Felicity Palmer, Rosalind Plowright, Barry Banks, Philip Langridge, Alan Oke, Toby Spence, Thomas Allen, Simon Keenlyside, Christopher Maltman, Donald Maxwell, Bryn Terfel) are British.
Fourteen singers.
At Covent Garden there are 175 singers on the roster of which ten – Charles Castronovo, Troy Cook, Stephen Costello, John Easterlin, Steven Ebel, Bryan Hymel, Kyle Ketelson, Helene Schneiderman. Kurt Streit. James Valenti – are Americans and you will note that not one of them is exactly a world superstar. One could say the same of the British artists at the Met, with the exceptions of Palmer, Langridge, Allen, Keenlyside and Terfel (I have to say I find it pretty surprising that the Met needs Donald Maxwell or Emma Bell) but the proportion of US singers at Covent Garden is considerably higher than Brits at the Met – and this is a season with no Fleming, DiDonato, Graham, Zajick or David Daniels.
This ignores the fact that the printed Met roster includes dozens of people who don’t have a prayer of ever singing a note on the Met stage. Whereas, say, the NYCO prints only those appearing in the current season — leaving off the names of some of their biggest stars — the Met prints every “cover” artist or any soloist who may do anything at all in connection with the company.
Take for example, Amy Burton, who has been missing from the NYCO roster for seasons on end, but who appears on the Met roster every season.
In that case, tell who are the useless British singers “saturating” the major US houses and keeping brilliant US talent out? I think it’s the smell of paranoia that is even more pungent in here.
These are established singers in major roles.
I think the issue is the extravagent expense and lost opportunity when middling people are imported for jobs that anyone could do.
I was answering the question ‘how many Brits are currently singing at the Met’ posed above.
AJ – I was actually addressing the general issue in the post…
Ooops, my mistake. The threading can get confusing hereabouts.
Personally I don’t see the UK singers filling in all over the place in small roles as much as in the past. Now the trend seems to be Russians and eastern Europeans that are everywhere. I’m not talking about the big name singers, Netrebko, Borodina, Ghoul, etc. But Gubanova, Smirnova, Petrenko, Gagnidze, Poplavskaya, etc. These are not big names, they don’t seem to me to be extroadinary up and coming talents but the New York casts have them liberally sprinkled in casts of Italian and French operas
Imagine a country with 300 million people having a strong international presence at an international house. How strange…
That’s not at all strange. The US has produced some of the greatest voices in opera since the late 19th century. Londoners are glad to see outstanding Americans at Covent Garden, and always have been. But the names I have cited above are relatively modest talents, but then so is Armerjacquino’s list of Brits at the Met, apart from Terfel and possibly Keenlyside. What is certain is that the proportion of Brits at the Met is lower than the proportion of Americans at Covent Garden.
John Tessier is Canadian.
This season outside of NYC we have Brits and London-based “Commonwealthers” singing in San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, Cleveland, St. Paul and Boston.
Phillip Joll as Thoas in Seattle and, last season, Rigoletto in Phoenix????? Elizabeth Byrne as Herodias at Minnesota Opera and Gertrud with the Phoneix Symphony?
There is no comparable US saturation of British companies; nothing remotely close.
Every summer virtually *all* of the singers hired by Mostly Mozart at Lincoln Center are Brits, even to do things like two concert arias or the mezzo part in a Mozart mass. Take a look at the solo singers on the roster of Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society: tons of Brits. Etc etc etc.
In recitals we get not only the wewlome Keenlysides and Cootes but the Bostridges (UGH), Maltmans and Padmores (i.e. the considerably overrated).
**No comparison**.
John Tessier is Canadian but you are saturated with London-based “Commonwealthers”!!!! Haha! You really couldn’t make such bare-faced xenophobia up. So can we count Relyea – who for once thank God we aren’t getting at the Garden this season (although he does concerts all round the UK) as an American because he is a New York-based “Commonwealther”?
I see Regina is unable to respond to the substance of this post (“Haha!”, always a sign of desperation) and chooses to play the Xenophobia card. That is nonsense. We welcome gifted singers from abroad at all levels of musical activity from conservatory upwards.
What we don’t like is a whole bunch of mediocrities promoted solely due to their London connections with our imported arts administrators. There are and have been a lot more such than there have been Yanks in the UK.
I mentioned Tessier being Canadian ( he is also Canada-based, though he does sing, year` in year out, at Glimmerglass, which delights in Brits and Commonwealthers) because you, Regina, cited him as an American in post 5.2.
My response to the post, is that if you compare the USA and Europe – although I concede there are far many more opera companies in Europe than in the US (but equally there are many more “mainscale” companies in the US than the UK) you will find that European companies are far more “saturated” with American singers than US companies are with Brits. UK singers you don’t like such as Philip Joll and Ian Bostridge are hardly good examples: when was Bostridge last cast in a major role by a US company? Has he ever sung at the Met? As far as I am aware he has no opera career outside the UK except when Deborah Warner is directing (usually a co-production) the show. If Mortier had gone to NYCO, you might have seen his Aschenbach which was one of his few convincing opera roles. As for Joll, well he rarely sings in the UK, except with Welsh National Opera – he is second cast Rigoletto this season following Keenlyside – and that’s because he was a member of the company as a beginner. If you want to know why he sings in the US, ask Matthew Epstein – an American I think – who has always been a fan and promoted his career. I’m no fan of Maltman either, although he has a certain Barihunk charm but he seems no less of a vocal talent than, say, Nathan Gunn, who has sung at both Covent Garden and Glyndebourne. What I am saying is that when less than starry US singers appear in the UK – and there are loads of them at Glyndebourne this summer – I, and the other Brits, don’t whine that there is some kind of US-inspired conspiracy to deprive Brits of jobs here. Some critics complain when underpar foreigners – not just Americans – are engaged by ENO or Covent Garden in comprimario parts, but often with reason. Yet whenever an American casting is questioned in the British press, there is a collective outburst of Britophobia in here. Opera is an international art form and Brits are hardly pervasive. Fourteen Brits out of a roster of over 300 singers, and a couple singing in Phoenix is hardly an Invasion of the British Opera-Snatchers.
*stands on chair, applauding*
Applaud all you like, tenorino. Again Regina answers something other than what I wrote. I said nothing about Bostridge in opera. He is inflicted on us in recital and concert.
And you persist in taking about the Met’s roster this year as if that were the only evidence. Year after year, Krunoslav, La Cicea and I and others have cited the unnecessary Britcastings throughout the USA (Mary Lloyd-Davies brought to San Francisco for Gertrud, for Christ’s sake; Matthew Rose imported to Houston for*Raimondo*) and you have always poo-pooed this with “Opera is international. They are the best singers for the job” which is untrue.
The conductors of ALL FOUR Glimmerglass operas this summer are Brits. Is that any way to run a festival dedicated to young American artists?
It’s nice that, Bracknell- like, you are prepared to overlook the problem. Don’t expect us to.
Please don’t tell me what I have or haven’t said. I have never said ‘they are the best singers for the job’; that would be an absurd claim for singers I’ve never heard.
Your tone’s a bit unpleasant, too- can’t this be discussed without getting nasty?
By the way, I mentioned the Met roster once, in answer to a direct question. Funny use of ‘persist’.
Armerjacuino–
Unless you are also “Regina della fate”, I was using “you” to refer to both of you, and “:Regina” has mentioned the current Met roster several times. Apt use of “persist”.
Sorry to sound shrill, it;’s early here, and the Llyod-Davieses and Glanvilles are on the march…
Oh dear, oh dear – the Lloyd-Davieses and Glanvilles are on the march? Where to, pray? I think you’ll find Mary Lloyd-Davies – another Epstein “discovery” incidentally – marched into retirement a couple of seasons ago (she’s well over 60) and Susannah Glanville now struggles to get B-casting at Opera North where she began her career. Which important American house is she singing in this season? As for Bostridge “being inflicted” on American audiences, well he is inflicted on London audiences far more and why? Because, like him or not (I don’t) he has an international record contract and a devoted following which buys tickets for his concerts, otherwise he wouldn’t be booked. Name a single American singer who has an INTERNATIONAL reputation as a Lieder singer compared with Bostridge’s and who sings Lieder in Salzburg, Vienna, Hohenems/Schwarzenberg and in most of the important cities where Lieder recitals are still cherished. Whether Bostridge is good at them or not is immaterial. He is perceived as such by audiences and promoters and people go. It’s not an artistic conspiracy, it’s called business, something I thought Americans were rather good at and approved of heartily.
I must say that I am in very nearly complete agreement with Nerva Nelli on this issue. Regina’s “rebuttal,” which consists essentially of cherry-picking a few names and then saying, “but none of these British singers perform [much] opera in the U.S.” is grasping at straws, and the smell of desperation is quite pungent.
Really? I don’t smell anything. If anything is desperate, it’s the constant invoking of Susannah Glanville, who didn’t sing two roles several years ago.
Sorry – I replied in the wrong place. It would interesting then to know who are all these useless Brits – ie the one’s I haven’t cherry-picked – singing in the major US houses and keeping dazzling Americans out. I think it’s the smell of paranoia that is far more pungent here, and it’s not coming from this side of Atlantic, where as I have said several times, we can’t get enough of artists such as Joyce DiDonato and Susan Graham and fine singers such as Kyle Ketelsen and Charles Castronovo. Ask Germans what they think about the “saturation” of German houses with US singers and they will mostly approve – it’s only in the US that this continual anti-Brit whining goes on and it seems based on the flimsiest of evidence, ie 14 singers at the Met, of which maybe two are surplus to requirements.
I didn’t know that Lloyd-Davies sang Gertrude in San Fran’s R & J last season, which is clearly absurd. She hasn’t sung with a British company for several years which makes it even more incomprehensible San Francisco casting her. But we just got Jphn Easterlin for a tiny part in The Gambler, which also seems unnecessary but none of us are whinging about a saturation of US artists on the basis of one comprimario role here and another there. You’re making a mountain out of anthills.
Re my 5.2.5.9. post – I just remembered Tom Hampson who certainly has a recital career equal, possibly superio, to Bostridge’s, but he’s almost an Austrian these days. He even speaks English with a slight Austrian accent, but that may be just for show.
Oh – and Elizabeth Byrne is a permanent US resident, has an American husband and an American agency, which may explain why she is singing in Minnesota and no longer in Glasgow or Leeds. She’s probably cheaper to engage than Jane Henschel, too. If I were running Minnesota, I’d be casting Jill Grove, but sadly, I’m not.
Re: John Easterlin above; but I think the consensus in the industry is that Easterlin is a highly talented and interesting artist who should be heard in the major international houses.
I think this whole argument is a matter of perspective. Directors tend to take their artists with them from production to production. Very often, they only tend to know the artists who work with them well. That a large number of Directors are Brits is not their fault. That they tend to ask for artists who are familiar to them…well, perhaps it is up to agents to be a little more proactive in introducing their artists to the Directors concerned. But I don’t see any indication that this is some sort of conspiracy.
Regina -
Mary Lloyd-Davies sang Gertrude in Hansel and Gretel at San Francisco, not in Romeo and Juliet. But, in any case, that was in 2002 and was in David Poutney’s production, which, as we know, originated in Britain and uses an uber-british translation compleate with london slang. I believe she, like Cathryn Win Davies, who sang Gretel, did the production in England and were imported along with it. That was also Lloyd-Davies’ only engagement with the company.
I don’t really see a problem importing singers of any nationally for a rented production if they already know the staging.
To be completely honest, I think this whole discussion is really quite silly. Who cares how many British singers at the Met, and how many of them “deserve” to be shipped over? There are plenty other singers of varying nationalities who sing all over the United States, and no one raises a peep. I don’t understand why a few British singers is such a big deal. If they can sing the role (well), why not let them sing it? The whole “fucking Brits” aspect of this site makes me generally uncomfortable. It IS xenophobic, and based in somewhat unsound logic.
Thanks Baritenor for your sane and informative reply. I thought it would have been extremely odd for Mary Lloyd-Davies to have sung a comprimario role in San Francisco last season when she hasn’t sung a note in the UK for four or five seasons or more. It’s interesting that all of the examples of useless Brits taking jobs from Americans appear to date from some years ago and some, like Susannah Glanville, didn’t even appear. I find it odd when houses like the Met or Covent Garden have to look abroad to cast roles like the First Lady in The Magic Flute.
And Browser – I’m not criticising John Easterlin – he may well be a very fine young upcoming singer, but the role he sang at Covent Garden was so small it was hard to tell. We recently had Stephen Costello debuting in Linda di Chamounix followed quickly by Rinnuccio in Gianni Schicchi and he was a big hit with the public and critics. He’s going to do Nemorino at Glyndebourne in the near future. That should be worth waiting for.
Hampson practically an Austrian? Regina, your info is way out of date. How can a person who has no residence in Austria and does not perform there be considered an Austrian?
Hahahaha, they could have had Gerard Mortier, but noooooooo, he was driven by the philistines in this country in to the loving embrace of the Teatro Real Madrid.
Yeah! You come in, smoooze up to the Board, set plans in motion, fuck off / or get rid of reliable staff, and send the joint dark with all your plans and renovations .Then, when people resist, and will not subscribe to your grandiose plans, you piss off in a tantrum like a prancing princess with its nose in the air Yes off, imagining you are leaving on some tacky parade day Swan float to native peasant azure sky regions where you can plead ‘cultural mis-interptration’ if they don’t accept you! Being La Mamma Morta Mortier.
H.H There are plenty artistic dills and pompous farts floating around the oceans , willing to wreck and damage before making hurried departures if, given the chance.
Now H.H please tell us what great indispensible expertise and creditials you allege, Mortier had, that New York missed out on……..
I am sure we would all love to know what they were…
As far as I can see, MacLeod has continued to do a fine job, so I’m sorry to see him go — despite the undeniable taint of his being a fucking Brit.
Wait…you can’t deny British taint?
Er …
Don’t be silly, Alto, he can’t have done a fine job. He’s a Fucking Brit.
Wait, do we really hate the Brits? I thought this was all a long-running, elaborate joke, akin to the Vicar.
Joke or not, I do find it a bit queasy-making, In the context of opera, nationalism and xenophobia aren’t likely, it’s true, to have the cataclysmic consequences they can have in the political realm; but, as in that realm, I suspect that these phenomena are displacements of other, unexamined motives. In my dream, critiques of casting could be articulated in other terms than these patriotic ones.
Agreed, rapt. I’m often surprised that these threads bring out sincere xenophobia (or “patriotism”), and degenerate into queasy-making rants. There are incompetent Brits, just as there are incompetent singers, admins, and GDs of any background. Likewise for the talented ones.
This Brit grew up -- heard him as Riccardo last night in Ballo:
Who is he?
Peter Auty:
Was he good in Ballo?
Yes, he was – at least, I thought so. I went for Monique Wagemakers, who is always interesting, and to check out Kelly God, who will sing Sieglinde next season. She was great:
http://www.kellygod.com/
Kelly God – great name for a diva!
Is it true that la Zambello is already chosen and waiting to be announced? De mal en pire….