When I set September 11 as the date for resumption of tri-weekly posts, I did not envision that it would take the form of this article. But as the summer unfolded, and as the ongoing pressure system of the pandemic collided with the social justice protests and the vertiginous uncertainties of election-year politics, the impact of these developments on the already-prostrate performing arts moved from pending and probable to immediate and certain, and I felt an obligation to offer some thoughts.
I support both the narrow, short-term objective of the social justice movement (serious reform in police training and practice) and its long-term goals of equality of opportunity and access with regard to household wealth, employment, education, housing, and health care. And none of the concerns expressed below approach equivalency with death from a knee on the neck or paralysis from seven bullets in the back at short range. However, I write here about the arts—opera primarily, but the other classical arts by close association—and so it is occurrences related to them that have engaged my professional attention. These occurrences have ranged across several artistic fields, but have one thing in common: the experience of the EuroAmerican cultural mainstream as oppressive and as inimical to aspirations toward social equality and “diversity.” I think we must acknowledge that that tension exists, and needs to be addressed in something other than a dismissive tone. Perhaps I bring two advantages to the table: I’m a critic, and I’m old. I’m aware that these are seen by many as disqualifying attributes. But hard as it is to to apply rational thinking to an emotionally volatile topic, that’s something a critic is accustomed to at least attempting. And while with every generational turnover, there are certainly things the old can learn from the young, a great deal of useful education has actually happened the other way around.
To my regular readership of opera devotees: though this piece is quite long and takes excursions into other artforms, do not despair: it begins with opera, and ends with it, too. Please see the end of the post for a revised future schedule.
Personal Prologue. I suppose the title should really be The Racial/Generational/Covid 19/#MeToo/HIV/LGBTQ Moment and the Performing Arts, with such living-memory ancestors as Gay Rights, Civil Rights and Affirmative Action, Poor People’s Campaign, and Women’s Lib Moments on immediate background, and Watergate/Vietnam/’68 hovering only a little beyond. Indeed, for my generation, the Sexual Revolution, Cold War/Nuclear/Space, and McCarthy-and-Blacklist Moments are part of the chain, too. Most of these have had implications for what we think of as the High Arts, including opera, and all have contributed to the atmospheric context within which we react to new developments. For example:
During my time of low-key activism in the Vietnam/Civil Rights era (an editors’ and writers’ group under the umbrella of the Fifth Avenue Peace Parade Committee), I made a sobering discovery: the new Left was not like the old Left with respect to high culture. The old Left, coming out of the Depression and WPA years, while certainly favoring folk and populist strains in the arts, also retained something of the ideal that all people were entitled to share in the riches of the high culture, to be uplifted by it—why should it belong to only the monied capitalist elite? I’ll give you but a single anecdotal example, which I guarantee is not atypical. In that very time, my dentist was Irving Peress. His name has surfaced again recently due to a new biography of Joseph McCarthy, because his Army promotion figured prominently in the televised hearings that brought McCarthy down. Irving was certainly on the political far left. Of the magazines in his waiting room, where one might have expected Time or U.S. News and World Report, the journal furthest to the right was Ramparts. And the music track that accompanied one’s cleaning or root canal in his office alternated militant labor or racial integration songs with Brahms symphonies. He could discuss either with appreciation; there was no contradiction between them.