Near the end of our amiable discussion, a viewer protested that no white singer, not even Lawrence Tibbett, should be cast as Porgy. Her argument was that whereas white singers have the entire classical repertory at their disposal, and with a preferential advantage, black singers have only this one often-produced piece that accords them preference, and that preference should be reserved to them so long as this situation prevails. Kevin and George quickly agreed with her, and George spoke of his wish that there may soon be more operas of Porgy‘s staying power that show us the variety of black life. So a reversal of attitude had taken place, and this had happened because the viewer’s statement had switched the discussion’s premise from one of an openness based on considerations of unusual artistic quality to one of exclusivity based on considerations of social justice, of equality of opportunity.

It was this exchange, viewed against the unfolding events of the subsequent weeks, that was the proximate cause of this attempt to think through the tension between these premises and the implications of The Moment for the High Culture in general, and opera in particular. But the case of Porgy and Bess is not one from which we can easily generalize. It is unique, and Tibbett was unique—an extraordinary singing actor with a bent for assuming ethnic identities, including the African-American one. Unlike our viewer, I would pay premium-seat prices to see him do this role, and pass the line of protesters to do so. But though we have had several great white American baritones since his day, I can’t think of another one I would be eager to see and hear as Porgy, in preference to any of a number of African-American singers. It requires a rare talent to make the prospect palatable, and cultural norms have shifted since the 1930s in a way that makes it unlikely that even such a talent would find the space to develop along the necessary lines. I shall return to the question of casting—a crucial one in any of the performing arts—below.

˜ ˜ ˜

Personal Perspective. There is no escaping the significance of the questions of social justice that are to the fore in the current Moment. Nevertheless, my own hierarchy of the four most urgent problems facing us today has climate change at the top and the uses, misuses, and ethics of Big Tech (this includes the internet and social media) one rung below that, with wealth inequality and the uses and misuses of nuclear power rounding out my Big Four. These are existential problems for humanity as a whole, and although the first looms over all, they are intimately interrelated in ways I sometimes think that I begin to grasp, but which I do not have the broad expertise to really sort out. Our very existence hangs on their radical diminution, soon, and they cannot be effectively addressed on anything less than the global level. They are followed by a number of other issues that are also urgent and international in consequence, but which do not seem to me to quite clear the existential-for-all-humanity bar, and the concentration of which strikes me as essentially national in scope. They would include the matters of race and gender that so preoccupy us in The Moment, and several more, including the availability and quality of education and health care, and the unregulated proliferation of guns. These are again entangled with one another, and with my Big Four as well. In a given instant, any of them can seem more determinative than the others. And I would add one more—the quality and social position of the arts and humanities, particularly in the forms that we ascribe to the High Culture. This is a minority opinion in the best of times, but whatever value it has holds in the worst, and is what I believe. Great art is in itself a social good, for all, and in the arts that must be performed to take life, the greatest social good is achieved when the artwork is most allowed to be itself, to realize its own uniqueness with power and integrity.

˜ ˜ ˜

Fallen Idols. The statues are a good starting place.^(I) They came first in the cascade of arts-related collateral damage following on the protests in the wake of the George Floyd killing. And I’m fine with de-monumentalizing Confederate generals, though not all Confederate generals were created equal in racist perfidy, and the fiery denunciations of “traitors” 160 years after the fact grows wearisome—we all know that the winners get to decide who’s a traitor and who a dauntless Freedom Fighter. In most of these cases, it doesn’t pain me that Ol’ Gen. Jubilation T. Cornpone^(II) may no longer answer to the rebel trumpet atop his pedestal on the town square, though I’m also aware that had I, a white boy, grown up in his town, I might feel wistful in the first days of his absence, simply because he’d always been there. (To a hometown black boy, obviously, the feeling might not be the same.) Still: private citizens, however justly angered, should not be allowed to topple him. That is vandalism, mob rule, and should be prevented. Who should prevent it? The police, I’m afraid.