As serious as my reservations about the Heartbeat Fidelio are, at least it gave us Truth in Advertising. It declared its stance from the get-go, and if you disagreed, or your curiosity stopped short of the time-and-money necessaries, you did not have to attend. I am much more bothered by Diversity-inspired intrusions, some of which may seem insignificant or of the sort we agree to overlook as a matter of etiquette, in productions and at institutions that purport  to present the original masterworks as themselves. That is what galled me in the outing of the alleged gay subtext (spearheaded, so to speak, by Étienne Dupuis’ Mohawk, and taken almost to the point of Ruling Idea) in David McVicar’s’s new Don Carlos, ^(I)and similarly nettled me in a much less persistent, yet unmistakeable, Statement in Act 3 of the old Otto Schenk Die Meistersinger. There, after the Guilds had made their entrances, and the last of the dancers were scurrying to settle before the oncoming Procession of Mastersingers, a single citizen of Nürnberg lingered high on the ramp in front of the city wall, upstage center. He was an African-American citizen, and on his way down to find his seat, he executed some enthusiastic, distinctly contemporary African-American moves to the last of the charmingly folkish German strains. It was a brief moment, but stood out both by reason of the performer’s prominent, isolated position and the considerable panache of his moves, different from and more celebrative than the none-too-exhilarating staging and choreography of everything that had preceded it.

Does my refusal to overlook or shrug off this little caper strike you as petty? Not so. The scene is one that proclaims national/cultural identity and the crucial place of a specific artistic outlook within that identity. (You might recall that in my article on the Thielemann-led Dresden Meistersinger recording, I cited Dieter Borchmeyer’s observation that in this Nürnberg neither the religious nor the civic authorities have any presence, unless we count the comically oblivious Night Watchman of Act 2 or the about-to-be-humiliated Beckmesser, who holds the essentially powerless position of Town Clerk. That is because it is Art itself, and its union with the honest Bürgerlich virtues, that is to triumph and reign.) This incongruous bit of staging cannot have been accidental. It took possession of an important transitional moment in this scene, and claimed it for a counter-cultural statement from outside the work’s world. So, no: to take note and protest is not petty. Do you find it racist? Ah, that it is—on the part of the Metropolitan Opera, whose staging staff either deliberately contrived or, at best, allowed (but how could that be?) this completely inappropriate gesture on clearly racial grounds, and whose administration, up to the top (I assume Gelb at least takes a look somewhere along the line?) issued no corrective to it. At our preliminary hearing for the Court of Arts Martial, we will need to consider all evidence as to who bears how much of the responsibility for this infraction. The offense is relatively minor, and the sentences will be correspondingly proportionate. But they will be rendered according to the principles of Art, not those of Diversity.