My point is not that the Met should never mount contemporary operas, but that the openings for them among the canonical works, which collectively have established the standards, should be jealously guarded, and above all that they should be selected on the basis of artistic merit, not for their conformity to the demands of Diversity.^(I)

Diversity has nothing to do with artistic merit. It is neither pro nor con, but irrelevant to it. I would call it artistically neutral; in the abstract, that is true. But we do not live in the abstract. We live with performance, and in performance we come up against the verisimilitudes. I wrote about verisimilitude in the Racial Moment article, but in the singular, in line with only that aspect of that subject. I talked about the history of the notion as it pertains to theatrical representation, and briefly about how it might be dealt with in the present context. But I think the discussion needs emphasis and refinement, for in opera there are several verisimilitudes. There’s the obvious one of physical appearance, which comprises ethnicity along with other aspects of bodily shape and size. Staying with eye true-to-lifeness, there is also everything conveyed through body language, which tells us much about a character’s cultural and individual identity, about class, about sexuality, about attitudes toward others and degree of comfort with a given milieu—everything, in short, we pick up from a person’s behavior. Then, in opera, there are the verisimilitudes of the ear. First among these is voice itself, the degree to which a given voice, as musical instrument, can approach complete fulfillment of the aesthetic and dramatic requirements of a particular assignment. There is mastery of language, extending to the ability to “get inside” the poetic expression of the idiom employed. There is mastery of style, extending to a sensitivity to nuance in a given expressive fashion. And there is, finally, in really superior artists, the instinct for fusing all these into what we think of as interpretive insight, and to make that seem spontaneous. These are all verisimilitudes, ways of penetrating to ear true-to-lifeness as understood in the realm of classically developed singing. They are all important. All answer to legitimate expectations of initiates, which in turn contain an element of idealization that is also legitimate. So we are obliged to concede that Diversity is not, in opera’s case, comfortably neutral. The masteries and expectations bend in the direction of powerful cultural norms that, while elastic enough to allow for a range of interplay within them, make up a homogeneous identity to which the artist must assimilate, on pain of loss of artistic integrity—or, to return to my principles—violation of artistic ethics.