Much closer and gaining on us, as if in magnification, was Crispino’s single unfortunate distraction, of DEI provenance. A strong eighteen-voice choral complement was on hand. It was divided into male and female contingents. Its members were not individuated; they sang and behaved with unified intent, and each sex was uniformly dressed, the men in a simple white shirt/black pants combo. Except that at the stage left end of the male line stood one chorister, tall and strong-faced, presenting entirely as a woman, with a long dress and flowing feminine locks. The program identifies her as Louise Floyd, listed among the baritones and basses. ^(I) Of the DEI-inspired intrusions on production integrity and basic believability that I’ve come across, from the “Quiche-o Don Carlos” (q.v.) on down, this was the most elementary and egregious. An individual—a chorus member, at that—came out of character to assert her gender preference over the clear artistic requirements of her role. She pulled focus from every scene she was in. She thumbed her nose at all the work the TN forces had done to at least approach theatrical plausibility, and set her personal campaign above it.

In her everyday life, Louise Floyd is entitled to her gender preference. And if what has so far taken place in her transition efforts has left a low male voice of professional quality intact, and if she meets the other requirements of participation in the chorus of an Italian opera buffa at a level at least commensurable with the competition, there is no reason not to cast her. It is then incumbent upon her, sine qua non, to assume her role, that of an anonymous male citizen of 19th-century Venice, and to adopt the costume, coiffure,  physical carriage, and, in sum, the sexual identity of the others so designated. ^(II) She should not have been allowed to defy these entry-level artistic rules. In the published comments on the Crispino production I have seen, there has been no mention of her transgression. So I’m mentioning it.

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Here follows the group of references I promised above. I urge my opera-devoted readers who may not be in the habit of closely following the doings away from our home turf to sift through them with care, and with an eye to their many implications for our artform. The publications, of course, have their paywall or free-article-limit policies.

1. Chris Jones: “The Theatre Loop: What Happened to Theatre in Chicago?”, Chicago Tribune, 8/17/23. There’s lots of good reportage in the NYT pieces I’m citing. But I think that despite its narrower focus, this is the most thoughtful single article on the theatre crisis. Chicago has long had a theatre culture both larger and more varied than those we call “regional,” and is at the same time artistically healthier than New York’s in at least one respect, in that it’s less dominated by its commercial sector. Jones, the Trib‘s longtime theatre critic, draws the strands of the crisis together and sorts them out with a sense of implicit artistic judgment missing elsewhere.