Following his NPR program devoted to Marston’s 10-CD Lawrence Tibbett release, for which I wrote the booklet essay, Joseph Horowitz has posted an article, The Baritone as Democrat, in The American Scholar, here. In addition to a concise narrative of the great baritone’s life and career, with its unequalled “crossover” triumphs (a “Star of Stage, Screen, and Radio,” as the réclame went), Horowitz speculates intriguingly on how differently the course of opera in America might have run had the dream for which he fought (of an American repertory, and opera in translation) had been realized, and even if—as was once held plausible—he had succeeded to the artistic directorship of the Metrpolitan Opera. Recommended.

I have decided to split this article into two posts, because I feel the second part, which deals with the radical director Yuval Sharon’s ideas and work about the nature of opera and its production (he will be staging Tristan und Isolde and the Ring for the Met beginning next season), as contained in his new book and in his Bayreuth production of Lohengrin, are best considered in a stand-alone context. Below, Part One.

The Met/Gelb/NYT. As with the 2023-24 season here at our local opera house, the present one is backloaded—most of what seems to invite critical attention falls late, and I have already offered my thoughts on Les contes d’Hoffmann. But there has been plenty to chew over since ’23-’24 staggered to a close with a revival of Madama Butterfly and a death-of-art production of Carmen (see Butterfly Revived. Carmen, Not, 5/24/24). The chewing began in mid-June, with a three-day volley of opera-related small-arms fire in the New York Times. On the 15th, Zachary Woolfe, the paper’s chief music critic, conducted a post-season survey (a half-page plus a column) that alternated artistic evaluation with box-office returns, special attention being given to the Met’s “swerve” toward contemporary opera in an effort to boost cratering attendance and lure younger and first-time ticket buyers. The article avoided anything definitive-sounding or alarmist, but the tone was of distinctly modified rapture on the artistic front and of sobering reportage on the audience-hunting one—no big game had been brought to ground.

The very next day, Joshua Barone contributed a bottom half-page (above-the-fold space being devoted to promo photos of the Intendants of the Staatsoper (Bogdan Roščic) and the Volksoper (Lotte de Beer), the latter posing dancily on the seatbacks of her auditorium) to how wonderful things are in Vienna, as indeed they are from the audience support p.o.v.—according to the article, typically 99.5-100% attendance at the Staatsoper, for many more productions and performances than the Met is currently managing.^(I) Artistically, Barone reports, Roščic’s kind of innovation involves a renewal of the core repertory, while de Beer’s is feminist and new-work-oriented. He does not paper over the Staatsoper’s administrative problems (see below), but the overall feel of his piece is positive. And the day after that, the NYT published a “Critic’s Notebook” article by Barone, an evaluation of Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s artistic leadership of the Met, with the emphasis on his work with the orchestra (a “mixed tenure . . . evident at recent shows,” ran the subhead) and on the limited portion of N-S’s élan vital that is available to the company amid his other commitments (he conducted only four of the company’s eighteen productions in ’23-’24).