Loyal daughter of Regietheater though she be, though, Grigorian sees a darker picture on the musical side, and it was here that her interview, published on the day she assumed the role of Elisabetta in the premiere of a new production of Don Carlo under Jordan’s baton, stirred things up. For it seems to her that while Regie strides forward, music (especially in its vocal aspect) suffers. We can have twenty new productions of Butterfly, she complains, but cannot find twenty Pinkertons, and “Altogether, the musical quality of opera is on that account really bad today . . . we must get back to the unique sound of this art form” (my italics). She goes on to observe that in the singing schools chest voice, as is natural to the sound of the voice, is not taught as formerly, and that “the true colors of the voice lie in the chest voice. One can’t always sing pretty.” (My emphasis again). I could have said these things myself—in fact I have, over and over and, oddly, in relation to Grigorian’s Cio-cio-san, wherein her underdeveloped lower range was a drag on her artistic intentions.

Grigorian ties these remarks into her own career situation. She feels that she “needs room for creativity,” and that the space for that is getting tight. It evidently hasn’t occurred to her that the principal reason creative space is tight might be the interpretive autocracy of Regietheater itself; the indifference to matching voices with roles (performers like her, who demonstrate theatrical talent and intelligence, are at special risk); and the absence of a school of performance training that not only seeks to regain opera’s “unique sound,” but to bond it with the vocal, musical, and dramatic means of imaginative interpretation, and thereby restore some of the individual performer’s artistic agency (see “Acting,”  9/20/24). As it is, the lack of creative room leaves her losing interest in what she does, and taking that as “a signal to do something else!”—pop music, for instance. Suppressing any suspicion that she is not being quite honest with herself and that this is a case of just another soprano in her mid-forties sensing a diminishment of voice and seeking a pasture without all this weed-pulling to do, I find her predicament poignant.

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And this just in (not easy to keep the pace): As of Nov. 25, we have another round of Gelb/NYT, this time in the form of a piece on the op-ed page—great position!—by PG himself. I cannot recall a precedent for that, and do not know whether it was by the paper’s invitation or Gelb’s request, but in either case it appears in the light of his problems with criticism and the Met’s struggles. Though he frames his arguments with a painfully forced parallel between the world premiere of La Fanciulla del West (Met, 1910, with Destinn, Caruso, and Amato, under Toscanini) and the casting of Lise Davidsen in the current revival of Tosca, he says nothing he has not said before. And look: he is perfectly right that the decline of music instruction in the schools has given us two or three generations of Americans who are much less likely than former ones to turn to opera for nourishment or diversion. And that an unprecedented profusion of entertainment options, many of them free albeit virtual, beckon us all. It’s also true, as noted above, that the Met and other American companies have not the cushion of state subvention (frazzling now, but still there) and the traditional place of opera in the broader culture that are  available to European companies. Those are among the factors that would face any administration, with any artistic policy, in the present difficult climate. I suppose we can also concede as a merit his reported long-term reduction of average audience age from mid-sixties to mid-forties, though since that is accompanied by a serious falling-off of total numbers, suggesting that some older folks have voted with their feet, I’m not sure just how useful that’s been. But the article is essentially an attempted defense of the “swerve,” and a response to its feeble record of success, by blaming “resistance from administrators, academics, and critics.” He thinks we should breathe sighs of relief at having escaped Ligeti’s Le grand macabre, cites the Volksoper’s production of an opera about Alma Mahler as the way to go, and maintains that the series of recent works that he and Nézet-Séguin have set before us (plus, of course, the series of auteuristic manglings of older, better operas) represents “forging ahead,” vs. “playing it safe.” I don’t think that’s going to sell.

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NEXT TIME: Part Two of this article will post next Friday, Dec. 6. As noted at the top, I will be taking a look at the thought and work of Yuval Sharon, who has made most of his considerable reputation with events that challenge the very nature of opera as an artform, but who will soon be confronting cornerstone works in the setting of an international-level repertory house, the Met. His new book, A New Philosophy of Opera, and his 2018 Bayreuth Festival production of Lohengrin (seen on video) will be my primary points of reference.

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