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Politicizing the Opera

Posted on Tuesday, January 9, 2024
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by David Lewis Schaefer
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AMAC Exclusive – By David Lewis Schaefer

nyc metropolitan opera house

The ongoing effort by the left to politicize every aspect of American culture was even visible during 2023’s programming at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera, the nation’s leading opera company.

While offering audience-pleasing classics by composers like Mozart, Puccini, and Wagner (with the opening performance of the latter’s Tannhauser repeatedly disrupted by a group of climate protestors), the Met also included on its schedule “The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” “Dead Man Walking” (based on a book and film tracing a nun’s “spiritual guidance” to a convicted murderer, and her unsuccessful effort to have his death sentence commuted), and “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” derived from a memoir by New York Times columnist Charles Blow recounting his sexual abuse at the hands of his cousin, culminating in his decision not to seek revenge.

But not even the classics are immune from politicization. At the start of last year, the Met debuted a new production of one of the most beloved 19th-century operas, George Bizet’s “Carmen,” which portrays the tragedy of a strong-willed gypsy woman finally killed by her jealous lover.

The Met proclaims that its production aims at “reinvigorating” the story by transposing it from a cigarette factory in Seville two centuries ago to today’s American border with Mexico. The customary, gorgeous gypsy costumes of the traditional setting are replaced by the new Carmen’s tiny cutoff jeans and turquoise cowboy boots.

The border is represented by a chain-link fence, while the tavern used by bandits in the original is replaced by a tractor-trailer lying on its side after a crash. In place of the original opera’s bullfighters, three pickup trucks are added, full of men waving automatic weapons presumably being smuggled across the border after being stolen from a gun factory.

Romantic Spanish flourishes like flamenco dancing and a bullfight arena are supplanted by a rodeo setting. Carmen and her lover meet around a pair of gas pumps.

The new production’s director, Carrie Cracknell, is known (according to Wall Street Journal critic Heidi Waleson) for not only “modernizing” classic texts but giving them a “feminist tinge.” (She describes her directorial approach as “looking [at the world] through a feminist lens.”) Her goal in this production, Cracknell explains, was to “find [Carmen’s] relevance to contemporary concerns.”

Instead of the escapism that “Carmen” offered nineteenth-century as well as contemporary audiences through its exotic setting, Cracknell seems to have thought that operagoers would benefit more from being reminded of controversies over the border and gun control, as well as its locale in “flyover” country, as Woolfe puts it, “the part of the country that fascinates the operating elite as much as Seville fascinated 19th-century Paris.” (That seems highly doubtful.)

To add to the feminist touch, Cracknell replaces the stabbing of Carmen by her lover with his bashing her with a baseball bat they have been struggling over. As Zachary Woolfe notes in a review for The New York Times, “a security guard walks by during Carmen’s final confrontation with her lover [but] doesn’t intervene.” And at the end, women sitting in the rodeo bleachers “rise in solidarity” with their fallen comrade, while the men remain seated. Sisterhood is powerful.

But have Cracknell and the Met really read contemporary opera audiences’ sensibilities correctly? Do couples typically say to each other, “Why don’t we go see an opera portraying the world through a feminist lens and also remind ourselves of controversies over gun control and open borders?” And if classic music, art, or literature really need to be updated to make them “relevant” to us, why do we need them at all? Just turn on a cable station of your choosing to find out more about those issues than any opera could teach you.

The entire notion that a work of art can’t be “relevant” to us unless it is updated and politicized rests on a denial that there are any permanent human problems – love, war, passions like jealousy, longing, envy, and righteous indignation – that transcend the limits of time and place, class, and sex.

Great art can never solve any such problems. Nor can any political act make them disappear. But granted that people have legitimate reasons for engaging in political activities aimed at alleviating societal problems, aren’t human beings entitled to some time away from the “issues” of their time, to have their souls moved through great works of music, art, theater, and literature that depict in a beautifying way the thrills and sadness to which all of us are exposed? If ideology and activism must permeate every aspect of our lives, how can we ever be friends with our fellow citizens, aside from those few who agree with us on everything?

A few years ago, my wife and I, lovers of Shakespeare, stopped attending performances of his plays because it seemed impossible to find a production that aimed to fulfill his vision, rather than portraying it through the director’s ideological “lenses.”

For instance, because King Lear goes mad in the eponymous tragedy, the last performance we saw had all the characters dressed in doctors’ and nurses’ outfits, stethoscopes aplenty, since the entire performance was set in a mental hospital. Another time, when we took our then-young teenage granddaughter to one of the comedies, we thought it necessary to explain to her – unnecessarily, it turned out – that sadomasochism, including the imprisonment of a woman in a constricting cage, wasn’t really part of the plot.

With classic theater collapsing and art museums required to post messages alongside their paintings explaining the artist’s connection to slavery or some other social ill, will opera be the next art form to fall?

David Lewis Schaefer is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at College of the Holy Cross.

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Carol
Carol
8 months ago

This is the reason I stopped going to plays, concerts, sporting events and movies! Even watching TV is hit and miss. Reading most current writing is trash too! Even the weather is politicized and that used to be a safe topic. It’s all demonic! I find my comfort in Jesus! He’s the only “safe space”!

Ben Franklin
Ben Franklin
8 months ago

Funny thing about making changes to improve the country (and the world). Most people are open to constructive criticism. Most would like to see improvement where warranted. But most don’t want to hear suggestions from haters. If you hate the U.S. you probably don’t want to make things better, you want to tear it down. If you hate men you don’t want to improve relations, you want to punish the opposite sex. If you hate straight people, you want everybody to be gay.
I see so many young people who are paying the price because old (and young) radicals have decided to turn the world upside down. Instead of actually making improvements, they want to destroy everything that has been created before them.
Civilization is not as sturdy as it looks. Great societies have been brought down before. Once we pass the tipping point it will take an awful lot to stop the slide. And it will take even more effort to rebuild it into its previous glory. It is rather fascinating to watch this process in real time. Kind of like knowing a road is ice covered, watching a car approach and knowing it is going to end in disaster.

Jackie
Jackie
8 months ago

Is there anything that Democrats won’t politicize??? We didn’t use to have to deal with the politicization of everything!!! Life was more enjoyable when sports, movies, awards shows and late night comedy weren’t politicized!!! I’m afraid to say anything for fear that any one person will be easily and overly offended!!! Then they will file suit against you for wild amounts of money OR they will cancel you!!! I’m sick of this cancel culture, the overly sensitive whiners and cry babies and the politicizing of everything!!! I’m sick of the deviates trying to steal our children and their futures!!! I’m sick of the transgenders getting away with actually stealing ribbons, trophies, titles, scholarships and medals from women and girls!! I’m sick of politicians who support all of this deviate and other ridiculous behaviors!!!

Robert Zuccaro
Robert Zuccaro
8 months ago

Indoctrination never sleeps.

Ladybug
Ladybug
8 months ago

Oh, dear Lord, there is no end to the craziness in this world!! We are doomed by idiocy, wokeness, and the blind!! Wake up America, Speak up, Patriots. Bone up voters or we will lose everything!!!

Saddened
Saddened
8 months ago

I sang in the chorus of a local Gilbert & Sullivan society for many years. Our performance of The Mikado won international awards, and the sets and costumes were beautiful, indicating the highest respect for the Japanese culture, and the artform.
Fifteen years later when the same society performed The Mikado, they were so afraid of being canceled for “cultural appropriation”, because traditionally, performers wore kabuki make up, and the performers were not of Japanese descent. They altered the costuming and staging to depict a “rehearsal” of that operetta. No beautiful Japanese costumes. I refused to perform in that production, and did not even go see it as an audience member.
I was so saddened and angered by the lack of care for the composer’s vision, and the flippant willingness to alter the art to accommodate people who likely had never attended, and likely would not attend a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta in the future.
The group’s website says it is dedicated to preserving the legacy of this artform. I see no dedication to preserving the art.
There are numerous new compositions by contemporary artists that portray contemporary issues. Don’t appropriate and twist the works of past artists. Just let it be!

Helen Sabin
Helen Sabin
8 months ago

The cancel culture killing groups need to move out of this country. According to them, anything goes. Even the Catholic Church is hopping on board and a recent Bishop was found to have published an erotic homosexual book. SIGH. If they don’t like American values, American customs of standing for the flag and reciting the pledge of allegiance, then move! Get out! Go to a muslim country and try their nonsense there. Conservatives need to say ENOUGH! I am tired of those “others” trying cancel me and mine. AMAC is trying too – good for it! that’s why I belong.

Melinda
Melinda
8 months ago

Improvements in the world often evolve slowly, not because someone imposes them on us. I don’t partake of performances, because of where I live, but I have never heard of a remake that was better than the original.

Rhoda
Rhoda
8 months ago

We listen to a 24/7, listener supported classical station (no state or federal funding). They carry the Met on Saturdays. The station sent out a lengthy questionnaire asking listeners to weigh in on the “new” format, and offering to not carry the “new & improved” operas. I hope this Met fiasco fails.

sue
sue
8 months ago

So sad to try and redo a classic to fit somebody’s own personal selfish interpretation of what they want while destroying a work of art.

Scott R L
Scott R L
8 months ago

As much as I love classical music, opera has been a money-loser for centuries.
(Frank Capra’s classic “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” has this as a sub-plot.)
So how does it keep going? By exploiting every source it can. Rich liberals make this easy. Their cultural/racial/economic guilt is endless.
They gladly hand over millions for this utter nonsense, because they don’t want to risk seeming uncool/un-PC.
The technical word for this is “suckers”.
All this, yet Mozart died broke. What a world.

anna hubert
anna hubert
8 months ago

Leave and boycott will send the message

barney
barney
8 months ago

It makes sense in a way for the plays to become political, as expensive as they are, it seems only the rich or the pseudo-intellectuals can afford to go to them. The left knows that those with money go, then it is up to them to pander to thier audience. Give the audience the leftist claptrap and make them think guilty and you have them. The Left took over the Educational system, the Media, the Arts and all of the non elected positions of government. If you remember that is what the Communist party said they would do to take over the USA. No, it doesn’t surprise me at all that Broadway has become political.

Laura Bentz
Laura Bentz
8 months ago

Welcome to rhe Decline and Fall of the American Empire…. sadly!

Republican 427
Republican 427
8 months ago

That wouldn’t work here in the Free State of Florida.

Watch your back
Watch your back
8 months ago

The opera? Guys didn’t Lincoln teach you what happens when you people go to theaters? Lol

Art Warmack
Art Warmack
8 months ago

Want my suggestion?? Take anyone that pretends to enjoy opera out to some distant rural area and send them to their makers. It will free them from pretending to like the horrid foreign language screeching one finds displayed as being “opera”.
Hell, they even make these little binoculars that barely work and call then “opera glasses”.
Make em dead………NOW!!

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