Wednesday
Aug072013
OperaNow! #195: Don't Mess With The Hampson
Wednesday, August 7, 2013 at 8:41AM 
Mezzo sues The Metropolitan Opera after falling through trap door...Thomas Hampson gets waterboarded by BBC's HARDTalk...Opera Philadelphia takes it to the fabulously re-furbed warehouses...First Pavarotti recording to be bundled with umpteenth collection of his hits...Opera singer accuses neighbor of killing her groundhogs...YOU try living in Russia!
Michael's Corner wraps up its look at Gilbert & Sullivan with The Yeomen of the Guard, The Gondoliers, Utopia Limited and The Grand Duke.
This week features Michael, The OC, Doug Dodson and Jenny Rivera.
Reader Comments (14)
Thanks for the mention this week! I chose Magdalena Kožená specifically because I know Oliver doesn't like her, and I always found Carmela quite annoying as a character, so it just seemed to fit...
The person who wrote that rebuttal to the BBC* has followed it up with some additional blog posts if you'd be interested in reading them:
http://greeninkninja.blogspot.co.uk/
It occurred to me that the reason G&S is more popular in America is that the style of singing doesn't have the same connotations as it does in the UK. I imagine that for you guys it all sounds fairly generic, but over here (at least to me) it sounds incredibly old-fashioned, even for the time that the recordings were made. I guess a rough equivalent would be like someone using a 1930s Hollywood voice in a modern film - it's that jarring. But maybe I'm being a bit presumptuous about American ears... That said, I think the same applies to lots of other opera - I imagine that Der Rosenkavalier sounds very different if you're Austrian, for example.
Also, I feel like I have to put in a good word for Die Fledermaus. I love it, and I think that exactly the same principle as the one you've mentioned in reference to G&S also applies to it. It benefits from a really professional approach, and just because it's a light piece, it doesn't deserve to be taken any less seriously by the performers. That's why the Carlos Kleiber version is so brilliant - he devoted just as much thought and energy to it as he did to something like La Traviata. As for the rest of operetta... often I can take it or leave it. I don't have a lot of time for Der Zigeunerbaron or The Merry Widow, for example.
(* In the UK we always say "the BBC", not just "BBC". For extra British points, say "The Beeb" or "Auntie Beeb".)
Also, there are prominent Russian musicians who have done a lot more than just appearing in photos with Putin - they've also made party political broadcasts on behalf of United Russia. I think the "they just want to make their art" argument doesn't really hold much water. Art isn't apolitical, or a total escape from the real world, or somehow immune from political critique. Refusing to engage with this issue is in itself a political statement - a sort of sin of omission. Then again, where was the outrage when Russia invaded Georgia, or when Mikhail Khodorkovsky was put on trial, or when Anna Politkovskaya was murdered, or when gay rights activists were arrested in St Petersburg last year? Why have people suddenly take an interest now?
I can't make up my mind about the whole Netrebko/Gergiev/Putin thing. On the one hand, I feel that opera is (in a way) an artform For Gays By Gays, and that Russian opera stars ought to stand on the side of their gay colleagues and audience. On the other hand, when I consider how very threatening the Putin regime is. When I consider that friends and family of those who speak out could be in very real danger, well...lets just say that if I were in the same situation I'm not sure what I would do. Probably just keep smiling, singing, and pledging allegiance to "Mother Russia." It's a complicated issue. It would be nice to see the Met, opening its season with a Russian opera, by a gay Russian composer, performed by several prominant Russians, it would be nice to see them recognize in some way the injustice in Russia.
Guys, I think y'all seriously dropped the ball on your coverage of how Netrebko fits into the furor over Putin's crackdown on gays in Russia. First off, it's simply not true, as Michael claimed, that all she's done in the past was have her picture taken with Putin. She and Gergiev are among the 500 celebrity trustees who officially supported his reelection campaign:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/no-political-harmony-among-cultural-elite/453318.html
Also, nobody's suggesting, as Jenny characterized the petitioners' argument, that musicians in the opera world necessarily have to become an activist on the issue. But given that Putin's unleashed an anti-gay pogrom with his homophobic legislation, the least that Netrebko and Gergiev's fans and employers deserve is to for the two of them to clarify, publicly, whether they still support him as they have, publicly, done in the past. Of course there's no need for non-political Russian artists (like, say, Maxim Mironov or Galina Gorchakova or Olga Peretyatko) to go on record about this if they don't feel comfortable making political statements. But Netrebko's already on record campaigning for Putin so it's too late for her to pretend to be above the political fray; if she doesn't speak up now, then her previous political stance holds true and she remains a tacit Putin supporter.
The Met had a policy during WWII which should the model for how to proceed in this case and which is consistent with what the petition at issue calls for: Explicit fascist supporters of Italy and Germany's bigoted regimes were banned, but Italians and Germans who either kept their politics to themselves or explicitly backed the Resistance or simply repudiated their former fascist support, were all welcome. You could just as easily apply Michael's comment above--"YOU try living in Russia"--to the fascist period and say "YOU try living in Mussolini's Italy," etc., which doesn't excuse allowing yourself to become an instrument of his propaganda machine. Anyway, the comment is off the mark in this case because Netrebko herself doesn't live in Russia: She's a citizen of Austria now, so it's not as if Putin can revoke her passport or have her disappeared or derail her already well-estrablished career.
Again, no one expects Netrebko to go to Red Square draped in a rainbow flag singing a crossover version of "Born This Way" to protest Putin's pogroms; we should expect nothing less and nothing more of her and Gergiev than for them to repudiate their former stance as Putin's political cronies, or else risk alienating a demographic that makes up a good-sized chunk of their fan base.
The petition, for those who want to sign it, is here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-metropolitan-opera-dedicate-9-23-opening-gala-to-support-of-lgtb-people
The Met has stated they are not planning to make the dedication.
YAY! Brad is back to commenting.....which means he is still listening to the show......which means that he heard my bits on Semele and Cavalleria Rusticana.....which means that since he DIDN'T comment on those, that he tacitly agrees with everything I said.
Netrebko is a Putin supporter but she doesn't weigh in on everything he does and come out as for or against it. As far as we know she only supported Putin to help advance her career. Who knows? Anyway, I don't think she has to say anything because the less we know about what she thinks the better. Have you ever watched one of her "Ask Anna" videos. The less the woman speaks, the better.
I LOVE the Ask Anna videos. They're hilarious. Their inanity is the perfect antithesis to the Joyce Didonato videos.
Fraught subject to be sure. I think that what Brad (bracs?) says makes a lot of sense and it's interesting to have the WWII Met history in this regard. While I can see why some might think that politics and opera shouldn't mix, the truth is just about every opera (every work of art for that matter) is created with some political intention. It may not always be overt (e.g. Puccini - though I'm sure you could find some political impetus somewhere in his operas), but I would think most composers are trying to make some kind of socio-political statement with their work. It might take some historical unearthing, but it's there. I see that Netrebko has tweeted some kind of innocuous statement that she values everyone despite their race/sexual orientation etc. and that she would never discriminate. Well, this is something at least but proabably not the same thing as coming clean with regards to Putin's latest policies. Still, at least she's acknowledged something.
On the Hampson interview - I loved how Michael was sputtering over this - yes, yet another retread of the same old cliches with regards to opera. My question is...why, compared to other artforms (fine art for example) do people get soooo incensed about opera? The charges of elitism, rich people, on and on, don't ever get called out in other forums the way they do for opera.
"why, compared to other artforms (fine art for example) do people get soooo incensed about opera? The charges of elitism, rich people, on and on, don't ever get called out in other forums the way they do for opera."
I repeat this until my face turns blue. What is the cost of a ticket to a major sports event? How much does it cost to see a fucking Broadway show? It is my opinion that the more people (read: ignorant journalists) say that opera is or seems "elitist" the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I also agree with what has been said on this podcast in the past that opera should be playing up its sophistication as a selling point. People LOVE snooty shit. People love pretentious novels. People love Mad Men. People love fancy schmancy Beer. People love high-end fashion. Those same people could very easily love opera. One day I'm going to write up a big, long, beautiful essay on this concept for my blog. One day...
If no one is hounding Renée Fleming for her views on drone strikes and domestic surveillance, I don't see why Anna Netrebko has some sort of responsibility to tell us what she thinks about Putin's human rights violations. I just kind of assume that she's a decent person and abhors them. If she ever gives me any reason to think otherwise, I'll reevaluate.
Touche Doug (insert accent!)
Doug, I agree with 99.9% of what you say on musical and other matters, but here I have to disagree, and strongly. Yes, domestic surveillance is horrible, but I can have a political difference with someone on the subject and still respect them as an artist. Same thing with drone strikes: In my mind they're horrible and they kill too many innocent civilians, in their supporters' minds they're a "surgical" way of "waging the War on Terror" which saves U.S. soldiers' lives. So once again, I'd have a major political disagreement with those people, and these disagreements are neither here nor there in the arts world; otherwise we could never sing onstage with Republicans or Obamabots (i.e., those who think the president can do no wrong), which in either case WOULD be absurd.
But Putin's anti-gay legislation and the pogroms it's unleashed aren't about politics, they're about human rights, because they specifically target a minority with violence. (The drones, horrible as they are, don't specifically target civilians; they target extremists based on their actions, not a whole demographic targeted solely because of a fundamental aspect of their identity as a human being.) So you're using the wrong analogies. What's happening in Russia can best be compared to human rights tragedies such as the apartheid regime in South Africa or the anti-Semitic (and, lest we forget, anti-gay) regimes in fascist Germany and Italy. Are you saying that arts organizations were wrong to boycott artists associated with those regimes? And Netrebko and Gergiev ARE associated with Putin, have supported him politically, and have used their clout as artists to help him get reelected. Netrebko even praised Putin's "strong, male energy."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/02/15/146942131/around-the-classical-internet-february-17-2012
Of course an artist has every right to remain apolitical and silent, but Netrebko's already foregone that right by declaring her support for one of the great human rights violators of our time, whose flagrant abuses put him in the super-rarefied company of apartheid architects like Verwoerd and Vorster, fascists like Mussolini and Hitler, and genocidal maniacs like Gen. Sherman (mostly for what he did to the Indians). Here's a comment I came across that nails it: "In addition to the right to be silent, an artist has to be held responsible for their words and actions especially when they accept privileges that are direct perks of their artistic fame, as Netrebko's are. [When she makes] some cryingly stupid statement about the 'masculinity' Putin brings to Russia, recant it, reiterate it, I don't care, but for God's sake, don't dive behind being an artist the first moment trouble rears its ugly head."
Also, Netrebko's statement that "I have never and will never discriminate against anyone" is a junior-grade-PR fail, because the issue was never about how nice she is personally to the gay people she knows. Saying basically that "some of my best friends and colleagues are gay" is some serious weaksauce when she knows full well that the issue is, what does she think of the violence being perpetrated in Russia by a leader she and Gergiev are declared supporters of? Crickets.... It sounds like she wants to have it both ways: To continue to count on the support of her LGBT fans and colleagues even as she maintains her support for an autocrat persecuting their LGBT brethren. If she and Gergiev can go on record supporting Putin (as they have done), surely they can go on record about the anti-gay legislation and violence endorsed by Putin.
So Doug, while you've said you'll assume she's a decent person until she gives you reason to think otherwise, the fact that she's willing to speak up about Putin's "strong, male energy" but stay stone-cold silent about the gays being hunted down, tortured, and killed under his aegis leaves me with no choice than to assume she's an Eichmann at best, though in her case an artistic rather than a bureaucratic functionary who represents the "banality of evil": i.e., the pathetic nature of the "normal, everyday" people who display neither guilt for supporting evildoers for purposes of petty career advancement, nor hatred for the evildoers' victims, but try to keep their distance and stay silent about the horrors inflicted because they're not directly involved, and without whom those who commit state-sanctioned hate crimes could never get away with it all.
Just catching up with all this. The point of protests, boycotts, calls to celebrities to speak out, etc., isn't that they're going to have an immediate effect. Rather, they keep the issue before the public, especially the Russian public. No one thinks that boycotting Stoli is going to bring Putin to his knees, but people protesting the company (which has significant Russian ownership) keeps people talking about it. Every time people in yet another country take up the boycott it will make news again. As did the Met's tightrope-walk press release.
There is nothing wrong with asking Netrebko and Gergiev to take a stand. Especially in light of their more-than-perfunctory support of Putin in the past. Calling on them to speak out makes news. Their speaking out or not makes news. As to whether it's fair to hold their stated political views against them, well, that's a choice we all make when we speak out. (And unfortunately also being associated with some of the less-savory positions of the political candidates we support). But even if they hadn't been such vocal Putin supporters, it would still be fair to ask them about it -- as a Russian in a field that has a lot of gays and lesbians working in it, do you agree with this? Netrebko made an answer that avoided political speech, which was smart of her, and diffused the issue. Gergiev should take note.