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I blocked someone yesterday, a stranger who slid on in to take issue with my post about the Met choosing 18 months of inactivity over, well, anything else. This someone only wanted to troll, but something they wrote sticks with me today as I watch other battles playing out. (1)
“It’s not their job to support musicians and all those other workers, it’s their job to preserve live opera.”
Even if this is written as nothing but bait, there’s something in there that resonates through a lot of our conversations. (2)
Even if this is written as nothing but bait, there’s something in there that resonates through a lot of our conversations. (2)
What is opera apart from the musicians, technicians, and creators who make and perform it? apart from its audience? Can an institution survive at the expense of its people? Should it? I’m not just asking this question about the Met. (3)
If what they meant was, the Met’s job is to preserve live opera as it has always been practiced on the stage of the Met - OK, that kind of performance can’t happen right now. But is that the only thing live opera means, or should mean, or can mean, even at a storied place? (4)
All of it’s hard right now, and every situation has its own complications. I guess I just want to say that I’m here for everything we are trying. Every video made, every outdoor concert planned, every masked and shielded and sanitized rehearsal. (5)
Every concert with audiences in cars or audiences widely spaced, every remote coaching, every online conversation, every interview, every bit of planning, everything.
Because we need this sound, this noise, this beauty. (6)
Because we need this sound, this noise, this beauty. (6)
We were transported when Denyce Graves-Montgomery raised her glorious voice to the nation this morning, surrounded by mourners with masked faces. We are in such need of the healing vibration of sound and the transformative power of words carried on that stream. (7)
However we deliver it, it’s a good thing. More than good, it’s necessary.
If our institutions will not help us, we will help each other.
Solidarity.
(End)
If our institutions will not help us, we will help each other.
Solidarity.
(End)
