Vienna saw the premiere of that most extraordinary work of genius, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, not at a court, palace or prestige venue. This seminal opera made its debut in 1791 at a theater that attracted both a high and lowbrow audience, and regularly featured broad theatre and comic performance. And in the 19th century Italy of the Risorgimento, Verdi’s music was on everyone’s lips – it was the soundtrack, so to speak, for the formation of the Italian state.
By the late 19th century, and into the earliest years of the 20th century, opera was popular culture, an art for the masses that also attracted the wealthiest to gleaming new opera palaces, even as .the growing tides of immigrants from southern Europe also were also humming along.
But by the time of the First World War, opera in New York had become the property of the cognoscenti, the palaces were less welcoming, and the art form that embraced the most number of arts lost its grip on the general public. *
Was it that many of the most popular operas were in a melodramatic genre that did not fit contemporary taste? Were the language issues overwhelming for an audience that was moving away from familiarity with languages other than English? In an age when less was more, was opera, where more has always been more, part of the problem – and what was the role of the ever-creeping upward price for a ticket on younger generations? In the early 1970’s, an orchestra seat at the MET in NYC could be had for $18. That same price today was more than $300, a big problem for the young, those on a fixed income, the middle classes, and just about everyone without a six-figure salary.
Enter Peter Gelb, the MET’s new impresario.
Mr. Gelb has not just brought razzle-dazzle to his first year at the MET’s helm: red carpet openings, screenings on the jumbo-tron at Times Square and on the Plaza at Lincoln Center, and opera singles gatherings. He has, in one fell swoop, given the MET, that grand old lady, a major facelift. In NYC, buses swirl with the flowing red announcement of Madama Butterfly. News columns list some of the most interesting theater and film names as directors/writers of current and upcoming productions: Anthony Minghella, George C. Wolfe, Julie Taymor, Robert Lepage, Tony Kushner — on paper, at least, reminding us all that opera is theater as well as divine music and singing.
Best of all, once the splash subsided of a free dress rehearsal, and the media attention of Times Square projections fade, Mr. Gelb has much more in store for us: six productions will be beamed into selected movie-theaters for a fraction of the price of an orchestra ticket; 200 seats are being sold for $20 at each performance at the MET, and the old house moves towards Mr. Gelb’s dream to make the opera relevant and accessible to all. This is not about rejecting the MET’s current audience: it is about a transfusion; opening the doors and windows to welcome others to join them, without the stodginess.
Gelb is thinking in myriad ways to do this. Perhaps one idea, best of all, is that the MET will be available online, as the MET re-masters its extraordinary archive, and prepares some of its more than 1,400 recordings of live performances for availability on the web. Soon one will not need to be anywhere near Lincoln Center to be able to plug in to an extraordinary musical treasure-trove.
Making the opera relevant to a larger audience, a new audience, is a practice that happening elsewhere in the states, as well — notably in San Francisco, where access for those who cannot afford the price of high cost seats is more than just a gesture to the bottom line. These are not just idle publicity stunts. In a real way, this is about saving an art form that once belonged to the people, but somehow came to stand for the privileged and elite.
Carmen shocked the middle class by bringing the real world to the stage. Fidelio became a signature piece for freedom.
And poor Madama Butterfly? Is it really just a case of the art form of the bourgeois slowly dying away, or do we all need to look and listen again to what happens when voice, music, design, acting, art direction, dance, theater and yes, puppetry, come together?
Mr. Gelb is now giving us that chance. Will we all be humming “Une belle die” again? Stranger things have happened. And before anyone dismisses what Gelb is trying to achieve, consider this: clear away the cobwebs, look and listen: the 18th and 19th century left us a magnificent legacy, and arguably provided the high water mark of the what the human voice could achieve. Maybe we need those voices now.
* For an extensive discussion of this, see Lawrence Levine’s “High Brow/Low Brow: the Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America”. (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1990)
