The Metropolitan Opera Graphs: Redux

Two days ago, composer Suby Raman published 10 graphs depicting the artistic history of the Metropolitan Opera. Taken at face value, the charts are provocative and, at times, perversely funny. ("How many female composers have been represented at the Met in the last 100 years?" To which the reply: "Dame Ethel Smyth is not impressed.")

Interesting, yes. But, on a deeper level, Raman's graphs miss their mark. It's nice to see statistical evidence that the Met plays too much Puccini, but, then again, nobody ever doubted that. All in all, the graphs simply confirm what most of us already thought -- to wit, that the Met is one of the most reactionary institutions in opera.

Why might this be? Aside from the obvious -- the ideological and aesthetic baggage of the Met's creative team -- I believe it has a lot to do with house size. If we had enough data to extend Raman's charts, we might be able to plot the same parameters (repertoire-focus, -origin, -vintage, -age, -sex, etc.) against the size of opera companies around the world. Of course, I have no proof, but I wouldn't be surprised if the biggest companies all function as museums of mid 19th-century operatic taste.

There are very good historical-economic reasons for this. During the time of such patrons as Emperor Joseph II (under whose aegis Mozart and Da Ponte produced Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così), professional opera didn't need to make money because it was supported by the monarchy. As Enlightenment faded into revolution, opera became the domain of patronless companies and freelance composers; houses had to expand to accommodate a paying public, and artistic styles changed accordingly. Da Ponte's layered sub-plots and Mozart's tangled recitatives were designed for the intimate court theater. Instead of belting to fill cavernous halls, singers enunciated, and audiences understood the words. As opera houses grew, so did voices, and clarity was sacrificed for volume. The Met epitomizes this logic at an extreme: it is a house designed for a very specific breed of opera (vintage 1870) in which the stories are simple (dying heroine) and the words don't really matter.

This is not to suggest that the fall of the 18th-century aristocracy is solely responsible for the Met's troubles. But, amidst a multiplicity of artistic and organizational problems, that of size remains fundamental and unavoidable. The Met is the product of a different century's musical ideology, and has not changed with the times.

(As an aside, let me note emphatically that repertoire is not the problem -- or, at least, not the primary one. The Royal Opera House does Verdi just as often as the Met, but hires the likes of John Eliot Gardiner to bring new musical perspectives to familiar works, as in their recent Rigoletto. And, throughout Europe, one finds mainstream productions in which 18th-century classics become staged explorations of terrorism, orientalism, racism, and colonialism. No, repertoire is not the Met's primary problem. There are ways to offer audiences their 19th-century favorites while also making an artistic statement.)

But, back to size: in the Met's case, bigger has ceased to be better. The prospect of increased ticket revenue may have motivated 19th-century operatic expansion, but now, in 2014, a full house is no longer a guarantee. Some expenses, including lighting, climate control and security, are proportional to house size; still more crucially, a large auditorium exacts a great toll on vocal production, intelligibility, and stage direction. Combine this with a creative team that seems to believe audiences haven't changed since 1890, and it's not hard to see why the Met is in financial trouble. (I resist the temptation to mention that the Met's productions feature singers who, with no discernible irony, perform Mozart as though it's still the 1950s…)

A mere century ago, listening to music meant being in the room with a performer. 50 years ago, period instruments had not yet reached the Anglophone world. Three years ago, Spotify was not available in America. Audiences can now find expressive operatic riches in far friendlier environments than the Met -- even, occasionally, in a London pub:

Video courtesy of Hampstead Garden Opera, © 2012;

Stage Director: Daisy Evans;

Guest Music Director, Conductor, Fortepiano: Dorian Komanoff Bandy;

Ferrando: Nick Pritchard

Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London, April-May 2012

As a young conductor entering the profession, I need to believe that listeners know the difference between tired, lackluster, stereotypical productions and those with real musical and dramatic purpose. Isn't that what the Met's problems are really about?

UPDATE, 30 October:

Since posting this yesterday, I've come across two other excellent pieces on the Met's problems. One was written in 2010; the other in 2006. Unfortunately, everything they say remains true…

A Ticket to the Opera (Felix Salmon, 2006)

A life of power, between walls of steel and crystal (Michael Smith, 2010)

Ars Rhetorica

What is it about the idea of rhetoric that so fascinates musicians? It's a word that I hear thrown around in rehearsals by my colleagues, abused by my forebears in their articles and books on period-performance (pace Bruce Haynes), and generally misunderstood by the modern gut-string community. Only last week a collaborator enjoined me to "phrase more rhetorically" in a sonata I was performing, and, even as I write, one of my Boston colleagues is blogging about Quantz, "The End of Early Music", and the importance of performing with the "rhetorical consciousness" of an orator.

In a sense, I know what these people are trying to say: phrase more, differentiate more, emote more, show more. But are "phrasing, differentiating, emoting, and showing" actually related to musical rhetoric? It appears that many people think so, some even going so far as to distinguish the "romantic" style of mainstream modern players from the "rhetorical" style of period-instrumentalists.

There are a number of problems with this popular viewpoint about early music and rhetoric. First, on the most basic level, the word "rhetoric" meant something very different to 17th- and 18th-century musicians than it does to baroque performers today. Virtually all of the extant sources, from Burmeister to Mattheson, discuss rhetoric in music as an important skill that a composer needs to develop -- not something for a performer to worry about. Upon reflection, this makes perfect sense: treatises constantly compare musicians to orators, and the orator's first task is to consider the argument of his speech and arrange its content accordingly. In music, this is all within the purview of the composer. The 18th-century view of rhetoric was so composer-centric, in fact, that even improvisors seem to have been exempted from thinking about it methodically: most treatises include a separate set of guidelines for the creation of extemporized fantasies.

If this seems a mere linguistic squabble, consider a far deeper problem today's musicians cause when they label playing as "romantic" or "rhetorical": they create a false dichotomy between two equally valid, equally useful, elements of expressive playing. An arresting irony lurks behind the fact that "romantic" musicians often find "rhetorical" performances unmusical, while "rhetorical" musicians often find their "romantic" counterparts unexpressive. But, upon reflection, doesn't this make sense? Should we be surprised that practicing only a single aspect of expressive music-making results in a paltry performance?

In reality, all musicians of all eras have tried to move their listeners in performance. All music tells an emotional story, and a good performer in any style turns that story into an expressive performance. This is as true for Quantz as it is for Heifetz, Rubinstein, or Malcolm Bilson. Not only is the "romantic - rhetorical" dichotomy useless for describing the true beauty of these artists' performances, but it encourages others to limit themselves to a single category. Ultimately, the magic of Heifetz's "romantic" playing is the clear, actor-like portrayal of affects and characters; similarly, in Bilson's "rhetorical" hands, the fortepiano sings with an emotional depth that few modern pianists can match. (Of course, while Bilson's and Rubinstein's expressive goals may be the same, no listener could claim that they play in the same way. But the difference is not a matter of "rhetoric" and "romanticism," but [to extend the comparison with language], of dialect, pronunciation, and hardware.)

A further ill-effect of the "rhetorical" revolution is that it has encouraged grotesque exaggeration in performers. It's one thing to try to get inside of the music, play expressively, and bring this expression to an audience; it's something else to turn "rhetorical gestures" into the main substance of a performance. So many HIP musicians seem to believe that once they've identified an affect, their work is done. The image of Stephen Colbert vowing "to feel the news at his viewers" seems to find an echo in those purely-"rhetorical" musicians who believe that depicting the music at their listeners is enough.

I still find that, despite my professional baroque affiliations, I derive much of my listening pleasure from early- and mid-20th-century recordings, which manage to combine stylish gestures with real emotional depth. With hundreds of excellent, expressive models at our disposal, why do we period performers still hold to an anachronistic misconception about "rhetoric", while ignoring so much else?