Utopia and its discontents

What comes to mind when we hear the word "Utopia"? Perhaps a particular set of texts, mostly from the worlds of philosophy or political theory. More likely, we think of a place--one that is Edenic and flawless, a paradise for its inhabitants, albeit one that is impossible to actually construct. But what I've always found strange about the idea of Utopia is the divergence between these idyllic associations that the noun-form of the word has accumulated, on the one hand, and on the other, the negative associations called up by its adjective, "Utopian." Popper and many of his followers in the tradition of classical liberalism leveled this term as a criticism against Marxism. Someone who engages in Utopian thinking chases fantasies of societal perfection while subjecting actual people to all manner of injustices. Indeed, one of the problems with Utopian pursuits is that they seem to offer a blank check to those held in their sway; since if one is pursuing what one genuinely believes to be an infinite good end, then any means needed to achieve that end will come to seem justifiable.

These critiques of Utopianism apply to a surprising number of dystopian worlds--not only the Marxist societies that were the subject of Popper's arguments, but the Sparta-like police-state described in Plato's Republic (a subject of different discussions by Popper!) as well as the fictional Oceania of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Indeed, encountering these dystopias, we may be struck by the fact that they are Utopian for at least some of their inhabitants (for instance, for those who directly benefit from the societal structures, i.e. those at the top of the ladder who are able to maintain power by controlling the thoughts and actions of others). And even some ostensibly Utopian fictions--for instance, Skinner's Walden Two--may easily come to seem distinctly dystopian when viewed from another angle--say, in the case of Walden Two, when viewed as something akin to what Oceania might feel like to its happier, Big-Brother-touting inhabitants. (Even if we dismiss this particular possibility for Walden Two, and claim that the society described in those pages actually is "perfect" in some sense, the fact would remain that it seems like an incredibly dull place to live, and thus would be Utopia only for a people with specific personalities....)

The fact that utopianism can so easily seem like the other side of the dystopian coin makes me wonder: is there a deeper attribute that all of these imagined societies share? I think the answer is yes--and that attribute is: these are societies entirely devoid of problems. In the case of the worlds that are supposed to look like utopias (Republic, Walden Two, and so forth), the problem-free environment is meant as a "feature"--one that will make life easy and pleasant for the inhabitants. For the worlds that are supposed to look like dystopias, the problem-free environment, tenaciously enforced through (in Orwell) torture, brainwashing, Newspeak, the rewriting of history, the erasure of truth, and so forth, is precisely what makes the fictional societies look so bleak. But, despite the different valence these and other authors give to their worlds, the underlying logic is the same. A superficial form of "contentment" is maintained by preventing people from seeing problems and trying to solve them. The enforced avoidance of problems may be well-intentioned, yet whatever the rulers' intentions, the picture that emerges is of a static society, in which growth, discovery, novelty, excitement, and further exploration and understanding are impossible. This underlying logic is why the very idea of Utopia as it is frequently understood is, in fact, so dark.

There is a twist. If dystopias (and dystopic "Utopias") aspire to be problem-free worlds, then it would follow that an actual Utopia--not a society simply called that, but a society that actually does allow for flourishing in its fullest sense--would be full of unsolved problems, which the inhabitants would pursue freely and as they pleased. This dovetails with Robert Nozick's view, described in the final part of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, of Utopia as not a single kind of place, but a "meta" world in which vast numbers of different societies and associations, each tailored to the different interests of different kinds of people, would emerge. Nozick's Utopia, too, is full of problems, both for those individual societies (whose task, he says, is partly to facilitate the discovery of what good societies might look like--thus implying that this is not yet known, and thus can't be perfectly instantiated even in principle) and for the meta-Utopia, whose problem will involve, for instance, the peaceful interactions and integrations of its constituent societies. Of course, most importantly, the problems that arise in such a meta-Utopia and its constituent Utopias would also exist on the level of individual inhabitants, who, unlike the inhabitants of the Republic, Oceania, Walden Two, and so many other "Utopian" worlds, would be free to imagine different, perhaps better worlds, and thus would be faced constantly with the personal problem of how to reshape their circumstances in pursuit of those dreams.

Of course, one cannot help but be struck by how decidedly unglamorous this account of Utopia sounds. Indeed, a "society full of problems, in which people go about trying to solve their problems" sounds not only unglamorous, but downright mundane. No wonder fictionalized false-Utopias and Dystopias seem to outnumber fictionalized real-Utopias.

However, here too, there is a twist. Yes, there are a handful of actually-optimistic Utopian fictions (some Le Guin comes to mind); but, there is also a sense in which most fiction is Utopian in the positive meaning of the term--that is, most fiction is about everyday people with lots of problems trying to do stuff that will make their lives better. In this view, the genuine champions of the Utopian vision are novelists like Jane Austen and George Eliot, whose characters may "rest in unvisited tombs," but who nonetheless show us a model of striving in which problems are present, but problem-solving is not thwarted by some oppressive autocrat. Indeed, perhaps this explains my abiding love of rom-com movies, whose plots tend to track the same processes. Rom-coms often highlight the problems and dissatisfactions of individual people, yet they also do so in a way that is fundamentally comic, and in which the overcoming of those problems is allowed even as success is never guaranteed.

Perhaps this is also why my intuitions about works like Così fan tutte or Into the Woods diverge from the intuitions of other listeners with whom I've compared notes. Many over the years have been tempted to see in these narratives a fall from grace--a loss of perfection and a confrontation with the tarnished reality of human life. And yes, that is one view: no character in these two works survives unscathed. But in both cases, what we witness is a process in which problems denied in Act I are recognized in Act II--and, in both cases, the end of Act II brings a loosening of authority and control, and with it a sense that, perhaps, problem-solving in the future will be possible for the characters. In Così, Don Alfonso steps back and allows the lovers to pursue their problem-filled lives without interference. Perhaps, after the end of the opera, the lovers' relationships will grow into authenticity. And in Into the Woods, the narrator is, literally, vanquished, as are the Witch's meddling, supernatural powers. What we are left with at the end is, in some sense, a fallen world. In another sense, however, it is a world that, for the first time in the musical, will allow its inhabitants to "just pursue [their] lives." That their strivings will never come to an end--that Cinderella begins to say "I wish..." even as the music stops--is itself a point of hope for the nascent, optimistic Utopia we see taking shape.

What's Wrong with Don Giovanni?

My colleague Patrick Hansen, director of Opera McGill, recently wrote a blog post discussing the challenges of producing Mozart's Don Giovanni - a retelling of the Don Juan story - during the era of #MeToo and other related social movements. Patrick makes the following points: 1) watching a serial seducer take advantage of women is no longer ok, though it might have seemed less obviously objectionable in previous centuries; 2) defending the character on the grounds that he sings beautiful music is also impossible; and 3) the quality of the opera's music overall is so high that the work cannot simply be jettisoned from the repertory.

Patrick's solution, demonstrated during this weekend's staged productions of the opera, was to set the story as a vampire tale, turning Giovanni into an actual monster who kills rather than sleeps with his victims. This strikes me as ingenious, for two reasons: first, it meets Patrick's explicit aim of forestalling objections to the nature of the story, by making it very clear that the production is in no way lionizing the actions of this character (after all, even if some old-fashioned types might be inclined to condone Don Giovanni's sexual exploits, none will praise him if he is a murderer rather than a seducer); and second, because it retains some elemental links with the character's sexual frenzies as depicted in the original plot. As is often pointed out, "undead" characters such as vampires embody aspects of Freud's conception of libido, which is both impossible to satisfy and impossible to kill. By setting the opera as a vampire story, Patrick is able to have it both ways, giving us a title character who is not-a-sexual-predator and yet still infused with many layers of archetypal sexual implications.

Although I appreciated and wholly support Patrick's solution to the "Don Giovanni problem," his discussion of the problem itself got me thinking. I'm always sad to hear people say that recent social or political movements have rendered an old and great artwork unsuitable for modern-day consumers - especially when the piece in question features such excellent music. So, in this case, I found myself wondering whether the opera is, in fact, as problematic as people often suggest it is. There are a number of viable arguments in favor of Don Giovanni - and, as far as I can tell, only one strong argument against it.

The argument against Don Giovanni is, in brief, that the mere depiction of a sexual predator renders the opera unsuitable for modern-day audiences. (Either on the grounds that some viewers might be triggered by them, or simply because depiction, even when ironic or skeptical, may be seen as a kind of approbation.) Many of my own arguments in support of the opera involve the idea that this work, or any, can show behavior without condoning it: that, in other words, the stance the artwork takes towards its own characters, plot, or moral content should structure the way we interpret and engage with that content. This, in turn, rests on the idea that the mere "facts" of the plot do not capture the full extent of what is ultimately being said - a proposition that I take to be largely self-evident, but that many do not. I appreciate that there are legitimate reasons people may wish to avoid an opera with this kind of plot. Although I disagree with them, I think this basically comes down to personal preferences, and I don't expect my arguments to change many minds. So, although I don't personally buy the depiction-is-bad-in-itself argument, I recognize that anything I say in support of the opera will seem a non-sequitur to someone who does buy it.

Nonetheless, here are some ways of thinking about the plot of Don Giovanni that make it seem less problematic than is often assumed. I'm not sure all of these are persuasive, but they should at least give us pause before we reject the original plot as being immoral.

1. Perhaps what is said about Giovanni, including Leporello's valorizing account of his exploits in the "Catalogue Aria," is simply false. To put it plainly, the first possibility is that Giovanni simply isn't a serial seducer. Consider the events of the opera. Over the two acts, we witness: a botched attempt to seduce Donna Anna (so botched that it culminates in a murder, which we need to assume is not Giovanni's normal strategy, since either the law or previous angry family members and their friends would have intervened in the past); a botched attempt to evade an angry ex; a botched attempt to seduce Zerlina (although it has been argued, including by me, that her imitation of his melody in their Act I duet is proof of her willingness - so perhaps this is the one successful seduction in the opera); a botched attempt to re-seduce Zerlina during the Act I Finale; and a botched attempt to exchange clothes with Leporello and seduce Elvira's maid.

If we are to believe what Leporello claims about his master during the Catalogue Aria, then Giovanni can't afford to have off-days like this one. If we take the day portrayed in the opera as a representative episode from the Don's life, then Leporello's account is false, and we'd be watching not an actual serial-seducer but simply an incompetent wannabe. I recognize that this conjecture is problematic, since it still leaves open the possibility that the characters, especially Leporello, think of serial seduction as a goal worth aspiring to. Though maybe this is softened by my next point:

2. Perhaps the opera itself condemns the Don. This seems to me the obvious choice in defending the opera: it's clear that although the plot depicts his (attempted) sexual conquests, in fact the opera is about his punishment. Indeed, "Il dissoluto punito" - "the dissolute man, punished" - was the title at the work's 1787 premiere, with "Don Giovanni" as the subtitle. On the level of plot, I think it's misleading to say that the opera depicts the actions of a serial seducer. More accurate is that what's on display is the intentions of a serial-seducer, plus the punishment meted out to the seducer. The musical structures confirm that this is, indeed, how we are meant to take in the work. The fact that Mozart introduces the statue's music as the first section of the overture is his statement that we are not watching, unbiased, as the Don pursues his various activities on stage, but rather watching with the knowledge of the supernatural censure in which his activities will result. Imagine if the Don Giovanni overture more closely resembled the Figaro overture, without any hint of the ombra music. Were this the case, the moral outlook of the opera would feel very different, since our starting-point would be in the less judgmental comic world, and we would watch the Don operate in a related, non-judgmental frame of mind. In reality, however, the opera introduces itself with the immediate announcement that what follows will be a story of judgment and damnation.

Of course, the fact that the Don is condemned by every other character, including ultimately by Leporello during Elvira's attempted intervention in the Act II Finale, also counts. Even Leporello's support throughout the opera, felt perhaps most keenly in the Catalogue Aria, is flimsy: the servant tries many times to denounce the master's lifestyle and quit his service, but is never allowed. The opera thus makes it clear that the Don's actions are bad both by terrestrial and celestial standards. Given that this point is so self-evident, I'm surprised that people who are on board with recent social movements haven't more enthusiastically embraced the opera, which, like Figaro, can be read plausibly as a statement of feminism avant la lettre.

3. Perhaps the opera is not really about sex. This final possibility may seem counterintuitive given...the actual literal contents of the libretto. But in much 19th-century criticism, including Kierkegaard's extended analysis of the opera in Either/Or, it is pointed out that the Don's sexual needs are exaggerated to the point of absurdity, and that perhaps the point of his character is to represent not sexuality, but rather the extreme limits of appetite as such - free of any particular impulse. (This reading also meshes nicely with Patrick's vampire theme, since with vampires, too, the fact of the appetite itself is far more salient than the particular need to which it is drawn.) Many authors have approached Don Giovanni from this angle. Nicholas Till, in Mozart and the Enlightenment, sees the piece as an essay both on Christianity and early theories of liberalism, particularly given the paean to freedom in the Act I Finale (Viva la libertà!). Karol Berger, too (in Bach's Cycle, Mozart's Arrow) sees it as a tract on freedom, on transgression, on politics, on the nature of individuals vs collectives in society. Indeed, so much does Berger take it for granted that sex is of no real importance to the opera's meaning, that he spends a chapter likening Giovanni to Faustus, a character for whom the pursuit of knowledge rather than physical pleasure is the abstracted, undead drive. Others, meanwhile (most famously Wendy Allanbrook) liken Giovanni to an Odyssean "No-Man": a symbol rather than a human figure. In all of these readings, even where the authors diverge on particulars, we find a shared conviction that Giovanni is not so much a sexual predator as a transgressor of normative moral values, and that sex simply serves as the plot-device through which Mozart and Da Ponte explore these bigger societal and human questions.

If listeners find at least one of these readings to be plausible, then the opera deserves to be accepted on its own terms, even with stagings that depict the actions described in the original libretto. At best, detractors who think that #MeToo poses a fatal problem for Don Giovanni should find that the opera takes an anti-Giovanni position and defends modern-day social values. And those motivated not specifically by #MeToo but by broader moral concerns should find that the opera's condemnation of this character is decisive and unambiguous.

Sondheim's most underrated show?

I've always been obsessed with Sondheim's musicals. In general, however, my fascination is entangled with broad features of his technique and aesthetic vision, rather than with any particular work. In the former category, I love the clarity with which he discusses the details of his craft. He often stated in interviews and lectures that writers/composers should be able to defend every word of their librettos and every note of their scores, and this is an ideal he certainly pursued - and indeed, this self-awareness is something that unites all of the artists in my pantheon, especially Mozart. In the second category, I resonate particularly with the ambivalence so many of Sondheim's characters experience, as well as the philosophical acuity of his shows (something I wrote about at the end of last year). 

Nonetheless, even if my intellectual interest in Sondheim is bound up with aspects of his technique and vision that apply to all of his shows, I can't help but have developed favorites. These works, to which I return again and again, are, perhaps unsurprisingly, beloved in mainstream culture as well. I find Sweeney Todd to contain some of Sondheim's best musical storytelling; I find Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods to be his most philosophically stimulating and meaningful shows (even compared with the rest of his extremely meaningful output); and I love the musical classicism of A Little Night Music, the verbal brilliance of Follies, and the cleverness of Pacific Overtures. None of these choices is unusual; none cuts against the cultural grain.

But in the course of revisiting much of Sondheim's work over the past few months, I've started to wonder whether Merrily We Roll Along could be his most underrated work. It was commercially unsuccessful (though this isn't saying much, since by this standard most of his output is criminally underrated). But my impression is that Merrily is also underrated by many critics and musicians. I had certainly dismissed it for most of my life, as had many of my family and friends. I've never seen it performed live, nor have I seen a theatrical recording that seemed to do it justice. Thus, I can't speak to the overarching effect of the show as a piece of theater. However, from the point of view of the songs, it has some of the best and most impressive writing I've encountered in Sondheim's oeuvre. These are better than much of Follies and Pacific Overtures, and Night Music, at least, and I could imagine that the show as a whole might be better in some ways than Sweeney or Into the Woods.

Performances of three particularly good songs:

"Not a day goes by" (it's amazing how much Sondheim can do with a simple minor triad, not to mention the power of the text and the extraordinary performance):

"Opening doors" (one of Sondheim's epic puzzle songs, complete with a joke about Stravinsky in the middle, here sung by the original cast at the 20-year reunion - an easier rendition to follow than in their earlier studio recording):

"Our time":

The fact that Merrily strikes me as being underrated also raises the (related) question of whether some of his other shows are overrated. In general, I don't think that this is the case; Sondheim's work is so good that even now it's probably, on the whole, a bit underrated. (And I'd also guess that even many of his devotees don't realize just how great he was, and thus that he's in that sense underrated, even by those who do love his shows.) Nonetheless, I suspect that some other of his shows have received more attention than they deserve in comparison with Merrily. For instance, Pacific Overtures does have some nice moments, but its score isn't as consistently great as Merrily's; and Night Music has wonderful music, but the play is extremely shabby both in conception and especially in execution.

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)