
Some may remember when the Metropolitan Opera decided to toss its legacy overboard and stage a production of the antisemitic and pro-terrorist modern opera ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ that justified the murder of an elderly wheelchair-bound Jewish American by Muslim terrorists. Despite the protests, the hatefest at the Met went on.
And anyone with decency turned their backs on the Met.
‘The Death of Klinghoffer’, rather than being a one-off affair to satisfy a donor, was the new paradigm of woke ‘modern operas’ whose music is as bad as their politics. And here’s where things stand now.
Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 2023-24 season on Sept. 26… Terrence McNally’s libretto traces Sister Helen’s relationship with Joseph De Rocher, a prisoner convicted of the rape and murder of a high-school-age couple, as his last appeals fail and his execution date approaches. Much of the opera takes place within the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, and the Met’s marquee production team, headed by Ivo van Hove with set and lighting design by Jan Versweyveld, created a strikingly austere environment: a blank-walled box, with a smaller cube suspended above the stage.
Pathetic but inevitable. Much of Broadway now consists of Hollywood adaptations, why shouldn’t the Met?
When elite audiences are as woke as they are culturally illiterate, putting on this kind of garbage makes perfect sense.
What else can you expect at the Met?
The three other Met premieres this season are all vintage: Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” (1986) in a newly revised version, co-produced with four other companies
Apart from the usual Verdi, Puccini, Bizet stuff (you can guess which ones), the Met is pushing black nationalist garbage like Fire Shut Up in My Bones and X, and adaptations like Dead Man Walking and The Hours.
Within a decade, the Metropolitan Opera went from the gold standard to a bad joke that can be counted on for movie adaptations, black nationalist productions, and Madame Butterfly.
American theater, at least in its current state, is dead. Its zombie corpse is reanimated by an all-female revival of 1776 and a version of Oklahoma that denounces ‘whiteness’ and ‘colonialism’. The less said of ‘original works’ the better. And now even opera has become a bad joke, but I’m sure the opera version of The Help or Get Out will be great. (If these don’t exist yet, they soon will.)
The Soviet Union at least preserved the classics. Our modern cultural barbarians are even worse vandals.
Dead Man Walking? Dead Met Crawling.
“When elite audiences are as woke as they are culturally illiterate, putting on this kind of garbage makes perfect sense.”
If the Play is garbage and it is based on the movie, then the movie is garbage. The movie is based on a book or work of Sister Helen Prejean. So her work is garbage or wrongheaded as some communists would opine..
I agree with calling Prejean wrongheaded. Elmo Sonnier could have sincerely have been penitent for what he did and, if he had been freed, gone off and did the same thing over again. Where does that leave Helen Prejean and her proposed way of doing things?
What is garbage? that the audience and actors are reconsidering the Death penalty or they are beyond it and glorifying Sonnier, their stand against the death penalty, or that they are beyond it all?
When I say beyond it, I mean occurrences like these murders never foreseeably affect them, so they can always take the high road and look down upon everyone else.. It is hubris and condescension all wrapped up into one.
I was thinking about attending the Met for the first time this year as a “bucket list” thing. Then I found out they still require face masks for the audience. No way.
As a musician, songwriter and vocalist for the better part of my life, you’d think I’d be more sympathetic to the ideals of the liberal arts and it’s artists. I am not. I’ve seen one stage performance in my lifetime and I’ll be able to survive the rest of it just fine having never seen another.
The Met started revamping the traditional repertoire years ago with new “updated” productions of the old classics. The music was the same, but the staging, sets, costumes were cast off for drab minimalist industrial “chic” productions (“Carmen”), or just plain wacky offerings (“La Traviata” wearing red stiletto heels). The Met retains some classic opera productions each season just to keep the old timers in their subscription seats: Aida and Turandot come to mind, but these and others are like a threatened species. Woke opera — what a waste.
In the 70s (80s?) there was, you might recall, the communist version of the Ring Cycle, directed by an East German, and set in a factory, with the obligatory class struggle. It was conducted by Pierre Boulez. It was probably never brought back. I am not against re-stagings, and productions of new works, but let them rise and fall based on market forces. When state money is used to push a production with a heavy ideological line, that is a different kettle of rotting fish. And, as Heather MacDonald so brilliantly documents in “When Race Trumps Merit,” most of these things aren’t making any money.
I’m not against all new productions either. Cases in point: the Met’s new production of Wagner’s The Ring is fantastic, and the not so new now Madame Butterfly is stunning.
I think these people are quite happy they are destroying art from Western civilisation. They can’t see it of course, they just think things will carry on this way. As Vlad Tepes says, this is not the object, the revolution is. Revolution is permanent change, constant destruction of what went before so there is no solid ground ever again. These are the useful idiots who will pass, just like the “feminists” who support men pretending to be women.
Hopefully these nihilists will destroy themselves.
As a big opera fan and ex Met attendee I was appalled at this season’s offerings. I was there for Klinghoffer but only with the crowd outside. I think Rudy Gulliani showed up to that protest.
This particular art form involves the experience of attending live performances, so its is difficult to give up, but it is time.
Did you read that the Met Opera guild closed after nearly 100years? .So, it is not as if those at the Met aren’t getting a message from their subscribers. I think the recent article about that was in City Journal,
Quote: an all-female revival of 1776 and a version of Oklahoma that denounces ‘whiteness’ and ‘colonialism’.
Wow, sounds southparkesque. With regards to Oklahoma! Well, that land was taken away from the Indians (even “Sooner” than what had been agreed on in one of those “fair” contracts forced upon Native Americans). In the name of profit, not “whiteness”.
Be that as it may-compared to these travesties Death Man Walking (which has been played also in the exact right places, such as Houston) sounds pretty high-class. Although I personally dislike operas (all of them).
This season sounds especially awful, but I guess it ought to please the woke herd – who surely don’t believe they are being taken for their money.
The real artist and supporter aren’t going to be seeing this rot. But, let’s face it – this stuff isn’t art. It’s trash held together with the glue of leftism. And yes, even the old Soviet Union did have artistic standards far above this stuff. The stuff is, by far, more in the traditions of communist China, and it never takes long for you to see how much the West’s artistic leftist does show its love of the communist Chinese party. (They love that cultural revolution thing, and only wish they could have the full practice here.)
Do people actually pay to see this garbage? If so, P.T. Barnum has been proved correct.
Unfortunately the output of the establishment music institutions is on the decline across America – to a large degree to their woke practices of hiring with “diversity and equity” being more important than merit (musical talent).
Such a tragedy – not just for the orchestras, but for those candidates who have spent countless amounts of time in preparing, and large chunks of their lives practicing and honing their performance skills to the highest levels – something that non-musicians cannot fathom, in terms of the unimaginable amount of years of hard work and relentless dedication put in. in lieu of the woke zombies.
So like our society as a whole, wokism is destroying even the performing arts.
Makes you want to think whether it’s time to give those woke establishment machers a run for their money (like the current Hollywood strikes) – and have using AI start for the composing (and to some degree performing). After, managements just want to save money…
“Met ” actually means “dead” in Hebrew- very appropriate here, for their sad state of affairs
Well, that’s unlistenable.
The tragedy for me in this is the impact on future generations. I grew up in an era when western civilization was celebrated along with the best of literature, art, and music. My uncle introduced me to classical music when I was in my early teens and I especially loved opera. We subscribed to Ormandy’s Philadelphia Orchestra. We visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I would occasionally take my family from Philadelphia to the Met to see the most amazing opera – the most stunning was Kiri Te Kanawa’s debut in Verdi’s Otello. Where will my grandchildren go? As Dennis Prager said, the Left destroys everything it touches.
The part that can’t be spoken out loud:
The Met like other opera/dance/theater companies is increasingly dependent on gay patrons. (Maybe only the childless can afford the tickets…)
Hence the edgy “transgressive” sexed-up content.
Many of the productions feature beefcake, and we are about a decade into The Era of the Hunky Male Opera Singer.
“The Soviet Union at least preserved the classics.”
“The Soviet Union at least preserved the classics.”
“Crime and Punishment.” Dostoevsky. What a classic. It was written like a Tchaikiovsy masterpiece. I felt like I was Raskolnikov when I read that. That was some damned good good writing.
Much better than Chekhov or Tolstoy, in my opinion, for what it’s worth.