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Since opera houses in New York City were mentioned in one of the comments on the decline of the city, I thought I would take a look at the current state of the Met. After the Met put on The Death of Klinghoffer, I have zero interest in setting foot in it ever again, but I wanted to see if it had pulled back on the wokeness… and nope.
Here’s Carmen set in a ‘contemporary’ American setting with what looks like men in Border Patrol uniforms. Because hating immigration enforcement is the current cause of the moment that transcends all causes. Just like Hamas was 5 minutes ago.
Joe Horowitz (no relation, presumably) called it the Worst Carmen Ever. “One called it ‘the worst thing I’ve seen at the Met in thirty years.’ The other declared it the ‘nadir’ of the company’s 141-year history.”
According to the program book, Cracknell has transplanted Carmen to “a contemporary American industrial town.” Bizet’s Seville cigarette factory is now an “arms factory.” The outcome is a “contemporary American setting” where “the issues at stake seem powerfully relevant.” Carmen and her co-workers are oppressed in a man’s world.
“Relevant” is the key word here. By relevant, wokes mean ‘political’ and by political, they mean hectoring. Every work of art is meant to carry the narrative and be infected by it. There is to be no escape from state propaganda. Anywhere.
“Relevant” pops up a lot in Met listings. Everything from Porgy and Bess to Handel’s Agrippina are described as “relevant” as if that’s the metric of great art. Why else do people go the opera except for ‘relevance’? Relevant used to be for annoying off-Broadway amateurish rants about capitalism and then everything became “relevant” which means that nothing is relevant because it’s all interchangeable. If everything is about class, racism, sexism and the rest of the small portfolio of uber-causes, then it’s all the same slop with minor variations in style. And that’s what much of modern entertainment, from comic book adaptations to period dramas, is, the same narrative with variations in style.
Back when the Met decided to put on an opera hailing Islamic terrorism and the murder of Jews, I noted the financial irresponsibility of it at a time when it was having trouble selling seats. Things have only gotten worse and the Met is in free fall and has had to turn to Saudi Arabia.
The Metropolitan Opera, one of the world’s most renowned performing arts companies, is turning to Saudi Arabia to help it solve some of the most severe financial problems in its 142-year history.
The company has reached a lucrative agreement with the kingdom that calls for it to perform there for three weeks each winter. While neither the Met nor the Saudis disclosed financial terms when they announced a memorandum of understanding on Wednesday, the deal is expected to bring the Met more than $100 million.Partnering with trusted voices from around the world, Verified floods digital channels with science-based climate facts and resources, improving the integrity of information in spaces where climate disinformation most typically circulates.
“All the democratic governments that I know of are engaged in business with Saudi Arabia,” Mr. Gelb said, adding that he believed that the deal would give the Met the opportunity to help promote “human understanding and compassionate thinking” there.
So the next performance of Carmen will be staged with the women wearing Burkas.
This is another example of Du Treason de Clerks, Julian Bender’s 1928Treason of the Intellectuals. Intellectuals will always whore after the latest fashionable ideology especially when money is involved.
Leftist politics and art don’t mix.
No, they don’t. I wouldn’t want to watch “Carmen” with chicks in burky durkies. I love that music. The left can ruin anything, and usually do.
I differ. I have Never met an “artist” who was not a lefty.
They hated Nixon. Reagan. Both Bush’s. Now they are TDS.
You know who their heros are. I Refuse to list them.
So, like Qatar bailed out Witkoff, Saudi Arabia bails out Gelb ….another sour note in the crescendoing cacophony of civilizational downfall. The scheme
is absolutely ‘grand operatic’. This is the stuff librettos are made of and from which composers spin golden arias that flow from the mouths of murderous villains and innocent, doomed lovers.
Possible title: Morte dell’anima cantante
Goodness, I think it’s time to watch
‘A Night at the Opera’. That sanity clause…….
I find this and the article on population flow quite amusing. It is sad to have seen things fall apart in my lifetime but there has never been acknowledgement by my “intellectual superiors” that of basic problems. It has only been “you rubes and hick just can’t understand.”
“Just pay your taxes and shut up. You are the help and never forget it.”
The cow is out of the barn and it is beyond all redemption. We now get to enjoy the fruits of your superiority.
Heather MacDonald is having a good, and terrible, bitter laugh.
Maybe this production will go down in history as a failure comparable to the Marxist-inspired production of the Ring cycle that was directed by that guy from East Germany.
Hollywood’s the same producing leftists propaganda and calling it Entertainment and with Moore, Stone Weinstein and the rest of them all
This is a new low for the opera Carmen. Even ten years ago the production featured minimalist stage settings and characters dressed in drab “costumes.” The Met’s programming still includes some of the traditional favorites with original productions (Turandot for one), but only because the Met needs to keep the old heads on its subscription rolls. The Magic Flute might soon feature singers in drag, who knows.
Perhaps a woke producer can stage an update of Les Miz about mobs of obese Gazans being forced at gunpoint by soldiers in Trump masks to eat mass quantities of processed cheese while belting out arias about diabetes, decolonization and the hardships of halal gluttony. Rebrand it as Hog Wild! Mohammed Val-mohammed’s struggles with goat dating and cellulite.
The degradation of the Met reported here is horrible to see.
I took a quick check and saw that there are 125 opera houses and 292 opera companies in the US. I don’t know what they are like. Is it uniformly degraded? Maybe there are people who read or work at FPM who know? My own taste in music is mainly piano and also crooners, not to mention the accordion, and I don’t keep up with the modern trends in any branch of the music business.
If not one opera company then another should be able to be good and should restore what people really wanted at the Met. We should be able to crowd out the rot with good things one way or another.
“Of all the arts, for us the Cinema is the most important.”
– Vladimir Lenin