In this post and the one to follow, I will discuss two problems that are characteristic of the difficulties that have accumulated to the point where the continued existence of one of America’s cultural treasures is threatened or at least seriously challenged. One, the subject of this discussion, is beyond the control of the company. The one to come is entirely the Met’s fault.
Basically, there are two reasons people are willing to spend a considerable amount of money to attend an opera performance. The first is the opera itself; the second is the opportunity to hear a familiar work performed by a singer of exceptional ability. Since the death of Puccini in 1924, with very few exceptions, there have been virtually no new operas that excite an audience the way La Traviata, Madama Butterfly, or Der Rosenkavalier do. Thus, what brings people back to the theater to see an opera they have seen and heard before is the chance to see and hear a familiar role sung by a great artist. When, for whatever reason, an opera is staged with a competent cast but one lacking in star power, the incentive to spend a considerable sum on an opera ticket is greatly reduced, especially when the variety of entertainment options is as great as it is today.
Consider two time intervals that I personally have experienced, the first in what now seems the distant past. My first opera at the Met was Tosca on December 25, 1954, with Licia Albanese, Eugene Conley, who replaced an indisposed Jan Peerce, and George London in the principal roles. I managed to scrape together enough money to buy a seat in the Grand Tier. Thereafter, I was a regular standee at the Met, often standing through three or four performances a week. Standing room was $2 a ticket. If one or more star performers were singing you had to get on line three to four hours before the performance to be sure of gaining entrance. Two dollars was a lot of money to me back then. I used to hope for the day when I could afford to buy a seat. This regular attendance continued until the end of the 1960-61 season, after which I left the New York area and returned to the Met only during visits to my native city.
Here’s a list of some of the sopranos and tenors I heard at the Met before I was 25 years old. The list would be just as impressive if I included the other vocal ranges. I’ll start with the sopranos. They are presented in no order other than as they occurred to me.
- Zinka Milanov
- Maria Callas
- Renata Tebaldi
- Birgit Nilsson
- Leontyne Price
- Victoria de los Angeles
- Leonie Rysanek
- Lisa Della Casa
- Eileen Farrell
- Licia Albanese
- Roberta Peters
- Antonietta Stella
- Anna Moffo
Now the tenors in the same random order.
- Jussi Björling
- Giuseppe Di Stefano
- Richard Tucker
- Mario del Monaco
- Franco Corelli
- Carlo Bergonzi
- Jon Vickers
- Nicolai Gedda
- Jan Peerce
- Cesare Valletti
There are two points to be made from the above lists. First, I was lucky enough to attend the Met when the company was full of great voices. While it was nice to have a great staging such as the 1958 Japanese-led production of Madama Butterfly with Antonietta Stella in the title role, the presence of so many extraordinary voices was enough to fill the house on a routine basis. The second is that today’s opera scene is particularly fallow. There is nothing today like the profusion of great singers represented by the two lists above.
This absence of greatness explains, to a large degree, the problem confronting the Met. The company stages new operas that the public doesn’t want to hear more than once. When they present standard works, almost all of which are a century or more old, they lack the star power needed to attract an audience willing to pay hundreds of dollars a ticket. I’m not saying the Met doesn’t have a lot of fine singers; they just don’t have the star power of two generations ago. There’s nothing the company can do to overcome this deficit. It is a victim of changing times.
Do you have any idea why there is a dearth of great singers today? Is the art not being passed down to new generations?
That would require an essay of its own and it would be full of guesswork. Things like the abundance or paucity of great singers and great composers go in cycles driven by multiple events like changes in taste and interests. People who once would have considered a career in opera are doing other things. The decline in eduction at all levels doesn’t help, as well. I’ll think about this issue some more and perhaps come up with a better explanation.
Thanks for your comments.
Thanks for your reply, and I would eagerly look forward to any explanations you might come up with. We’ve seen the collapse of literacy in the last ten or so years, so that’s an instance where skills are no longer being passed on (as widely as in the past); I wonder if what we think of as a lack of singers is paralleled in orchestral musicians (or are they still ‘going strong’?). These are big and important questions, I think. (I also wouldn’t want to ignore some great singers of the present, like Nadine Sierra, who I think would be admired in any age.)
Orchestral musicians are technically better than ever, and there are a lot of superb players.
Glad to hear it (about orchestral musicians). So there’s no ‘necessity’ that the musical training, etc., of opera singers should be failing.
There are many reasons. A big problem is in the training of singers. Singing should not be taught at university, all of the previous great singers did not go to university. Everyone is taught the exact same style. Singers used to have different styles and approaches, which made it more interesting. Generally the academic environment is not good for vocalist, each person is very unique and requires a unique approach. When learn an instrument you learn music theory and how to use your hands in a physical skill. The voice is not like that. A lot of professors at university have no actual stage experience. They generally choose small voices that takes less time to train, because they need to prove that they are doing something. They expect singers with big voices to sing repertoire like Mozart, which is not really suitable. Singers only get actually lessons around once or twice a week. There are many small problems within this system. There are perhaps more singers than ever, every years hundred of singer graduate with degrees in opera singing. Of course this also restrict the singing pool if you are only going to look for university degrees. And yet vocal degrees are given out like candy every year. You would think there is huge selection of good singers, but the truth is the training they receive is simply not good enough. Jerome Hines actually already warned against this in his book the Four Voice Of Man decades ago. On top of that you also have situations where conductors and stage directors don’t really know anything about voices. They hire the wrong singers for parts. There are many different problems, culture in general has also been hollowed out. All of the arts are struggling, all genres of music are struggling.