My Response to John McWhorter on Black Opera

On Oct. 19, 2021, the New York Times published a piece by John McWhorter, a Black professor of linguistics at Columbia University, entitled: "Go See These Black Operas -- Several Times." You can read it by clicking on that link.

What follows is my response to that piece:

Dear Mr. McWhorter,

Your Oct. 19, 2021 piece in the NYT on opera conflated at least three, arguably distinct issues and in the process turned out to be something of a dog’s breakfast. It was sufficiently provocative nonetheless.

The easiest issue is whether Black composers and librettists (as opposed to singers) have been unfairly denied access to the Metropolitan Opera (and various similar organizations) and thus it is high time the Met staged something like “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” I think we can stipulate that is true. On the other hand, just because the piece is a true Black opera (not an opera about Blacks written by a white person) doesn’t mean it is particularly good. As is the case with all other operas, time will tell.

Second are questions of cultural appropriation, or misappropriation – a trendy and highly “woke” topic. If you failed to bring this up, you would be viewed as seriously out of touch by certain constituencies in the current sociopolitical environment.

Artists have always depicted cultures other than their own, or been influenced by them and incorporated the narratives or aesthetics of another culture in their own work. There is, I personally believe, nothing at all wrong with this. The current cultural appropriation wars arguably have little to do with art and much to do with sociopolitical power.

(This is a different issue than what happened in the jazz era and beyond when white musicians and entrepreneurs basically stole music, or most of the revenues accruing to it, that had been originated by Blacks.)

Third, and in my case by far the most interesting topic, is the prevailing state of opera, no matter what the race or cultural background of the creators. Here, you seem to think you “should” like what opera has become although you are far from sure you actually do. Join the club. Why do you suppose opera companies stage only a limited number of contemporary pieces while relentlessly re-staging the old favorites?

In a nutshell and with broad generalization, in contemporary opera the singers serve the music. In most of the older forms of opera, the music served the singers. Singing, or extraordinarily virtuosic vocalization, was what it was all about. The stories were secondary and often somewhat ridiculous, or set well in some often mythic past, in large part because the threat of censorship was always present. Patrons largely bought tickets to hear their favorite singers sing particular roles, and to compare such performances to that of other prominent singers. The rest was spectacle.

That is far from the case at present, and as such raises the question, why opera? Why not just put on a play or make a film, the latter if you insist that background music adds to the story as opposed to at least partially obscuring it – as may be the case in the two operas under consideration in your article. You urge readers to listen to them repeatedly, not to hear great singing, but simply to make sense of them, which is apparently difficult otherwise. Oh well, there is nothing new about the notion of art for the sake of art. Viewers have frequently been told, for instance, that when gazing at abstract art: “it means whatever it means to you.”

You seem to wish that Blacks could, in effect, find a third way that they could call their own: opera somehow different from that characterized by the stand-alone arias of the past and more approachable and more broadly appealing than most contemporary opera. Something that would appeal to and be understood by an audience beyond those who attend because they think they “should” for one reason or another, but different and presumably more “high brow” than musical theater. “Porgy and Bess,” but written and composed by Blacks and with a story that avoids stereotypes? Porgy and Bess survives, of course, because the songs (or arias) are so good one (such as Angel Blue) can overlook the rest. Oops. There we are, back to opera as great songs and great singers with everything else secondary. Well, good luck.

One can argue that contemporary opera started or got into high gear with Wagner and his “it’s all about me” approach. Don’t give the singers arias that put them first and foremost. Make them serve my “total work of art” instead. Well, OK, that’s one approach and it arguably worked for Wagner (whatever one things of him), but less so for most of what has come in his wake.

That’s a sharp contrast to Handel who would regularly alter his compositions, and even drop parts of a story, or add new parts, so that a particular singer would come across at his or her best. That’s what the ticket buying public was paying for and Handel had to sell lots of expensive tickets. Mozart regularly wrote arias with the capabilities of particular singers in mind. And so forth and so on.

Everyone these days seems hung up over the race (or sexual orientation) of the creators and performers. As for me, where did I put that fabulous recording of Kathleen Battle singing G.F. Handel’s “Semele?” (I’m more than happy to overlook Ms Battle’s cultural misappropriation of the role and sorry I missed Angel Blue singing Mimi in “La Bohème” at the Seattle Opera as a result of the pandemic.)

Keep up the good work, and with my very best wishes. Maybe you’ll be able to make sense of it – for ALL of us – someday.

Fowler W. Martin

(P.S.  No surprise: there has been no response from Mr. McWhorter.)

 

 

Sally Rooney and The Literary Industrial Complex

 Sally Rooney, a self-described Marxist, appears to be willingly serving as the latest tool of what some call the Literary Industrial Complex, a capitalist dream come true.  Basically, it uses the public's infatuation with celebrity to sell a lot more books than would otherwise be the case.

Ms Rooney, author of the best-sellers "Conversations with Friends" and "Normal People," and who has just had her third novel "Beautiful World, Where Are You" published, offers a glimpse of this phenomenon on page 228 of the Hogarth paperback edition of "Normal People."

Therein, the book's chief male protagonist, a young man named Connell who appears to be getting a writing career started, muses over the nature of literature and concludes that books are purchased primarily so educated people can feel superior to the uneducated.

Even if the writer himself was a good person, and even if his book really was inciteful, all books are ultimately marketed as status symbols and all writers participated to some degree in this marketing.  Presumably that was how the industry made money. 

Those were some of Connell's thoughts at the conclusion of a book reading he had been attending at college.

How then does Ms Rooney participate -- beyond just making herself available for interviews, such as in the New Yorker when an except from "Beautiful World" was published there shortly before the book was released -- evidently as part of the marketing effort?

One way is by authorizing a host of branded merchandise to be released around the time of publication -- and making sure it gets into the hands of opinion leaders and with their names then associated with it, out onto social media.

The New York Times described the effort in an article entitled "Beautiful Merch, Where Are You?" (By the way, the title of the "Beautiful World" does not finish with a question mark. probably because there is no answer in Ms Rooney's view.)

As the release date has drawn nearer, anticipation has approximated streetwear-drop levels. In August, Ms. Rooney’s publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, distributed yellow bucket hats and tote bags (featuring the novel’s cover illustrations, by Manshen Lo) to celebrities, journalists and other so-called literary influencers. They have been encouraged to post about the book using the hashtag #BWWAY.

Lena Dunham, Maggie Rogers and Lucy Dacus are among those who shared photos of the book and its promotional swag on social media. Sarah Jessica Parker was photographed reading it between takes for the “Sex and the City” reboot. In an interview, Delia Cai, a correspondent at Vanity Fair, called it “the status galley of the summer.”

And further ...

Emily Temple, the managing editor of Literary Hub, described the ongoing Rooney-mania as nearly “unprecedented” for a literary fiction release. To her, it calls to mind “Ferrante Fever” — the obsession with the pseudonymous author Elena Ferrante, whose Neapolitan Novels, beginning with “My Brilliant Friend,” made her an international celebrity.

And so forth and so on.  Publishing is first and foremost about marketing and marketing is about celebrity. The manner in which Ms Rooney's latest book was launched, and how she participated in it, while decrying capitalism would make excellent fodder for her next novel -- and its collectable swag.

"Eleanor Rigby," "The Umbrella" and All the Lonely People

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

That's the famous opening line of "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy and while clearly not strictly accurate, the notion contains a certain truth that encourages readers to tackle the remains of this very lengthy book: we are far more interested in things that go wrong than in things that run smoothly.

One of the former is human loneliness, far more pervasive, one might argue, than it ought to be given the fact that homo sapiens are fundamentally social animals. 

To paraphrase Tolstoy, each lonely individual is lonely in his or her own way, which is fodder for fiction and for the arts more generally. Which brings me to a couple of entries in the Oct. 25, 2021 New Yorker.

First is an article by Paul McCartney explaining how the Beatles' hit song "Eleanor Rigby" came to be written. A masterpiece of minimalism, the chorus goes:

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

As for the article, it is more about how the Beatles came together than how the song came about, but, short in length by New Yorker standards, it is worth a read.

Second is "The Umbrella," the English translation of a short story by Danish author Tove Ditlevsen, who died in 1976. Yet another example of the New Yorker's role as an avenue for marketing by the publishing industry, the story is part of an anthology of translated works by Ditlevsen due out in March 2022. Instead of an author interview, this story is accompanied by an interview of the translator.

There is little about "The Umbrella," essentially the story of what might be called a vacant marriage, that is particularly interesting unless, perhaps one can relate to it on a personal level, By the end, one senses that the chief protagonist, a woman named Helga, is as responsible for her loneliness as anyone else. She seems as little interested in her husband as he is in her.

Each lonely individual is lonely in his or her own way, and this is one of them. In that sense, I suppose the story is in the nature of a collectible.

I Can Just Hear the Screams of Cultural Misappropriation

 Suppose John O'Hara, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart had all been Black Americans, wrote a musical set in a black community in 1940s Chicago, called it "Pal Joey." and saw it performed on Broadway more than once and also made into a film.

Suppose then someone came along and said "let's reset this in a white community in Chicago in the 1930s" and bring it back to Broadway in that fashion.

Can't you just hear the screams of cultural misappropriation?  Yet another example of white Americans ripping off Black creativity.

Well, of course (according to the Oct. 5, 2021 New York Times), the situation is the reverse.  The three men mentioned in the first sentence were white, the original was performed with white actors and it was set in the 1930s.  A new version, apparently headed for Broadway has remade the musical Black and set it in the 1940s.

There are apparently a host of other changes as well, including the addition of several songs that weren't in the original.

I'm tempted to say all of this has left me "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," but in fact, it has left me simply wondering when what is bad for the gander will also be bad for the goose (or vice versa).