Opera in a post-bourgeois world.

[Chosen Barley]

Article by Roger Scruton in The American Spectator:

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/14/shocking-the-bourgeoisie

[some guy]

I see "post" any more in front of another word, and I shudder. This is purely involuntary, but I'm hoping with Zen and a better diet to control this. For now, let me indulge my revulsion, not just with "post-bourgeois," but with the whole article that Chosen has chosen to share with us.

Scruton is the master of the generality, and this article is made up almost entirely of generalities, none of them worth a pixel. Oh, it's fun to dump a bunch of different people into one group and then bash the group. Fun, but not very useful. And Scruton manages to bash everyone, bourgeoisie and artist alike.

In so doing, he also manages to collapse the entire artistic endeavor into one activity, shock. Now artists may from time to time actually shock a person or two. I would argue that for most artists, this shocking business is incidental to the real work, which is as multiple and various as shocking is single and tedious. Artists make all kinds of choices, for all kinds of reasons. Shocking "the bourgeois" is pretty low down on the list. But Scruton makes it the raison-d'etre of the whole artistic venture. How depressing.

But all that is just to get us to his real topic, new and distasteful stagings of classic operas. Distasteful to him and to me both--but who are these bourgeois who are being assaulted? Apparently, it's Roger and I. We both find these productions distasteful. And that's the thesis of this article, that artists shock the bourgeois. So Roger and I are both bourgeois. Interesting. I had not thought I was. I'll venture to guess that Mr. Scruton neither thinks he is, either, nor has any inkling that he's identified himself as a bourgeois. I could be wrong. It's only a guess. But I'd still put money on it!

And what about the artists? Early in the article, artists were composers, painters, poets, people like that. But by the time he gets to the point about opera, the artists are producers and directors. Now, it may be true that producers and directors like to consider themselves as artists. But who else does? I pronounce Scruton's bait and switch a failure. He's damned artists for shocking the bourgeois in order to lead up to his main point, that opera (not new operas, but new productions of old ones) is the last place where the bourgeois can be shocked. And the only way he can do that is to silently (sneakily) assert that producers are artists.

Foul.

(By the way, does someone else want to deal with the whole issue of operas being attended by "the bourgeois" and of the plots of operas having been designed (apparently by a different kind of artist than the "shock the bourgeois" kind) to please the bourgeois? I'd love to do it, but I need to finish packing so I can catch the train to the airport.)

[eyeresist]

Well said, some guy. Shock and sexual arousal are the two lowest, cheapest motivations for any artistic endeavour. And there may be, per chance, a slight difference between "shocking the bourgeoisie" and "annoying people who care about art".

The "bourgeoisie" were always a straw villain. In the 19th c., the disdain of the upper classes for people rising out of poverty into comfort and higher culture was, unthinkingly, adopted by left-wingers who were supposedly the moral opposite of the upper class. (Except of course that they were "aristocrats of the soul", and actual aristocrats, as often as not.) And who are the bourgeoisie? Why, it's us! Even the "elite" who do the shocking, with their elegant lifestyles funded, more often than not, from the public purse (us, again), are bourgeoisie. Sorry, "bourgeoisie" (have to avoid legitimising the term).

But... Heh. I'd like to annoy certain people by staging a production of Lulu set on the moon, with the cast in colourful space suits. See how they like it.

ADDENDUM: I notice, in the comments for that article, people throwing around the insult "Liberal" as though it has any more substance than "bourgeois". Ideology is always a great excuse for switching off the brain.

[Florestan]

ADDENDUM: I notice, in the comments for that article, people throwing around the insult "Liberal" as though it has any more substance than "bourgeois". Ideology is always a great excuse for switching off the brain.

Quite so. How does one define "bourgeois"? Who qualifies as one?

[karlhenning]

I see "post" any more in front of another word, and I shudder.

: )

I see Scruton as the author of an article, and I shudder . . . he's the arts-criticism equivalent of a toddler walking at large with no diaper on.

[Florestan]

You know very well "bourgeois" in this context means what used to be called "philistines" (earliest use known by me in Robert Schumann's critical writing), "squares" (Gore Vidal still uses the term) - ie middle & low brow segments of the populations who were easily chocked by daring in the Arts and free & open life-styles and intelligences.

By this use of term, most "proletarians" would qualify as "bourgeois".

The earliest known use of the term "bourgeois" as incomprehending enemy of the arts that I have seen is in Voltaire, Voltaire's correspondance, the term this great writer used to berate mid-level jurists & bureaucrats & others who would never be seen at the theatre or opera and considered actress whores and prostitutes and had them burried in common graves instead of church grounds.

Time has changed. Today middle-level jurists and bureaucrats fill the theaters and opera houses and frequently get involved with actresses.

My point is that "bourgeois" has become a meaningless term, just like so many others.

[karlhenning]

Quite so. How does one define "bourgeois"? Who qualifies as one?

Thanks for asking on my behalf! ; )

[karlhenning]

Gore Vidal still uses "squares"? What a fossil!

[karlhenning]

Could be. Karl Henning has more importance in the history of music than "toucan" does on the planet. Much more.

[Lethevich]

[jochanaan]

So many errors and oversimplifications, so little time...

First, let's get rid of the term "bourgeois."  At one time it had a specific meaning, but for at least a century and a half it has been used only to build straw men, or straw groups.  I'd rather deal with real people and, as much as they exist, real groups.

But as for opera itself, "shocking the public" has almost always been an incidental part of its appeal.  In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, opera was not just a "high-art" form but a very public entertainment and a vital art, so vital that many of its practitioners had trouble with censors.  (The Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto was originally the King of France until the censors smelled revolution.)  And in Europe, apparently--I don't know enough about the current situation there but this is the impression I've got--it is still vital enough, despite extensive state sponsorship, for new operas to take the stage and be praised and damned.

Yet here on the Western side of "the pond," opera is seen as mostly a mere "cultural experience."  One goes perhaps as part of a school field trip, much as one visits a museum, to get one's dose of opera.  And that's as far as it goes for most people--as far as their circumstances will let it go.  So when Americans hear the word "opera," they think they know what it's all about: people on recordings screaming in an incomprehensible language, or fat folks on stage strutting or stabbing each other with no reason.  (That's a gross oversimplification, of course, but I dare say there's some truth behind it.)  We mostly have little idea how rich, challenging and vital opera is; we forget even our own operas such as Amahl and the Night Visitors or The Ballad of Baby Doe.

That's a problem--but not an insoluble one.  There's genius enough here to keep opera new and evolving and in the public eye and ear.

But I feel that there is a modern equivalent of "the bourgeoisie," and that it is all the people who have become seduced or enmired in the world of the big corporations, Wall Street or Hollywood or Silicon Valley; who, through no fault of their own, have had no experience with operatic art that shocks, challenges, and enlightens; or if they had, it was through such tedious field trips as I described above that allowed little chance to be shocked, challenged and/or enlightened.

And here is where opera can change lives.  Opera at its best is an overwhelming experience; story, music, visual art and stagecraft meld into a magical whole that easily bypasses our emotional defenses and opens our minds and hearts to new ideas or new states of being.  No matter that so many operas fall short of their potential; there's always the chance that a new crew of artists (opera is always a collaborative effort) will create something beautiful and challenging enough to work an inner change on some audience member.  You can call this "shocking the bourgeoisie" if you like; but to many of us, it's more like preaching a gospel and watching it change people for the better.

[knight66]

Well, no one seems to be giving him the time of day, and a good thing too. Polemicist, he enjoys hurling a rock into calm water.

One of the many aspects of the item that amused me was his holding up the Met as the one true place where the art is allowed to shine through unsullied. Most recently I have enjoyed work from the Met, but for decades it played the Opera as Museum in Motion game. If it sticks with traditional productions, opera will be dead and that is a demeaning approach that allows it to drift further and further away from contempory relevance. Many re thinkings are ill thought through, but the good ones provide that freshness that all great works of art from Shakespeare to Botticelli sustain and thrive on.

Mike

[Scarpia]

One of the many aspects of the item that amused me was his holding up the Met as the one true place where the art is allowed to shine through unsullied. Most recently I have enjoyed work from the Met, but for decades it played the Opera as Museum in Motion game. If it sticks with traditional productions, opera will be dead and that is a demeaning approach that allows it to drift further and further away from contempory relevance. Many re thinkings are ill thought through, but the good ones provide that freshness that all great works of art from Shakespeare to Botticelli sustain and thrive on.

Contemporary Opera is created by contemporary artists who set modern libretti.  Screwing around with the scenario of a Mozart Opera doesn't create something contemporary.  It creates something even more obviously anachronistic.

[Franco]

Contemporary Opera is created by contemporary artists who set modern libretti.  Screwing around with the scenario of a Mozart Opera doesn't create something contemporary.  It creates something even more obviously anachronistic.

Hear, hear.

[jochanaan]

Contemporary Opera is created by contemporary artists who set modern libretti.  Screwing around with the scenario of a Mozart Opera doesn't create something contemporary.  It creates something even more obviously anachronistic.

Agreed.  It's interesting that the movement in musical performance is toward greater and greater "historical authenticity," while the movement among producers is seemingly toward greater and greater revisionism.  "Mozart in Nazi garb" spells "cognitive dissonance" to me!

[DavidRoss]

In America, the bourgeoisie are the folks who contribute generously to support orchestras, museums, dance companies, opera houses, and performing arts academies, who provide scholarships that enable talented youth to study the arts, and who buy the paintings and sculptures and season subscriptions that provide a livelihood for performers and creative artists.  Of course the wealthy contribute as well, but their numbers are small in comparison. 

[knight66]

Contemporary Opera is created by contemporary artists who set modern libretti.  Screwing around with the scenario of a Mozart Opera doesn't create something contemporary.  It creates something even more obviously anachronistic.

That is an opinion, not a rule. I have seen a fair few who manage it magnificently. The mafia Rigoletto directed by Jonathan Miller, the Glyndbourne productions of Theodora and Giulio Cesare have all been widely accepted as superbly successful. If you read through the pages here, there is pretty much nothing but praise for the Copenhagen Ring. It does not have to be about men on toilets, or a fast film of a decaying rabbit. The bad ought not to drive out the good.

I am not suggesting that all opera should be taken out of its timeframe. There are lots of great examples where it has been successfully retained. Rosenkavalier usually works best as placed and I have enjoyed many traditional Mozart and Rossini productions. But there should not be a stultifying assumption that it is the only way.

If you insist on authenticity, then light it with flame torches. Dress Cesare in a breastplate, a high full-bottomed wig and tights. You can then watch performance after performance that will be eventually like attending an animated wax works. We need fresh eyes on how this whole art form is brought to life.

Mike

[Florestan]

In America, the bourgeoisie are the folks who contribute generously to support orchestras, museums, dance companies, opera houses, and performing arts academies, who provide scholarships that enable talented youth to study the arts, and who buy the paintings and sculptures and season subscriptions that provide a livelihood for performers and creative artists.  Of course the wealthy contribute as well, but their numbers are small in comparison.

But David, in order for the "bourgeoisie" to contribute generously, provide scholarships and buy, it must by necessity be wealthy. Where do you draw the line between "bourgeois" and "wealthy"?

Labels aside, you are of course right and this has been the case at least since late 19th century on. Pick any iconoclast artist you want and you'll find one or more "bourgeois" that encouraged and supported him.

[DavidRoss]

But David, in order for the "bourgeoisie" to contribute generously, provide scholarships and buy, it must by necessity be wealthy. Where do you draw the line between "bourgeois" and "wealthy"?

Labels aside, you are of course right and this has been the case at least since late 19th century on. Pick any iconoclast artist you want and you'll find one or more "bourgeois" that encouraged and supported him.

In economic terms in America these days I'd equate them with the upper-middle class of successful small business owners and professionals, those who work for a living but are rewarded handsomely enough to have significant disposable income.  The wealthy are those with sufficient assets to do whatever they please with little or no regard to monetary expense.  Neither income nor net worth is adequate to distinguish the classes.

For instance, an electrician or dentist might own a business with a dozen employees and capital assets worth a couple of million, might earn a couple of hundred thousand for himself annually, and might have retirement investments worth a million or so, all offset by whatever personal and business debts he owes--mortgages, education loans for himself and his children, car payments, accounts due, etc.  Though he may seem rather well off on paper--let's say he's "worth" $3 million--he's hardly wealthy (even though it may seem like it to someone with no savings who lives paycheck to paycheck in a rented flat and goes out after work in the gas-guzzling SUV that he can barely make the payments on to hang out with his mates at the local pub smoking and drinking and ranting the same ignorant class-warfare slogans that have kept him and his sort impoverished victims of their own stupidity for generations).


 

[some guy]

...someone with no savings who lives paycheck to paycheck in a rented flat and goes out after work in the gas-guzzling SUV that he can barely make the payments on to hang out with his mates at the local pub smoking and drinking and ranting the same ignorant class-warfare slogans that have kept him and his sort impoverished victims of their own stupidity for generations....

Wow. I think you should tell us how you really feel and not all this maidenly reticence!!