December 10: Round Table Discussion

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 10:34 PM | Link to this post

For our final class, we invited a panel of speakers for a Round Table Discussion on the topic "Opera in the 21st Century: The Business of Opera":

• Maurice Saylor, composer, and authority on American opera, and Head of the Catholic University Music Library
  
• Dr. Andrew Simpson, professor of composition and composer of the opera trilogy Oresteia, which had its first opera premiered in a fully staged production at Catholic University in 2003
  
• Dr. Elaine Walter, professor of musicology, former dean of the School of Music, and Founder and General Manager of the Summer Opera Theatre Company here in Washington, D.C.

Professor Simpson began with a presentation of the work he did on the first opera in his Oresteia trilogy, Agamemnon. The idea of setting Aeschylus's Greek tragedies as one-act operas in English translation was suggested to him by his wife, a classicist. Agamemnon was presented first by the Opera Workshop at Catholic University, in 2001. The budget for this production was roughly $3000, and we watched an excerpt of the performance (from the reduced score). After that experience, Professor Simpson went on to spend a year revising and scoring the opera for full orchestra, while on sabbatical leave in Greece, for a fully staged production that premiered in Hartke Theater at Catholic University on April 25, 2003 (see Joseph McLellan's review for the Washington Post). I was happy to learn that you can watch video Webcasts of all three performances of the opera.

For the full premiere, there was a budget of $33,000, and Professor Simpson admitted that he served ultimately an infinite number of roles during the whole process: composer, proofreader (in which Maurice Saylor assisted), grant-writer, score copier, advertiser, fundraiser, educational and preconcert lecturer, auditioner, coach, rehearsal pianist. The second opera in the Oresteia trilogy, The Libation Bearers, was presented by the Catholic University Opera Workshop this past March, and you can also watch that on video Webcast. While that opera works its way toward a full production, Professor Simpson assured us that the third opera, The Furies, is also in progress.

Maurice Saylor mentioned that he has also composed an opera, Express: a bus ride in one act, from 1983. However, he spent more time describing his interest in the two works by Gian Carlo Menotti that were given their American television premieres by the Catholic University School of Music, The Saint of Bleecker Street and The Consul. In fact, as we later discussed, Catholic University took part in four television premieres for NBC. The films appear to have been lost, but Mr. Saylor does have sound recordings of all of them in the Music Library. He also suggested the Museum of Television and Radio, in New York and Los Angeles, as a resource for broadcasts of hard-to-find American operas. For example, at the museum you can watch the broadcast of Menotti's The Labyrinth, an opera that has only and, in fact, can only be produced in the medium of television, since Menotti effectively made it impossible to stage traditionally.

This led to my question later: what has happened to opera on television in the United States? As far as I can determine, there will be a grand total of one opera broadcast on PBS this season (Otto Schenk's Metropolitan Opera production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, scheduled for April 3, 2005, at 2 pm). I remember how impressed I was, as an undergraduate student working in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the summer of 1990, seeing the telecast of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle from the Met. I still have the set of low-quality videotapes I made that summer. This is not to mention the regular programs like "Hour of Opera" that used to air on NBC, before my time. Why don't we have that anymore? And when will I be able to get the European network Arte from my satellite provider? (Radio broadcasts are great and all, but come on.)

Kevin McCarthy et al., The Performing Arts in a New Era (2001)

Professor Walter approached the topic from her vantage point as an impresario, the general manager of a small opera company. She described a book by William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen, Performing Arts, the Economic Dilemma: A Study of Problems Common to Theater, Opera, Music and Dance (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1966), which by and large correctly predicted the trajectory of opera as a business in the latter part of the 20th century. This has been followed by another book by Kevin McCarthy et al., The Performing Arts in a New Era, published by the Rand Corporation in 2001, which predicted—prior to the September 11 attacks, which have further devastated opera's funding base in the United States—that the wealthiest opera companies and the smallest-budget companies would probably survive but that most of the companies in between those extremes were likely to fail. This prediction appears to be coming true, according to data collected by the Opera America organization, she concluded, which shows that most opera companies are surviving only by running on deficit spending, paying off this year's bills by loans against what they expect to make the following season.

All in all, this was a lively and convivial discussion, followed by wonderful food prepared by the students. Thanks to everyone who was involved!