The Florentine Opera Company’s
production of Benjamin Britten’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. |
Curtain Call
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Opera at Amherst
"What is very interesting is that the very high value given to
the arts experience is held by both attendees and nonattendees,” Scorca says. For example,
the PARC project found that between 31 and 38 percent of the people surveyed
perceive the arts as increasing cultural understanding in a community, even
if they don’t attend arts performances themselves. “Even if someone
doesn’t go to the opera, they still appreciate it,” Scorca says. “They
still understand that the arts are important and that the arts organizations
in their communities are important.”
That’s exactly why Opera America has become so vital to American opera.
Counting 117 American and 19 Canadian professional opera companies as its members
and leaving only a handful of professional opera companies in America and Canada
unaffiliated, the organization compiles the experiences of each member company
into a cohesive whole. “We collect information, both statistical and
anecdotal,” Scorca explained. “We do national research projects;
we essentially try to accumulate the
experience and wisdom of our field into a more accessible form, so it can be
made available to our members, who, we hope, use it to help do their work more
effectively in their community.” Opera America also works with public
policy and monitors legislation’s impact on the arts, particularly immigration
law that affects foreign artists’ entering the country and tax law that
affects the deductibility of charitable gifts to arts organizations.
"What really attracted me to Opera America,” Scorca says, “is
that I enjoy running an organization. But part of the responsibility of this
organization
is to think theoretically and philosophically about the art form; to think
about the important intersection between the art form and community, between
the art form and public policy, between the art form and new audiences.”
Opera has had its hold on Scorca since his childhood outside of New York City.
His grandparents were great fans of the opera who loved going to New York to
watch Enrico Caruso perform. “It’s always what I’ve wanted
to do,” he said. “My parents took me to my first opera when I was
in junior high, and I went to the Met countless times with my high school friends,
standing room only.” As a freshman at Amherst, Scorca wrote to the Metropolitan
Opera asking for a volunteer position over Interterm. “So for four years,
I spent every summer break, winter break, every Thanksgiving break, every day
I could,” he remembered. “I had a desk at the Metropolitan Opera,
two wonderful projects that I worked on the entire time I was there, and standing-room
privileges. My record was seeing 44 performances in 41 days, all standing room.”
It’s unlikely that the general opera-goer will match Scorca’s degree
of dedication, but clearly the trend is toward his position. The optimistic
state of opera today is all the more impressive because opera is just now climbing
out of a difficult period in its history. Beginning in the 1890s, opera, unrivaled
for almost 300 years, suddenly had to compete with modern technology and the
mass media. In 1890, there were two ways to enjoy opera: attend a live performance,
or, if you were blessed with enough talent, sing your favorite arias at the
living-room piano. By 1915, though, you could indulge yourself with Caruso’s
voice on 78-rpm records without the fuss, expense and inconvenience of leaving
your living room for the opera house.
When cinema was introduced, opera found itself on unsteady ground. “If
we look at how opera moved from being a cutting-edge art form that thrived
on new works to being an art piece that was threatened with becoming a museum
art form, I think we have to look at the intersection of opera and film,” Scorca
says. “I’m not positing a causal relationship, but I do think that
it’s something to be explored; it’s interesting to think about.”
On top of the new competitors for the opera audience, the Great Depression,
World War II and a lack of funds hit the industry where it hurt: in the wallet.
Scorca explains: “It’s expensive to produce an opera. It was cheaper
to bring on a performance of Carmen, where you already owned the sets and costumes,
than it was to build new sets and costumes, not to mention to pay for the commissioning
process and the rehearsal process that a new opera requires.”
Beyond basic financial concerns, there were aesthetic reasons for the stagnation
of opera in the 20th century. Some people cite the premature death of composer
George Gershwin as one of several setbacks. The Metropolitan Opera in New York
had commissioned Gershwin to write
a new opera after Porgy and Bess; Gershwin died before completing the
opera, leaving a trend
toward new opera with little to feed on. In addition, contemporary classical
music became very
difficult music toward the middle of the century. “The composers of new
music moved into a school of composition that was particularly difficult for
audiences to enjoy,” Scorca says (imagine, if you can, a John Cage aria). “There
was a general sense that audiences didn’t like contemporary music, and
that if you did a contemporary opera they wouldn’t come. So, in addition
to having the expense of producing a new opera, you would lose the revenue at
the box office. It was kind of a double-edged sword.”
Continued >>
Photo of The Coronation of Poppea:
Bruce Zinger
Photo of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Richard Brodzeller
photography, Florentine Opera Company
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