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December 12, 2003
TT: Opera in the bedroom
As you may have heard, ChevronTexaco, which has been sponsoring the Metropolitan Opera's Saturday-afternoon radio broadcasts for the past 64 years, is pulling the plug at the end of the current season. (They now have other corporate priorities.) The broadcasts cost $7 million a year, and the Met doesn't have that kind of cash to spare.Tony Tommasini has a story in this morning's New York Times about the situation as of this moment. The broadcasts, he writes,
have been a cultural lifeline for generations of listeners, both those who live in places far removed from any opera company and those who may live just a subway ride from Lincoln Center but can't afford to attend. They are carried by some 365 stations in the United States, as well as in Canada, Mexico, South America, 27 European countries, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, reaching, according to the opera company's most recent survey, an estimated total of more than 11 million.
The Met has been unable to obtain a new sponsor to pick up the annual $7 million cost of the broadcasts, which covers a range of expenses including compensation to commercial radio stations; extra fees to singers, musicians and technical crews; salaries for the radio production staff, engineers and announcers; transmission fees; royalties; and publicity. Ideally the Met is looking for a single sponsor that will pledge financing for a minimum of five years.
A partial reprieve for next season came recently with the announcement that the Annenberg Foundation had awarded $3.5 million to keep the broadcasts on the air. That still leaves a sizable sum to raise. The only reassurances that the broadcasts will continue have been the personal pledges of Joseph Volpe, the Met's general manager, and Beverly Sills, its chairwoman.
Ms. Sills's determination to find a new sponsor is strongly personal. "Being a child in Brooklyn from a modest home, the opportunities for me to go to the Met were nil," she said in an interview. "The radio broadcasts were an essential part of our lives. My mother cut out that time every week. She arranged for my singing lessons and piano lessons in Manhattan to be on Saturday mornings, so that there was time for me to get back to Brooklyn for sandwiches and the opera."
(Read the whole thing here.)
Susan Graham told Tommasini a similar story. And I sympathize--up to a point. But I'd also like to know how many of the Met's 11 million listeners live in the United States. I'm interested in knowing more about the extent of those "extra fees" to singers and musicians. And I'd especially like to know exactly how much of that $7 million budget goes toward "compensation to commercial radio stations." NPR, as we all know, no longer wants to broadcast live music--its member stations are rushing to adopt the talk-oriented formats that today's listeners seem to prefer. Does this mean that the Met has to pay commercial classical stations to carry its broadcasts?
Regular readers of this blog know that I'm furious with NPR and PBS for abdicating their responsibility to high culture. At the same time, I don't believe in sinking money into obsolete cultural ventures that have largely outlived their utility, and it occurs to me that the Met's radio broadcasts--at least as presently constituted--may well fall into that category.
Another quote from Tommasini:
I, too, was formed musically and even emotionally by the Met broadcasts. Coming from a family on Long Island with no musical background, I discovered these broadcasts on my own. Sometimes I would listen on the crackly radio in the kitchen, where, in something of a role reversal, I tried to engage my mother, who was intrigued but not that interested. Eventually my parents gave me a high-quality radio, and I would listen in my room alone. I remember having only a scant idea of what Verdi's "Aida" was about, yet being enthralled with Leontyne Price's singing.
That's a nice story, just like the others in the piece. On the other hand, I love opera at least as much at Tony, yet I've never listened to the Met's radio broadcasts, not as a kid (we didn't get them in southeast Missouri) and not now. And in any case, all the people he quotes are talking about listening experiences that took place at least a quarter-century ago. I wonder how many budding young singers and critics circa 2003--if any--would paint a picture remotely similar to that of Tony and Beverly Sills.
I've thought for some time that the future of classical radio lies not in what has come to be called "terrestrial radio" (i.e., conventional radio broadcasting) but in satellite and Web-based radio, which make it possible to "narrowcast" a wider variety of programs aimed at smaller audiences. I suspect that's where the Met really belongs--not on terrestrial radio. And if I had to guess, I'd say that the Tony Tommasinis and Susan Grahams of today would be more likely to listen to the Met on their computers than on "high-quality radios" bought by their parents.
As I've said more than once on this blog, I'm as nostalgic as the next guy, but I'm mainly interested in essences, not their embodiments. The real miracle of modern technology is that it offers radically new means of bringing about profoundly traditional ends. You can use your iBook to download Dostoyevsky, or listen to vintage radio shows from the Thirties and Forties--or read a blog like this. The Metropolitan Opera needs to keep that in mind as it figures out how to stay on the air.
Posted December 12, 2003 12:24 PM
