Not so commercial

This weekend a press release came in the mail, announcing what it called the “first commercial recording” of Carlisle Floyd’s opera Of Mice and Men, recorded by the Houston Grand Opera on the Albany label.

But this isn’t a commercial recording, or at least it’s not what most people commonly mean by commercial. Nobody invested huge sums of money in it, hoping to make a profit. Instead, this recording — like many classical records today — was subsidized. The fine print at the end of the press release says:

This recording is made possible by major grants from The Ford Foundation, The Wortham Foundation, Inc., and Louisa Stude Sarofim in support of the Houston Grand Opera’s electronic media initiatives.

The opera company, in other words, raised money to pay for the recording, then took it to Albany Records, which now can release it without much risk. Albany might be paying to manufacture the CDs, but the overwhelming expense in a project like this is recording the music — and that, I’m sure, was paid for by the two foundations and Ms. Sarofim.

Not that there’s anything wrong with any of this. None of it reflects badly on the Houston Grand Opera, the record company, or the recording. Subsidies, in fact, are a fact of life in classical recording these days, and have been for quite a while. Even CDs by very famous artists might be subsized; some Metropolitan Opera recordings on major labels (including Wagner’s Ring) were paid for at least in part with donated funds.

So I’m just struck by the language of the press release. “Commercial recording” –not at all. The use of that language only serves, ironically, to underline how noncommercial classical recording has become.