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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: Sign from the Times

November 10, 2003 by Terry Teachout

Here’s John Rockwell, writing about New York City Opera in yesterday’s New York Times:

The City Opera has been aggressively lobbying to be named the flagship institution in the new cultural presence at ground zero. To its evident surprise, it has encountered resistance. As of this writing, no decision has been announced, but the downtown powers seem to want a greater diversity of artistic expression….


American culture has changed radically in the last 65 years. It is that change, rather than the virtues or failings of City Opera in its current condition, that is causing it problems downtown….


By now, for all the lip service still paid to high culture and for all the genuine passion and pleasure that millions still derive from it, the revolution is complete. The current issue of Vanity Fair, for instance, has a foldout cover of celebrity photographs by Annie Leibovitz trumpeting “American Music” without one classical musician in the group. American music in the minds of most Americans today is popular music. We’re a democracy, and the majority votes for what is most popular. Opera ain’t it.


To some extent, opera’s current marginality is its own fault, in failing to sustain the blend of creativity and popularity that distinguished the operatic past. And to some extent, one might wish for a little more responsibility on the part of our politicians.


But the fact remains that the new art that excites people these days is likely to come in the form of film or literature or popular music or visual installations, not from an art like opera, whose best days seem well behind it. If an artist today is to celebrate the common man or lament Sept. 11 effectively, it will most likely be

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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