About Last Night

Dear OGIC:

I want to talk about sex scenes again after you’ve seen The Cooler.

Middle age has slowed me down. I only just learned what DTR means–it’s Gen-Y-speak for Define The Relationship–and this morning I stumbled across an invaluable addition to my vocabulary: WTF. Thank you, Cup of Chicha.

(For the context of this staggering development, go here. You won’t be sorry.)

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.

“The first night we went to hear Parsifal. I still see my paralyzed mother there, looking and listening. In the Prinzregententheater the orchestra pit is invisible, especially designed by Wagner himself. On the stage there moved some high-bosomed women and obese men, enacting some sort of unreal slow-motion tragedy. From the bowels of the theater came the wailing sounds of a music whose humid sensuousness and subjectivism is intended to indicate ‘religion,’ or something which the artist believed to be religion. It was a strenuous and embarrassing experience. The only bright spot was the interval with sandwich rolls and beer.”

Karl Stern, The Pillar of Fire

My mailbox continues to silt up with good stuff, which I’ll dole out drib by drab. First is a reader’s response to my posting on the growing irrelevance of regional orchestras:

To me, the chief benefit of having a third-tier regional orchestra (aside
from the employment it provides to classical musicians, which, admittedly,
is a poor reason for anything) lies in the children. True, an adult
familiar with the classical repertoire would be better off listening to a
Beethoven symphony on a CD or DVD rather than spending an evening at some
small-town auditorium, but children are a different story.

I spent my first 11 years in a small town in Belarus, and my very first
concert was hearing the Soviet equivalent of a third-tier orchestra. I
don’t remember what was played and I certainly was in no position to gauge
the quality of the playing. But the experience was permanently etched in my
memory. This was my first introduction not to the music so much, but to the
concert experience. It was the grandness, the pomposity of the occasion
that I found so fascinating. The music was almost beside the point. It was
that evening when my love for concerts (which later evolved into the love of
music itself) began.

Later, we moved to New York and I attended various music schools, including
the old High School of Performing Arts. Three of my four children now study
music at one of the schools I attended. When I though it was time to take
my oldest to a symphony concert, it didn’t matter to me so much whether it
was the Chicago Symphony playing at Carnegie or some Bergen County orchestra
playing in Englewood. I wanted him to develop a love for the spectacle of a
symphony concert.

My concern is that if regional orchestras disappear, the already shrinking
audience base for classical music would, within a generation, disappear with
them.

I’ve gotten a lot of smart letters defending regional orchestras (more of which will turn up here in days to come), but this is the first one that seemed to me to move the argument in a significantly different direction. I really did underestimate the power of sheer spectacle, didn’t I?

As I read this letter, I recalled the first time I ever heard a symphony orchestra in person. It was the St. Louis Symphony (a second-tier ensemble of high quality, to be sure), performing Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony with a local university choir. I can’t remember a thing about the music or the way it was performed, but I can still close my eyes and see all those musicians up on stage. Granted, I was already in high school when I saw that concert, by which time I was already well on the way to becoming a performing musician. Looking back, I’d say the most important orchestral “experience” I had during my formative years was watching Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts on TV. Still, I’m inclined to go along with what my correspondent says about how seeing a symphony orchestra in person–be it good or fair or merely adequate–might well help set a young listener on the right path.

That’s me! Please don’t forget that my most recent book, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, is now out in trade paperback–and still available in hardcover. If you like “About Last Night,” you’ll like The Skeptic, and so will your friends. Don’t take my word for it, though: instead, take a look at some of the reviews.

I blog for the joy of it but write to pay the rent (as well as to buy the occasional lithograph). You can support both causes by giving The Skeptic for Christmas, or buying a copy for yourself if you don’t already own one.

To purchase the paperback, click here.

To purchase the hardcover edition, click here.

Forgive me for being a nuisance, but a boy must peddle his book. We return you now to our regularly scheduled blog.

I reviewed John Kani’s Nothing but the Truth
and the Builders Association’s Alladeen in today’s Wall Street Journal. About the first I had mixed feelings:

For playgoers who prefer politics to art, apartheid was a godsend. It inspired countless scripts that were black and white in every sense–you never had to ask who the bad guys were–and whose authors always threw in a last-act sermon to clear up any lingering doubts. Now that the good guys have won, though, it stands to reason that South Africa’s playwrights should finally have started working in shades of gray, and Lincoln Center Theater has proved the point by importing the Johannesburg production of John Kani’s “Nothing but the Truth,” an uneven but interesting new play that runs through Jan. 18 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater….

“Nothing but the Truth” is a kitchen-sink drama (literally–Sarah Roberts made sure to include one in her ultra-naturalistic set) whose characters are all citizens of Clich

This week’s New York Observer reveals almost more than I wanted to know about Mr. Personality:

We can help ID him only partly: Although Mr. TMFTML was gallant enough to speak to The Observer by phone, he would not disclose his name. This much can be ascertained: His nom de guerre is taken from the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah.” He is 31. He lives in Manhattan. He is married. His occupation–which he refers to only as “corporate”–remains cloaked in mystery. He was born in New York City, and has lived here ever since. He does not travel in “media circles,” a phrase he would no doubt gag over, but he admits to having once met Dale Peck, who “made fun of” his clothing.

Sounds like a lot of disinformation to me. Except for maybe the Dale Peck part.