{"id":3331,"date":"2024-11-22T00:15:20","date_gmt":"2024-11-22T05:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3331"},"modified":"2024-11-28T03:33:48","modified_gmt":"2024-11-28T08:33:48","slug":"lawrence-tibbett-and-fate-of-american-opera-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2024\/11\/lawrence-tibbett-and-fate-of-american-opera-today.html","title":{"rendered":"Lawrence Tibbett and the Fate of American Opera Today"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Singing Black” — Tibbett in “The Emperor Jones” at the Met (1933)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Today\u2019s online edition of \u201cThe American Scholar\u201d carries my essay on Lawrence Tibbett and how he “prophesied today’s Metropolitan Opera crisis.” You can read it<\/em> here<\/a>. An extract follows:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent New York Times<\/em> \u201cguest essay,\u201d Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera\u2019s embattled general manager, expresses the na\u00efve hope that \u201cnew operas by living composers\u201d can make opera \u201cnew again.\u201d And he blames critics for being \u201cnegative or at times dismissive.\u201d In fact, recent Met seasons have highlighted operas in English composed by Americans. But they\u2019re all recent (the Met still ignores Marc Blitzstein\u2019s Regina<\/em> [1948], arguably the grandest American opera after Porgy and Bess<\/em>) and debatable in merit. Works like Terence Blanchard\u2019s Champion<\/em> and The Fire Shut Up in My Bones<\/em>, however touted today, will not endure: their craftmanship is makeshift; there is no lineage at hand. And the standard repertoire is increasingly hard to cast with singers capable of projecting musical drama into a 3,850-seat house. In fact, the vast Met auditorium is today an albatross, an emblem of financial duress and artistic crisis.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of all the many might-have-beens, among the most tantalizing involves Lawrence Tibbett, who seemed a candidate to take over the Met in 1950 \u2013 the year an Austrian, Rudolf Bing, was appointed general manager. Though retired from the stage, Tibbett was still widely famous, arguably the foremost singing actor ever produced in the US. As a Verdi baritone, he had more than held his own with pre-eminent Italians. He had starred in Hollywood and on commercial radio, had sung many dozens of recitals annually in cities of every size.  American-born, American-made, he embodied a pioneer archetype. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, no less than Henry Krehbiel [who wrote that opera in the US would remain \u201cexperimental\u201d unless and until American works were promoted and embraced], Tibbett was prophetic. He declared opera in America \u201cin grave danger,\u201d entrapped by a \u201cstar system\u201d enforced by a social elite. He advocated American opera and opera in English. He urged the substitution of smaller auditoriums, shedding the glamour of opera houses in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco far exceeding in scale European norms. He resisted touring abroad or Italianizing his name. He called for financial incentives for American opera composers. He wrote that \u201cthe whole structure of opera must by Americanized if Americans are to support it in the long run.\u201d Ignoring a critical consensus marginalizing George Gershwin as a dilettante, the claimed that Rhapsody in Blue<\/em> surpassed \u201cin real emotional musical quality half of the arias of standard operatic composers whose works are the backbone of every Metropolitan season.\u201d Singing Gershwin and Cole Porter, Sigmund Romberg and Jerome Kern, singing Lieder in English, he embodied a democratic range of style and repertoire decades ahead of the game. A voluble public advocate, he thundered: \u201cBe yourself! Stop posing! Appreciate the things that lie at your doorstep!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To access an NPR \u201cMore than Music\u201d episode about Lawrence Tibbett, American opera, and \u201csinging Black,\u201d click here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s online edition of \u201cThe American Scholar\u201d carries my essay on Lawrence Tibbett and how he “prophesied today’s Metropolitan Opera crisis.” You can read it here. An extract follows: In a recent New York Times \u201cguest essay,\u201d Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera\u2019s embattled general manager, expresses the na\u00efve hope that \u201cnew operas by living composers\u201d can make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-RJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3331"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3337,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3331\/revisions\/3337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}