#but pivoting towards contemporary works b/c your throwing everything behind them worked (shocker) risks abandoning the form’s identity

[reggiecristal]

#reggie speaks #like at this point we’re just beating the art form’s corpse #i get wanting to work with a living composer #but the vocal culture of opera is maintained by its core repertoire #it’s not possible to cultivate an operatic voice without the hand of bel canto—the notion of it and the repertoire associated with it #guiding and building voices so that the singer is empowered to tackle any rep they choose #if you can’t put butts in seats for classics maybe you’re not promoting them well #but pivoting towards contemporary works b/c your throwing everything behind them worked (shocker) risks abandoning the form’s identity #and effectively delegates singers to the role of pawns—few contemporary works showcase voices to their fullest extent #‘the hours’ sold well b/c it was headed by three divas—actual stars w/ experience and renown coming together like never before #but renee and joyce wouldn’t be shit w/o mozart strauss and rossini #those composers will be the ones to appear in their obituaries #they’re what made them household names and it was possible b/c the roles showcase the better parts of their vocalism #what does heggie do? other than write listenable non-starters to be performed in conservatories and regional theaters #this move is less about the art form’s evolution and more about how it can be twisted for profit #its spirit being marred matters not if you rig the grammys so you can stack them for better marketing advantage #that your singers have no power and burn out and discarded in less than a decade matters not #and this also absolves the Met of having to fill dramatic roles which can barely be sung anymore #simply write music for smaller voices #and never question why dramatic ones aren’t emerging or why your lyric voices burn out so quickly #god i want peter dissolved in a vat of acid #a record exec being the head of the country’s largest operatic institution was a shit move from the start #and this’ll be his legacy: killing the traditions that have kept the art form extant for hundreds of years for the benefit of his #administration and its allies #how very much like us as a nation and culture