The Brooklyn Rail

Opera began as entertainment for the aristocracy, of course, but the general, gradual, and fitful democratization of Western society over the past three hundred years has also reached it. And not always subtly: Ludwig van Beethoven was a subversive and Fidelio is about rescuing a political prisoner, Giuseppe Verdi was an important political leader in the democratization and unification of Italy (Walt Whitman loved Verdi). Is it possible for opera to be fully democratic, fully American in spirit and values? The answer in this moment is: only with difficulty.

When Metropolitan Opera general director Peter Gelb stepped out on stage before the season opening premiere of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay to proclaim that the Met was dedicated to freedom of artistic expression, he likely never thought that he would be showing himself an utter cynic. Give him the benefit of the doubt for his sincerity in the moment, which was buttressed by his complete miscalculation in then bringing out Senator Charles Schumer, who was booed and jeered by many in the audience who yelled at him to “endorse Mamdani” and “do something” as he harangued the crowd, voice breaking in anger, by taking credit for 2020 legislation that addressed the COVID pandemic, and name-dropped Jimmy Kimmel.

This was September 21. On September 3, the Met announced it had signed a memo of understanding with the theocratic monarchy of Saudi Arabia. The Met will, for a period of five winters, become the resident company at the Royal Diriyah Opera House. They will perform fully staged operas, and “provide training to aspiring Saudi opera singers, composers, directors, designers, theater artisans, and technicians. Aspects of the collaboration will also include the commissioning of a new opera.” The Diriyah Opera House, designed by the Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta, is scheduled to open in 2028. Human Rights Watch has described how slavery and forced labor are standard in Saudi Arabia’s government construction projects, and there’s no reason to think that this is somehow exempt.

Gelb did this for the money. He’s mismanaged the Met’s fundraising and programing and has had to sell items from its collection, use its Marc Chagall murals as collateral, and dip into its endowment. The house needs cash. His position—he is paid seven figures at a non-profit—means he likely only spends time around people with a lot of money, and so only sees that people with money exist—no one else. The feeling opening night was that he and Schumer, imaging only the rich, never knew there might be patrons who weren’t sitting in boxes or snagged 25 dollar rush tickets, who were there for the anti-fascist opera and not for the gala celebration of wealth and privilege. That cheaper seats might be available because of poor ticket sales—and the openings of Turandot and Don Giovanni later that week had only about three-quarters attendance—is something Gelb has blamed on Donald Trump’s presidency, itself doubtlessly funded in part by many of the same people who pay for Met boxes and are invited to the galas.

The difference between Gelb and comedian Tim Dillon, who was dropped from the Riyadh Comedy Festival after telling his audience “I am doing this because they’re paying me a large sum of money. They’re paying enough money to look the other way,” is that Gelb has kept his mouth shut. But what artistic freedom will the Met have via its new deal? Can it stage Aida? Don Giovanni or Le Nozze di Figaro? Fidelio? Porgy and Bess? Kavalier & Clay? An opera season without slavery, adultery, undermining aristocrats, and striving for political freedom leaves, well, not much. An opera season where non-heteronormative performers aren’t welcome leaves, well, not much.

A couple weekends before the Met opened, Roulette and Performing Artservices brought the “new band” of performers on stage for Robert Ashley’s Celestial Excursions. Ashley is more right for our time than he’s ever been. His method of intoned, sometimes sing-song monologues and conversations—tightly bound to time and a precise harmonic and timbral range—has always been contemporary. Ashley thought his work would be ideal for television, and he was right, because the static and intimate stagings present his dramas in a similar way to news, and even soap operas. And two decades of podcasts, of people walking around listening to murmuring in their ears, has created the sensibility for the ASMR-like enthrallment of Ashley’s means.

This is not just democratic in artistic terms, but a literal means of mass culture. Ashley’s work is of-the-world in profound ways; opera in Saudi Arabia means stories of kings and queens performed for an audience of kings and queens, Ashley at Roulette means stories about the people who booed Schumer performed for an audience of people who would boo Schumer. His subjects are often people at the margins of society, and Celestial Excursions is the stream-of-consciousness voices of the elderly. Ashley wrote in his introduction:

The fear is … we will hang on in the endurance trials of old age, forever rehearsing in the early morning twilight, fortified by a few hours of faulty sleep, the plot or why there is no plot, the explanations, the why, the lists, the old grievances never to be settled now, the stories never told or passed on, the interruptions, the terrifying proportions, everything larger than it is known to be, distorted in the mirror, and again and again … Old people are special because they have no future.

That’s not despair, that’s sympathy. In three parts, this opera dips into personal statements (“songs”), conversations at an assisted living facility, and reminiscences—including one about St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith. Everyday voices Brian McCorkle, Gelsey Bell, Kayleigh Butcher, Paul Pinto, and Mario Diaz-Moresco are on stage, and the stalwart Tom Hamilton is directing the electronic music bed and live mix.

Reviews are irrelevant to Ashley’s operas. Either you accept their humanity or you don’t. Either you resist his method because it’s not part of the mainstream tradition or you don’t. Either you listen or you don’t. His work is not technically difficult to perform, like “Der Hölle Rache” from Die Zauberflöte, but the discipline is so different from the norm that it takes time to master it, even as almost everyone could voice it. That is this handful of artists who have put in the time to understand Ashley. Producing his work is relatively cheap—the salary for one standard leading role would bankroll many performances—but there are few right now who can perform it.

That, however, means Celestial Excursions—and every other Ashley production this new generation of musicians mounts—was superb in the way opera should be: mesmerizing, transporting, moving. Pace is controlled by the music, the performers fit their delivery inside with patience, ease, and grace. There was wit, empathy, the force of characterization. There was us, in the cheap seats, there because we want to listen and know.

It's an odd paradox when an aria can, in practice, be more common than hearing Mario Diaz-Moresco narrate a disturbing nightmare, characters muse that Samuel Beckett must have eaten a baguette before he wrote in French, or Brian McCorkle mention that “Subaru” means “Pleiades” in Japanese. It’s often easier to be impressed by money and pageantry than a happenstance conversation in a bar. But it makes poetic sense: hierarchies, authoritarianism, and fascism are easy; a lot of people would rather have a boss, know their place, and be told what to do. Democracy is hard: it takes values, patience, endurance, constant work. It takes listening. But anything of beauty is like that.