Schadenfreude

I know it's wrong to take pleasure from the pain of others (especially when "others" are an opera company which employs several of one's friends,) but something about the mini-firestorm that's been enveloping the Metropolitan Opera this week has been highly entertaining to me.

At the center of the controversy is a brand spanking new production of Tosca that America's premiere opera company has chosen to open its season. Opera audiences do not, on the whole, tend to be big fans of change, so it's always risky to replace a well-worn production with something new and innovative. (Opera audiences also tend to be far more willing to make their displeasure known immediately than the audiences we see at Orchestra Hall. I attended a perfectly decent production of Eugene Onegin at the Vienna State Opera last winter at which the director and set designer were roundly booed during the curtain call.)

Still, music critics today are a gentle lot, on the whole, and it's relatively rare that you read a truly blistering review. So I can only imagine that the Met's new Tosca must have indeed laid quite an egg last week to inspire this absolute demolition by the estimable Alex Ross at The New Yorker:

"It takes a certain effort to suck the life out of Tosca... [Director Luc Bondy] delivered an uneven, muddled, weirdly dull production that interferes fatally with the working of Puccini’s perfect contraption. Karita Mattila was miscast in the title role. No one else sang with particular distinction. By the end of opening night, [Met Opera General Manager Peter] Gelb had on his hands a full-blown fiasco, with boos resounding from the orchestra seats, the upper galleries, and even the plaza outside, where people had watched on a screen for free... While there is nobility in an ambitious failure, there is no glory in ineptitude."

Dude. That is a serious takedown. But Ross sees a bright side in the rare Met misfire, too...

"Opera being a delightfully paradoxical medium, this whole debacle left me in an upbeat mood. The Met is refusing to repeat itself and is seeking, by trial and error, a new theatrical identity... The audience was, at least, paying attention. If I’m not mistaken, someone shouted “Vergogna!”—“Shame!”—when the production team shuffled onstage to face the firing squad. I doubt that mass revulsion is part of Gelb’s marketing plan, but a scandal has its uses: the Met made the evening news."

Good point, and one that further underscores the different cultural positions occupied by orchestras and opera companies in America today. Can you imagine the New York Philharmonic being booed at Lincoln Center? And even if you can, can you imagine any media entity beyond the arts press caring about it?

Somewhere along the way, we seem to have decided that opera companies are populist and orchestras are elitist. (Which is odd, since the trappings of each experience would suggest exactly the opposite to me.) That's a problem for those of us in orchestras, of course, but I'll admit - there are times when it's nice to be ignored. I'm guessing the Met would take some of that treatment right now...