2004 Director's Meeting
Part 1: Copyright
Part II: Funding
Part III: Diversity

Part III: Diversity

1. Diversity in Performers: Including minorities in productions recieved universal approval, while,discrimination based on looks (especially size) was disapproved by everyone present
Jordan Popkin (Cape Cod Opera): I’d like to know why we don’t have more ethnic minorities participating in opera. I felt so good about the fact that we had three black performers in our “Cavalaria Rusticanna.” They were superb, that’s why they were there, not because they were black. George, do we get a lot of diversity in the auditions?
George Arthur (Cape Cod Opera): : Yes, we get a lot of diversity. We had diversity in terms of people, location, race.... even Rumanian singers...
Kathryne Jennings (Opera Providence): I find the opposite. I am constantly searching for really good quality singers of diversity. I don’t find as many people of color as I’d like to see. They aren’t attending auditions.
Stephen Marc Beaudoin (The Vox Consort): It’s universally acceptable, and even encouraged, to advertise that one’s open to, and looking for, minority singers. For instance, The Theater Offensive advertises that they are actively looking for actors of color, or ethnic minorities...
Kathryne Jennings (Opera Providence): This is very important to me.
Scott Brumit (Longwood Opera): The Wheelock College Theater Company is noted through-out the country as being one of the most diverse equity companies. They are not only diverse in race and gender, but also in age. They will put a six year old child in an adult role and visa versa. They never have any trouble finding diversity.
David Walther (The Acting Singers Project): I was wondering how many people would be willing to hire someone who was, say 99 years old. One of the best basses I ever heard was on television, a 90 years old Russian, named Mark Reisen. His voice was in perfect condition. It was a couple of years ago, so he may be dead. (laughter). He had trouble walking, and that gets into staging issues. But would any of you hire someone in a wheel chair?
Christina Puntoni (Lowell Opera): We have a member who is in a wheel chair.
DW: Good for you. What about a 400 pound Mimi? Bad choice of roles, perhaps, considering how she died. Would you hire someone whose anorexic. It’s in our mission statement that we have to overlook these things.
JP: We have an octogenerian woman in our chorus.
DW: Would you cast her in a main roll?
JP: Yes, we would.
DW: Now it all depends on the voice.
Andrew Hubbard (Acting Singers Project): Divas Wobble but they don’t fall down! (Laughter!)
SB: It should always depend on the voice.
DW: This gets into the question: “How to maintain high standards on a low budget.”
GA: That’s a question in any business management situation, in which one has to be hard and tough on contracts with the artistic staff, and one has to make sure that the director doesn’t run off into left field (this can be a problem). We have a scenes concert coming up, but with short time and money, we have to convince people to limit sets to backdrops, lights and a few pieces of stage furniture. Even the Met had “Ariadne auf Naxos” with a single pyramid center stage. (laughter).
JP: The success of our recent productions has been primarily due to the voices. We had mostly young voices. Ray Bowers. was probably the oldest. We were very fortunate to get him. We were able to back him up with a Santuzza from Chicago, who was just unbelievable, and two African-American bass-baritones who were just incredible.
KJ: This was on the front page of The Arts section of The Providence Journal. (She holds up newspaper about one of the top sopranos in the world, Deborah Voight, being fired from The Royal Opera House because she didn’t fit into the evening dress that the director wanted her to wear.) This is about just what you’ve been talking about: That the voices where what what made for the success of your show. So many of these productions are calling for a certain look. Opera is the last bastion of art that is succumbing to lookism.
DW: Is it Ben Hepner too, or is it just Deborah Voight (and Jane)?
Everyone: It’s just the women.... it is sexism...
Dirk Hillyer (Hillyer Festival Orchestra ): I don’t want to rub people the wrong way, but one needs to capitulate to the notion of self-sort of realism because that’s what the younger generation wants. So the soprano has to wear a slinky gown for Ariadne. I’m not saying they should have fired Deborah. I’m just saying that we have to see both sides of the question. A director reserves the right to be more realistic.
SB: The audience is so inundated with television, and sit coms with a plethora of gorgeous anorexic people. It’s what they want to see, instead of fat people screaming in a language that they don’t understand. In the summer, we break away from the opera mold and do a lot of G & S, and Broadway. We do a lot of surveys. We ask the Broadway people why they came and the response was: “We knew that we wouldn’t hear fat people screaming at each other.” That’s what people think opera is and they’ll have nothing to do with it.

2. Finding New Audiences: More young and middle aged audiences; Cross over audiences: G & S and Broadway Music Theater; Translations into English and other languages; More Social Relevance and Newer Operas
GA: I am surprised that opera isn’t doing better. I look out at our audiences and see only people who are age 55 years and older. There is a complete loss of ages 28-55.
Beth MacLeod (Opera by the Bay): (to GA) At your Cav & Pag I think I was the youngest person in the audience. (Ms. MacLeod is actually in that lost age group).
SMB: It depends where one is and what repertoire one is presenting.
SB: We’ve been here, at Christ Chruch in Needham, for 14 years, and had huge audiences; but they’ve been dwindling since the ‘90s; and they’re not being replaced.
CP: We’ve seen a growth in those middle ages, because we’ve deliberately gone after them by recruiting the high school students. The parents are used to paying $400 or $500 for a training program, so they are thrilled that their children are getting a $25 check and it’s not costing them anything. The parents and grandparents are coming to see their teenagers perform. The adults are finding that a lot of their peers are also open to the art, so they are also are bringing thier friends. We are seeing a small but noticable growth in attendance. We give coupons with student tickets that allows them to bring an accompanying adult for free.
Judy Lamoine (Lowell Opera): We just attended a city wide parents’ council and we’re going to a YMCA in April. We perform in a local school, and get audiences of about 150.
KJ: We give concerts that incorporate opera, Broadway and operetta; and with a 400 seats we are filling the house, but they are NOT going to the grand opera productions. The next show we are putting on is called “Opera to Broadway: Bel Canto to Con Belto.” It will show how opera has influenced music theater. There will be excerpts from “Boheme” and “Rent.” “Madame Butterfly” and “Miss Saigon” “Romeo and Juliet” and “West Side Story.” I have often heard people say: “I love opera... I love “The Phantom of The Opera.” We will show that this is really music theater, where as, contrary to common belief “Porgy and Bess” is an opera.
SB: We’re doing the same thing in June: A tribute to Bernstein. The first half is from his light music theater, including “Candide” and “West Side Story” and the second half is a fully staged rendition of “Trouble in Tahiti.” Our summer concert is “Opera meets Broadway.” We’re doing the same thing: we’re trying to get that Broadway gang interested in coming to our operas. We get 650 on a Broadway night and 200 for opera scenes. How do we DRAG them in?
KJ: Do you find that they will go to opera? They haven’t with us.
SB: We’ve had 27,000 people show at Christ Chruch since we started performing here 14 years ago. Quite a large number of people over the years...
KJ: Yes!
SB: And the majority have not come to the operas.
WS: How many operas, and how many summer concerts do you present?
SB: We do 8-9 summer concerts, and two major productions.
DW: When did Longwood Opera first perform?
SB: Longwood Opera started performing at First Baptist Church in Melrose in 1986. In those early days we did nothing in the summer.
Juiliet Cunningham (Janus Opera Company): So much of it is that people are not exposed to music in the schools.
All: Yes!
JC: We were staging Act II of “Die “Fledermaus” as “Cinderella at The Ball.”
KJ: Oh, that’s nice.
JC: We gave out comps and at the last minute to a women wanted to bring her two teenagers; now she is the divorced wife of a British jazz performer, so the kids had been exposed to jazz. They had also heard the music of their contemporaries. They had never heard classical music, and they were blown away. They loved it.
SMB: I wonder if that has to do with the context of the production. I just sang in Opera Boston’s “Nixon in China.” It was a HUGE, huge success. I am wondering if it had to do with young people not wanting to listen to “Cav/Pag” or “Don Giovanni” again and again.
SB: Many of them haven’t heard it the first time.
SMB: ... Perhaps because it’s in a foreign language and 300 years old. They might rather go to something in English with more accessible staging.
JP: We have an older population on the Cape. We are always wondering how far we can go away from the set traditions. What about trying to interest other cultural minorities? We have a large Brazilian population on The Cape. Maybe we need to find a Portuguese translation of “The Medium.”
SB: They exist, I’m sure. Menotti has a Spanish version of “The Telephone.” I did it years ago with Marguerite Ruffino’s organization. I may still have the Spanish text.
SMB: That’s what “Carmen on The Common did.” They had programs in many different languages, and in Braille. People got really excited about it.
SB: One has to remember that this all costs money.
KJ: What is the policy that all of you have about original language versus English?
SB: We do everything in English, and we have done so, since Longwood started performing 18 years ago.
JC: Janus Opera has never done a full production in a foreign language.
GA: I think it depends on the work. We did concert versions of “Figaro” and “Fledermaus” in English. That’s almost a no brainer. I’m just about the oldest guy in the room, so it’s sometimes painful to me: it’s bad enough to see “La Forze del Destino” in German; I’d rather see it in English. I grew up on the original language and I like it. Some things, like “Flute,” do lend themselves to an English translation.
SB: It depends on the work and what people get used to.
JC: It’s not just what the audience can handle; but also what the performers are able to do. My biggest problem with performers is that they are not willing to commit to ACTING, and if they can’t do it in English, then how are they going to do it in a foreign language? At audition calls one finds lots of people who look wonderful and have nicely trained voices, but they’ve forgotten why they want to sing.
Philip Lauriat (Granite State Opera): A lot depends on the director.
JC: We’re doing “Gianni Schicci”  and ‘Suor Angelica” in Italian. But the translation in the score leaves a lot to be desired. I’m not clever enough to write in all of the rhymes. I do believe in the interlocking value of the poetic form and the musical form. What I DO manage to do is to get all of the proper names in the right places, and to get the text to say what the Italian says as much as possible,
so that if they ever do get a chance to sing these pieces in Italian somewhere else, they will be able to breathe in the same places and accent in the same way.
GA: One can go to a Broadway show, with American singers and not understand a single word. I do a lot of lecturing on opera to both young and old people, and I believe that the personal attraction of opera to me (now I’m talking about 19th century opera) is that one understands the story, and lets the music flow over one.