NPR station refuses to air Metropolitan Opera

NPR recently reported that an affiliate radio station considered not airing seven different broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera this season. The NPR report made sure to recognize the ethnic backgrounds of some of the composers with what appears to be an attempt to paint this as a racial issue. It was not.

The operas that aren’t being aired in North Carolina are all 21st-century operas except for Florencia en el Amazonas, composed by Daniel Catan in 1996. The issue is the content of the operas in question. They are modernist attempts at opera that happen to be composed by individuals of varying ethnic backgrounds. The ethnicity of the composer has little to do with the quality of the compositions. However, the ideological background of the composers has everything to do with it.

Modern composers feel compelled to use profanity, graphically depict rape, and consistently eschew any sense of melody based on an ideology that shuns the traditional values of opera. Generally, that ideology could be called post-modernism. As an opera fan, I consider these compositions to be something other than opera.

The traditional values of opera are succinctly expressed by the big four—freedom, beauty, truth, and love. A fifth would be redemption. Sometimes the plot of an opera is about freedom being denied a character as is the case in Carmen. Sometimes the opera is about the destruction of love as in Madama Butterfly. The through line in all great operas is truth and beauty. No one can claim that a great opera such as Rigoletto is untruthful. No one can claim that an opera that contains tragedy, such as La Traviata is not beautiful. Not every opera achieves redemption for its characters but redemption is the aim of every opera by Richard Wagner.

Some of the operas in question are about redemption. Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking is most decidedly about redemption. However, The Metropolitan Opera website has the following warning in the description of the opera. “Content Advisory: Dead Man Walking contains a depiction of a rape and murder, as well as other adult themes and strong language.”

Note how “coarse language” has been changed to “strong language” in this content advisory. Interestingly, every composer of opera prior to World War II managed to get their point across without using coarse language.

Now, I cuss all the time but I do it within the appropriate context. You might observe the lack of f-bombs in this column. Trust me, they are lurking beneath each and every sentence when it comes to modern opera but the context restrains my coarser inclinations. Appropriate restraint is becoming a rare commodity in our popular culture and opera, ever striving for a misguided sense of relevance, is following suit.

Of course, the decision to withhold these opera broadcasts was met with a torrent of vitriol from the artistically enlightened via the platform formerly known as Twitter. Oh, what I would give for an ounce of restraint from those enlightened sages of post-modernism.