Hard Times?

Yesterday’s announcement from the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera that they would be suspending their 2009-2010 opera season was a local reminder of the general turmoil swirling around arts organizations everywhere on a far too regular basis as of late.

Of obvious mention is the case of the New York City Opera. Gerard Mortier, the Flemish general director of the Opéra National de Paris, was to take over as General Director of the New York City Opera. There had been grand promises of revolutionizing New York’s opera scene, not the least of which was the final shove to get long-desired renovations underway of the acoustic black hole that is the New York State Theatre in Lincoln Center. With the theatre closed, the company was relegated to biding their time this season with concerts scattered around New York City and a concert performance of Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra at Carnegie Hall.

Such a move, although unquestionably necessary, irrevocably diluted the company’s physical and financial inertia that was shaky at best. Promises of $60 million for the first year of productions dissolved with the announcement that fundraising had fallen drastically short. And with only as much as $36 million being available, Mortier announced that he could not operate under those financial constraints. While the situation is somewhat more complex—it was discovered that Mortier and Nike Wagner, Richard Wagner's great-granddaughter, had put forward plans to run the Bayreuth Festival—this leaves New York City Opera in the worst of all positions and makes impossible their dream of competing with the Met across the plaza.

While Mortier’s lack of true commitment is now painfully obvious, adventurous opera-goers were sighing about what could have been. Mortier had already commissioned for the company an opera by Charles Wuorinen based on Brokeback Mountain and one by Philip Glass on Walt Disney. In addition, Mortier was pushing a revival of Glass’s Einstein on the Beach and a first-ever staging of Messiaen's St. Francois d'Assise.

The disappointments had begun to pile up. Opera Pacific’s board of directors cancelled the remainder of its 2008-2009 season (Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Grapes of Wrath and Salome) citing “the downturn in contributions to the organization that is a direct reflection of the challenging financial times the world is facing.”

Hopefully, the opera and music world can ride out the storm without the wolves taking any more victims.