Lyric Opera to staff: Sign new deals or face sack

Sociologist from Alabama says:

This Chicago story is yet another tragic instalment in the slow but sure demise of America’s classical music and opera performing arts institutions. It is times like these that the U.S. performing arts business model shows its weakness and its being an unsustainable model for the future.

Leaving the arts, like opera and classical music, to the private sector, as is the case in the United States, making them nearly totally dependent on private and corporate donors, is a model that can only work when economic times are good and when there is a certainty that the private and corporate sector see the need for European/white origin performing arts in the community and when a projection shows that those two lifeline groups will increase their interest over the coming years. Sadly, none of these criteria are the case today and the interest in classical music and opera by the private and corporate community is only declining, due to demographics and cultural identity. The COVID crisis has only accelerated the demise of classical music and opera in the U.S., a demise that has long been underway, but will now, because of this crisis, move into a state of being unsustainable and I fear that most of the orchestras and operas in the United States will not be able to continue and most will cease to exist within the next five to eight years.

Why? When a society chooses to leave the funding of an arts institution in private hands, it will only survive when the economy thrives and most importantly, when that activity is deemed of high interest and can attract an ever-growing attendance. It must also be felt to be an essential part of the donors’ own personal cultural heritage. With changing demographics in the United States, opera, for example, will not be of interest to a larger and larger percentage of the U.S. population, itself no longer based on white European immigration and their descendants. Opera and classical music only got support in the U.S. when the majority of immigrants to the young country were of European origin, their wanting to bring a piece of Europe with them to their new homeland. Now, when most immigrants and more and more of the U.S. population are not of European origin, why would those people suddenly support, in large numbers, opera and European classical music, when they themselves don’t feel any type of affinity with that art form? They may like it, they may even listen to it occasionally, but it is highly unlikely that they will invest in it in the way that the first and second generation European Americans did in the 1920’s, 30’s, 40’s and 50’s….

So, with that well-documented shift in U.S. demographics, it is only clear and obvious that interest in classical music and opera will continue to decline and eventually be a “museum piece” and not an active enterprise requiring funding in the millions of dollars to keep it operating throughout the year. The only way to save these orchestras and operas going forward would be for support from the government. There again, why would a third generation American politician or corporate chairman, who is of Haitian or Chinese origin feel any sense of duty to keep alive an art form that is so clearly identified and connected with European culture and European languages? It should be a no brainer and obvious to all, but sadly it is not and they plod on, believing that they are immortal institutions, paying their CEO’s seven figure salaries and not seeing that the party was over probably already in the 1970’s.

I fear that even a legendary institution like the Chicago Lyric Opera will either not be around in 5 years or it will be reduced to a mere shadow of what it once was, with an ever dwindling audience and private and corporate donor base, alongside a government that traditionally never was very interested in the arts or its survival. It is interesting that in the current presidential campaign in the United States you never will hear, not even once, any comment about the arts sector, about its importance to the education and well-being of the society, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Compare that to Europe, where the preservation of orchestras and operas is seen as a national responsibility, as it forms and is part of the national identity, unlike in the United States where it was only transplanted to the country by the newly arrived immigrants and then supported by their children and grandchildren. Now, those same families no longer even feel that connection to their European cultural roots and they would be far more interested in supporting a local football or baseball team, or the local hospital, than an opera company burning through millions of dollars to produce a few productions every season for an ever smaller audience. It is all a question of identity and affiliation and in the United States today the identity has shifted to something that is no longer Euro-centric and that explains why U.S. operas and symphony orchestras will slowly disappear and fade into the past immigrant history of the country. It is all very sad, for those of us who appreciate it and want it to survive, but it will go ignored by the vast majority of current U.S. citizens, politicians and corporate leaders. It is the end of an era and the current COVID crisis just got us to that place faster than it would have happened in more normal times.

Opera lover says:

It is my understanding that the orchestra is in arbitration. The picture of the striking musicians is misleading. When was it taken?