Jamie Barton: I’m done with the patriarchy
NewsTwo quotes from the US mezzo’s interview with Erica Jeal in the Guardian:
‘I’ve spent a lot of years doing roles where I’m the third person in a love triangle, which is always perpetuated by the man, and the lead soprano almost always has to kill herself in order to be ‘redeemed’, and those are stories that are 1,000% created by the patriarchy, and I’m not interested in them any more. …
‘I’ve been saying for so long: ‘Can I please do an Orfeo where it’s a lesbian love story? Can we do a Don Carlo where Eboli or Rodrigo are queer?’
Read on here.
Can she please shut up. If she doesn’t like the repertoire, she doesn’t have to sing it – go stack shelves at Walmart or somewhere no one will care if you have an opinion on your own world view.
Amen!
That…is what she’s saying. She doesn’t like the repertoire, and she doesn’t want to sing it. Why don’t you try reading the article?
Selected quote from the article: “What I do see already happening, and am really interested in being a part of, is telling new stories that highlight perspectives that haven’t been highlighted before. You’re seeing all sort of stories being written about life right now, and I love that. This is such a necessary part of the way forward, one that opens the doors to more people.”
No problem with that. Some problem with heterosexual love stories — on which, physically, the turning of the world rotates — have to be turned into gay ones (or some other new variant) for the sake of “inclusivity.”
‘fraid Romeo and Juliet would not work for me unless it was about a boy and a girl. That’s not because I am an exclusivist. It’s because I have read, written about and understood the source material.
Let people write about the sexual conurbations they like. And try offering some of the respect they demand for other, older forms. What’s next, a gay Don Giovanni? (I assume I am not allowed to use “queer”).
At least the trannies are getting a nod in the new West Side Story.
If people don’t like the plot of an old opera, they should write their own opera with their own plot, and not toy with existing art works. If you don’t like the way the Mona Lisa is dressed, paint your own painting, but don’t overpaint the original. If you don’t like Saint Peter’s basilica, don’t break it down but build your own basilica. Etc. etc….
Behind this virtue flag waving lies a deep hatred of the authority of achievement, the wish to change it, to get it away because you don’t agree with its ‘message’. The result is throwing away the baby with the bath water.
Good points, in the first paragraph at least. Of course, it’s worth remembering that the original baby is unharmed by any of this fiddling-around.
I disagree with your view of the intentions ascribed in the 2nd paragraph, but whatever.
This isn’t ALL she’s saying. Why don’t you try reading the article? She also says ‘Can I please do an Orfeo where it’s a lesbian love story? Can we do a Don Carlo where Eboli or Rodrigo are queer?’ So yes, she basically doesn’t like the rep and wants to twist it to suit her own agenda. How is a lesbian Orfeo supported by the text and music, and how are a queer Eboli and Rodrigo supported by the text and music? Notice that Rodrigo is arguably the character who walks away with the popularity award in Don Carlo. She didn’t come up with the idea of making Le Grand Inquisiteur a queer character. Now I wonder why?
This is kindergarten. We adults are past the stage (pun intended) of attending performances because we need to identify ourselves with characters on stage. I’m not five years old, thank you very much.
You talk as if there’s a movement to ban all straight Ebolis, Orfeos, Romeos and Juliets. Come on. She’s talking about one production here and there. And if you think it doesn’t matter to you who the characters on stage are, ponder why you are so terrified of non-straight characters.
Gluck’s Orphée/Orfeo has been played by baritones, tenors, male altos, countertenors, and women contraltos/mezzos. Clearly that doesn’t prevent anyone from understanding the concept of love. So what is the problem?
You are putting words in my mouth. I didn’t talk like there’s a movement, etc, I talked about HER statements. Just HERS. I’m not terrified of non-straight characters, I say those operas aren’t about gender politics. Those operas have a narrative, and a message, that have nothing whatever in common with gender politics. She wants to make those operas about gender politics. I say she should respect the composer and the librettist. This is what decent professionals do, they respect the creators of the works that provide them with a living. The repertoire isn’t for grabs. If she wants to sing in an opera about gender politics, she should commission a new one.
You confuse love with gender politics. By the way, Orfeo isn’t primarily about love, it’s an allegory about temptation. To say Orfeo is primarily about love is like saying Scarpia’s main motivation is sex. It isn’t sex, it’s humiliation.
As to Eboli and Rodrigo, I suggest you read the libretto. People who understand Italian or French are going to have a good laugh and a loud boo at the stage director’s expense, should he or she be so incautious as to make them ‘queer’. But then, Americans don’t understand Italian or French.
This all sources in America, the most infantile nation on earth, home of the pretend culture (e.g. they pretend that if they do not offer sex education, kids will not have sex).
Unfortunately it has spread, like all too much from America, and found willing “victims” who never felt like victims before. (Not saying gays were not socially and legally victims of prejudice and unjust law for far too long, just that opera was never one of their oppressors).
I have no problem with gay, or any other, minority or even interest group offering their own stories. That new opera at the Met in September was pretty well received. But can’t people with agendas leave the old stories alone? I stopped watching the Geradine McEwan versions of Miss Marple after the first one, in large part because they turned a couple of heterosexual characters into gays for no other reason than to virtue signal.
I wish people would face facts. The majority of the world is heterosexual. That does not mean those of other dispositions should face any disadvantage now, and with the widespread legalisation of gay marriage, at least the law has caught up, and attitudes will, with familiarity.
And that acceptance has not always been there in the past, which is regrettable but true. Nonetheless, artists worked then. Is their work to be essentially dismantled, changed, just because someone operating long ago was not obsessing day and night with the plight of someone unlike himself?
Leave it alone, and get on with telling your own stories. Film and TV are getting it done. It’s a Sin was brilliant. There is room for some interpretation, even manipulation, in some work, but why should the essentials of a valued piece of art be changed to accommodate your agenda? Leave Orfeo alone. Yes, his music suits a contralto, but the tendency for a very long time has been to have a man in the role. It is an ancient myth. About a man and a woman. Get over it.
It’s true! I never felt oppressed before I read about all those letters. Now I’m a member of the qwerty support group & feel so much better, after becoming aware of my minority status.
Sally
She doesn’t want to sing it but we’ll see if she stands by her principles. Of course if she is coerced into doing so it will no doubt be another example of patriarchal oppression. How the virtuous do suffer.
She’s just another perpetually unhappy Democrat in dire need of psychiatric care.
It’s not her place to re-write history to suit her SJW narrative or serious personal insecurities. If she’s still upset with the repertoire as published after all these years, it’s time to stop willfully making money off of it like the capitalist she truly is. Make money off of music you like or have it written to suit your own needs.
Opera has enough problems without internal hatred for the art form.
Are you seriously implying that there are no Republican gays? (Or Conservative ones?). If you are not doing anything QUITE SO STUPID, how did the Democrats get into this.
On point. Barton (a white privileged leftist) gets tossed into the mentally off bin..
The US is all the worse for their hateful left wing insurgents who chose their own white-privileged savior above a diverse candidate pool of their own making. They can’t get on with each other as is reported by even CNN. Harris (who is not black) certainly wasn’t competent by leftists to lead. Her inept team of sjw girls just abandoned Harris to carry on in her feeble echo chamber of a mind. She and the Bidens don’t get on either.
November facts per CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/15/politics/kamala-harris-joe-biden-2024/index.html
December facts per CNN thus far
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/01/politics/symone-sanders-leaving-white-house-harris/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/12/04/kamala-harris-management-style-aides-leaving-pager-intv-ndwknd-vpx.cnn
With Fredo Cuomo suspended by his lefty network, it seems time to stop watching CNN as it is imploding on its own malice.
Predictably the Democrat occupants of the White House have proven themselves unfit by both mainstream news and their very own party. Poor college educated sjw’s we’re led on Biden then left to hang by Pelosi. Next month they’ll be required to start paying their enormous student loans with more mandates and lockdowns taking place without a pot to piss in living back at home armed with only vitriol. Tisk..tisk.
Ah, ok. As usual, all she comes up with is woke nonsense. Her community’s social acceptance would possibly be higher if they would write their own stories, libretti and operas, instead of imposing any ideas on the past, which cannot be changed anyway.
Yeah! We need to protect good, traditional, opera like Le Nozze di Figaro, where a woman plays a boy who is told to become a military man then dressed up as a girl while falling in love with all the women in the vicinity. You know, good old stories that do not play with gender norms whatsoever.
It’s not a woman playing a boy, it’s a woman singing the role of a very young male character. Such roles have high tessitura, too high for a tenor. Could be sung by a counter tenor if it makes you happy.
Well, no – it was written for a woman! It’s not as if Mozart didn’t know who he was writing for. And in this case, it wasn’t a man, wasn’t a haute-contre, wasn’t a castrato, wasn’t a young kid, wasn’t a disembodied pure voice – it was a woman, playing a boy.
Of course it was written for a woman. You seem to have the wrong idea about how business was run back then. It wasn’t up to the composer to select singers, the singers were imposed on him. Every opera house had a roster of singers for the season. New operas commissioned for the season had to be written for the singers the house had under contract. For Nozze, the Burgtheater cast Dorotea Bussani. The very same Burgtheater had offered Gluck a castrato in 1762 for Orfeo. The Paris opera had a tenor, so Gluck transposed Orfeo to haute-contre for the Paris premier. For La Clemenza di Tito a castrato was hired even before the composer and the librettist were hired, so Mozart wrote Sesto for a castrato. When La Fenice commissioned I Capuleti e i Montecchi from Bellini, they had Giuditta Grisi under contract, so Bellini composed Romeo for Grisi. Had La Fenice had Rubini under contract, Bellini would have written Romeo for a high tenor. At the time these roles were written, they weren’t about playing with gender norms, they were written to fit the singer the opera house imposed onto the composer. Now they still aren’t about playing with gender norms, they are about the type of voice that can cope with the range, tessitura, and agility demands.
No it couldn’t–the tessitura is too high for countertenors.
And since when does “a young male character” not mean “boy”? (Strictly speaking, of course, Cherubino is a sex-crazed teenager.)
Male sopranos can easily cover any soprano range:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izYzCvytrEA
Young man after puberty. Boy before.
adol = adult
esce = become
Yet she chose to pursue a career in opera, knowing all this.
Anyway, is someone forcing her to sing these roles?
She can write her own songs, and see if anyone comes to her concerts.
She is, in fact, doing that. Did you miss the part about touring with Jake Heggie (to sold out crowds, I might add)?
If the sold out crowds are like the person who allegedly wrote to her ‘I never thought that I would see a body like mine playing a role like that’, they are welcome to her, they don’t understand anything about music. What’s next? Messages à la ‘Wow I have a dress like that, thank you, oh thank you, I never thought I would see a dress like mine on stage’?
Claiming she’s ‘touching people with the classics’? Gimme a break. She’s touching immature people with identity issues masquerading as classics, not with the classics themselves. Those people don’t care about the classics and won’t know one if it were to bite them on their butt.
Actually, here’s the program from one of their concerts. Fairly matched mix of standard repertoire with Heggie and Price songs. So nothing out of the ordinary.
And yes, she does behave like a spoiled teenager.
Before we cancel patriarchy, let’s not forget it has produced almost everything of civilisation. In short, if we follow woke logic, civilisation IS patriarchy and the other way around.
But on a more serious note, if women had enjoyed the same liberties and chances since antiquity, it is very likely that the Enlightenment, the fridge, the vacuum cleaner, the computer and the electric tooth brush would have been invented equally by women and by gays, but less likely is that there would have been as much war and bloodlust and nazi burps, which are mainly male hormonal problems.
It may be of some interest to know that Wagner was of the opinion that most of the ills of the world came from insensitive, emotionally-underdeveloped men, and he thought that women were a species superior to men. He was such an admirer of the feminine, that he dressed as one most of his private time and made woman the central character of his operas. And let’s not forget that he and his work were saved from total bankruptcy by a gay king.
All well and good, but how does your comment relate to her advocating for a lesbian Orfeo and a queer Eboli or Rodrigo, which are not supported by the libretto? Diversion tactics?
No, this woman directs her efforts in a totally misconceived direction. The problem does not lie in the art works but in the world. To want to adapt the works to reform attempts in the world creates the woke nonsense. Wagner saw some of the world’s ills and created a new work (the Ring) to show this, and did not advocate to change existing works. This silly woman should look for composers who would write woke operas and then we could see how viable they are, as works of art.
You might want to choose your role models a bit more carefully next time, John, as Wagner was also a raging anti-semite, but I guess a person such as yourself would just write that off as a niggling personal shortcoming.
It may be important when it comes to considering him as a man. It has absolutely nothing to do with the MUSIC.
And I suspect he is more a famous anti-Semite than a raging one. I suspect that many other composers we discuss without any personal reference were as anti-Semitic as Wagner. I suspect they get played without question in Israel. They just did not happen to be personal favourites of YKW.
If you people weren’t so laughable, you’d just be sad. I’m not the one who brought up Wagner’s extra-musical peccadillos – that was John that opened that door; and if John believes Wagner’s personal eccentricities to be central to his MUSIC, then why not examine what other stimulus may contribute to the man’s psyche. The MET tried to play the game of separating James Levine, the man, from James Levine, the conductor, for more than three decades until external pressures made the practice unsavory, intolerable, and ultimately unprofitable, but not until then – funny that. If you people didn’t have double standards, you wouldn’t have any standards at all.
“I suspect that many other composers we discuss without any personal reference were as anti-Semitic as Wagner. I suspect they get played without question in Israel.”
You should see some of the stuff Liszt wrote about Jews. Makes Wagner look like a kid having a playground tantrum (admittedly not that hard to do).
She should start her own company? Lesbian Opera Theater has a nice ring to it.
She’s a real pain in the ass. Orfeo and Eboli are not lesbians. If you want to sing a lesbian role, have someone write one for you. She may be tired of the “patriarchy” but I’m tired of her constant whining.
Hey, I’ll say this for her, at least she knows how to generate headlines and get attention…she knows how to play the media game pretty well.
Trust me, she doe snot do it for headlines. She is a true believer of the church of woke.
Playing Eboli as queer would be a bit of a stretch given that she spends the entire opera pining after Carlo – Rodrigo makes more sense, and in fact that has been more or less done (it was heavily hinted at in the old ROH Luc Bondy production, and I’m sure it must have been made explicit in other productions by now).
It doesn’t make any “sense” to make Rodrigo gay. His sexual orientation is completely irrelevant to the the plot. To make him gay is just self-serving personal agenda. This is kindergarten. We adults are past the stage (pun intended) of attending performances because we need to identify ourselves with characters on stage. I’m not five years old, thank you very much.
Also, Rodrigo is arguably the character who walks away with the popularity award in Don Carlo. She didn’t come up with the idea of making Le Grand Inquisiteur a queer character. Now I wonder why?
Perhaps bc Le Grand Inquisiteur does not get to sing a (passionate) friendship duet with Don Carlo?
If you want to “queer” opera (which I don’t), then Rodrigo is not am implausible candidate to start with. And, as James already pointed out, it has been done. Regietheater has taken bigger leaps.
Nope, I don’t believe so. I believe she is after Rodrigo because he is the nice character, not because he has a duet with Don Carlos. It won’t do to make the baddie (Le Grand Inquisiteur) queer, wrong message to the masses.
She is so tedious. I know that artists crave attention, but she brings her neediness to a whole new level.
If Barton really wants to make a statement she can go back to her roots and sing Queer Bluegrass music. That would be different.
Might have to do a bit of running for the hills…
Looking at 4 days’ worth of likes vs dislikes, I think you might have been forgetting what site we’re on…
Real Headline: Mezzo, desperate for attention, uses woke buzzwords to mask the fact that she doesn’t like her own art form that much.
Nah, it’s just this climate of assertive victimology that we afflicted by. In her case “Pride.” Pity her “pride” does not run to the extent of bragging about capturing a major role in a major opera without having to wander down the side-road of the character not being gay. A serious actor would be justly proud if, as a straight, he sensitively and intelligently portrayed a gay (Hanks in Philadelphia? good enough for an Oscar, such as it is) or a gay man intelligently and sensitively played a straight (Rupert Everett in Dance With a Stranger).
They used to say there were no small parts, only small actors. Maybe we should consider there are no gay characters, just interesting characters and capable actors/singers.
Incidentally, she was disastrous when she sang Orfeo at the Met. Just saying…
Talk about snowflakes–all the whiners on here. Having heard Jamie Barton live several times, I’m a fan because she’s the real deal. She has a point whether you agree with it or not. And she’s talking about what’s right for HER, and what SHE would like to see happen. She’s allowed to have her own opinion.
Thank you for proving my point along with the other rational commenters ‘Herr Doktor’ (as in Mengele and Fauci).
This is merely HER (as in one of the only TWO sexes) psychological problem. It is something personal unto her and only a segment of society. It is clearly not “everybody’s problem” rooted to that portion of society who is insecure and projecting in order to induce a big tantrum.
Remember:
“You are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts!!”
– Hillary Rodham Clinton
Recent fact
https://www.axios.com/clinton-foundation-donations-plummet-87bc5cf3-4633-4544-a29d-3f84daa3be3f.html
Indeed, she is entitled to her opinion but as expressed here…. ‘and those are stories that are 1,000% created by the patriarchy, and I’m not interested in them any more’ clearly shows that she has a decision to make about whether she sings the roles as they were conceived or has them changed to allow her to deign to perform them.
Regie theater regularly deconstructs the repertory to make a largely political/aesthetic point which much of the core audience tolerate at best. Barton seems to want to go one step further by deconstructing the patriarchial nature of much of the repertory which begs the question does opera, and art generally, serve the audience or the practioner?And if the latter what happens when the audience just gets sick of the whole thing and stops attending?
She then has the purity she craves but no one to share it with but those who proselytize the passing modish moment.
The paradox of identity politics in re-imagining the classics is that the very act of inclusion is an act of simultaneous exclusion, of someone more queer than you, more oppressed than you, more excluded than you, who has a greater claim to grievance than you.
A Jamie Barton that sings a Lesbian Orpheus is a Jamie Barton that excludes a Trans Orpheus, a Black Orpheus, an Asian Orpheus, a Latinx Orpheus. So, shame on you Jamie Barton for monopolizing Orpheus for White American Quadragenarian Lesbians.
Now I think about it, I’m being excluded all the time as a PA. My typos are not acepted, my comentaries are rejected, my payrise requests ignored, my only outlet is SD when he’s not looking. There’s so much injustice in the world! You don’t need to be queer or take-on any of those letters to get suppressed!
Sally
And to add to the oppressions of classical opera, there is not a single work with a plot of a boy meets horse!
Why doesn’t she write her own libretto and produce it herself!
Actually, there exists a ‘modern opera’ with that unlikely plot:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=449551615242847
It’s Dutch, and represents the free spirit of the low lands.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209993/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl
Why must she twist the opera to serve her own agenda? Why can’t she respect the work the way it is written? She is here to serve the music, not the other way round …
All opera written before 2020 is Eurocentric, triggering, wounding, and privileged! Shut it all down!
I never ever imagined that an opera singer would ever be so senseless and so stupid, but even more so that somebody would publish such nonsense!!!! Is the Barbican presenting this lady on stage?! No wonder that 50% of the venue is not sold, why would such an average voice sell?
You cannot and should not change what geniuses (composers and librettists) wrote, just because you say so… she can compose her own “queer” operas… oh wait, she is not capable to do that!
Then to hear once again that black singers are only singing Porgy & Bess is a big nonsense, but what to expect from a “singer” that stupid? Leontyne Price, Grace Bumbry, Shirley Verrett… today Angel Blu, Pretty Yende… all sang or are singing a diverse repertoire…
This “lady” is the perfect example of a person that does not understand what the opera world and opera history is all about – she should never sing opera again and people should be wise enough not to listen to such crap.
Opera is dying, since a few years now, and it is because of exactly such stupid people and the ones that follow them…
A lesbian (or at least bisexual, or LGBTQWERTY or whatever, considering the plot) Eboli has already been done once (Warlikowski’s ugly and boring production in Paris), and probably two dozen times elsewhere. A gay Posa has certainly been done over an over again. We even had a gay and incestuous Tristan and Marke (Sellars in Paris).
The poor soul has really no imagination. She’d better shut up, and the Guardian, which can be good at investigative journalism, does itself no favors by printing such idiocies.
As a qwerty person myself, because of my work, I think all that opera stuff has to be updated and show the plight of us PA’s who suffer in silence and aren’t heard, however loud we suffer. We are the biggest silent minority in music life!
Sally
If she wants strange non-traditional stagings, all she has to do is move to Germany and she’ll get all the bizarre productions she wants.
That’s true, an acquaintance of mine went to see a Tristan there which was staged as Rigoletto. According to the story, it was most confusing.
Sounds like something that would happen on I’m Sorry, I Haven’t a Clue, and on the piano Colin Sell.
Also, body-positive people aren’t represented in ballet. I want to see Swan Lake performed by a herd of heifers.
Swan Lake is open to all sorts of variations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvZO-UYsehs
Orfeo with lesbians would still be Orfeo, wouldn’t change a thing. So why bother? Who cares about this woman’s whining anymore? I agree, it’s all so completely tedious. Let her commission an opera of ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’.. except, I don’t think it would be a very attractive affair.
Tedious. She knows full well why those characters are not ‘queer’, and why the composers did not attempt to portray them as such. It’s a pointless exercise, as far as the music goes, but that’s not why she says these things—look how many comments there are, and there’s your answer—-it’s PR at work, nothing more. Shame, as she has a fabulous instrument and should be remembered for her musical contributions rather than her social justice moanings.
Wow. Courageous to put your name to this, Tony, given the political climate in the arts. Thank you for having the fortitude to state this plainly for we conservative singers hiding from the backlash of an honest opinion.
Opera is quite open to gender permutations anyway. I guess it has always been. Its diversity, its dialogic nature are not compatible with propaganda of any kind.