In Covid, we forgot to listen to the baby divas and the bragger boys

Mary Miller, former head of Bergen National Opera, has written a moving reflection for us about the wonderful young baritone Emil Havold Næshagen whose funeral was held this week.

Read every word and reflect very hard.

Few in the culture world have emerged from the last virus-fogged years without scars. Some of us, the lucky ones kept our jobs and were able to sustain our staff. Then, some of us helped by exceptional director colleagues in the digital world, were able to help the vast raft of cast adrift freelancers stranded without income. But even with our most established colleagues we saw pain – motivation sagging, gloom descending and real hardship biting.

In the last days of all this, Norway lost an extraordinary young artist for whom Covid marked a descent so far into depression that he ended his life. He was 29. For sure, before lockdown, he had struggled. Alcohol, treatment, anxiety were his ugly companions, but even so he turned up, sang superbly, won a major competition and delivered some remarkable performance. Drugs and adrenalin – mainstays of so many artists, for sure – saw him stride out there on stage in his clean shirt and shoes, smiling, delivering joy.

Now, in the days after his funeral, I wonder if we really care enough about our young talents as we noisily claim to nurture them while pushing them forward. We talk earnestly, noisily, about artist development as the beating heart of our activities. Too often, do those hearts tend to be forgotten as we leave the board room?

As an opera company who loved this Norwegian boy, we tried. We rang often. We offered work and when it couldn´t be fulfilled we expressed sorrow. It wasn´t enough.

We all know the good people and also the agents who stick loyally to their artists´ backs in tough times – not just the small companies, but the large teams too. We also know the shitty people who ring round gossiping that their young singer ‘isn´t reliable’ or ‘needs to grow up’. Years ago, one such agent I dealt with, when I rang to tell him that one of his young singers had been killed in an accident, seemed to find it inconvenient to alter his webpage. It gave an ‘odd signal’ he said.

In 2022, now work is beginning to surge happily forward; halls and opera houses are regaining confidence, welcoming their audience back and offering a mix of wistful and exciting programmes. Maybe we have learned to have a greater duty of care for our artists, to ask the questions, to talk and sometimes to probe. Coming out of bleak times into some sense of sunshine, are we sure our young aspirational talents have the support they need to recalibrate? Let´s watch: they may be unable to articulate how badly they need the help of management and colleagues.

Our late wonderful baritone and I travelled from Oslo to Halden by train together not so long ago. He was going to his parent´s home. I was going to a bad performance of Turandot. He was polite as ever, a little jumpy. He giggled a little and said that that sadness wasn´t a defeat if you could find something funny about it.. Tears run down my face as I remember.

So to the baby divas and the bragger boys, the loud voices and the darlings; listen carefully. They may too be crying.

Mary Miller

24.03.2022