Munich is hit by a blackface furore
NewsErnst Krenek’s 1927 opera Jonny spielt auf was so hated by the Nazis that they made its black-faced hero the symbol of their campaign against so-called Degenerate Music.
In Munich it was rejected by the state opera companies and shunted down to the Gärntnerplatztheater, where Nazis disrupted the performances and beat up audience members.
It is now back at the Gärtnerplatz, but with a different kind of disruption.
Jonny in the opera is a black American jazzman. He was played in the original production by a white baritone, Max Spilcker, wearing black make-up. The 2022 Gärtnerplatz production follows those guidelines.
But warfare has now erupted on social media, with a group of activists calling for the show to be recast or shut down.
Some 600 self-designated artists, mostly students, have demanded ‘the immediate cancellation of the production’ and called on ‘all Munich residents to stay away from the performances of this production’.
The last group to issue this kind of call wore black uniforms.
More here.
A great opera that needs to be performed more often.
I saw it last year in Greifswald with Jonny cast as a WHITE WOMAN, optically and vocally the weakest link in an otherwise very entertaining production.
I will try and see it in Munich with apologies to the “600 self-designated artists, mostly students”.
I doubt very much that the men in black uniforms would have sent a carefully and politely worded open letter. These students don’t disturb the performance, they open a discussion and make a request. Big difference.
There are some good points even in their letter. Using blackface in this production can’t possibly be justified by historical correctness, since the production uses modern scenery, costumes, etc. The fact that the production team is all white and didn’t even feel the need to consult a black professional proves how tone deaf they are. I’m not saying they should at all costs have engaged a black singer, but they could have simply let the white singer be white. Contemporary opera really doesn’t care very much about that kind of discrepancies anymore.
Of course political correctness, wokeness and cancel culture go way too far in many cases. But if even a purely verbal protest against blackface, which is a rather extreme form of disrespect and historically of racism, isn’t allowed, then what kind of antiracism is?
Seems to me it shouldn’t be hard to cast the role with an actual black baritone these days.
Funny but I always thought acting was playing someone you were not. Maybe I’ve been misled all these years.
Nowadays people want to take things literally because of a profound lack of imagination. They want to have things spelled-out so that they don’t have to think or to feel or to imagine.
The idiocy of these kids is just sad. Failure on a higher societal level. They know nothing, but have opinions on anything.
Woke on the war path.
I am sure that there are many commenters here who will follow NL’s lead in dismissing the casting concerns.
Where is your consistency, Mr Lebrecht? After all, you’ve been a leading voice in the call for Russian cancellations, for weeks!
“He was played in the original production by a white baritone, Max Spilcker, wearing black make-up. The 2022 Gärtnerplatz production follows those guidelines.”
What ‘guidelines’? Just because a Black baritone wasn’t available then doesn’t mean that the part should not be offered to a Black singer now.
It’s a shame some of you weren’t born Black, and that you therefore missed out on the opportunity to experience years of virulent racism and mockery as children.
Your perspectives would be quite different, I am sure.
So only black people suffer from bigotry and prejudice? Oddly enough, I never noticed that before in real life.
People just need to grow up already and realize that decisions made for artistic reasons is not the same as burning crosses on someone’s front lawn. Is nuance completely lost in the 21st century?
I await the wrath of the SlippedDisc comments for this one, but…
It is 2022, not 1927. The role is of a ‘Black jazz man’, not a ‘White man pretending to be a Black jazz man’. In 1927, there did not exist a host of extraordinarily talented Black opera singers who could sing such a role, and because of the socio-political climate of the time a Black singer would likely never have been considered. Today, there are more than a hundred Black baritones who could sing this role, and instead of demonstrating society’s progression over the last 95 years by casting one of these singers, Gärtnerplatz has decided to make an unfathomable political statement.
We have productions like 2018 Hungarian State Opera’s nearly all-White Porgy and Bess to show us how far Europe has actually come in terms of diversifying its casting, this is just ludicrous.
Can we stop the idiocy? It’s theater! It’s about imagination. Actors play roles, not themselves. Do we really need to build a wall around our societies and call it mental hospitals now?
What happened to people?
Was there some other unnoticed global pandemic of idiocy?
How did the Hungarian Opera obtain the rights to perform with a white cast? It was firmly stipulate in the Gershwin Estate contracts I’ve seen that all cast, with the exception of a couple of minor white characters, must be performed by black singers.
You’re right, that’s still very much in place. My understanding is that the stipulation was circumvented through exploitation of self-identification. It’s a complete catch-22 for progressiveness.
I’m sure you would have had the same objection to casting Jessye Norman as Sieglinde.
Not only as Sieglinde, but cast in pretty much 97% of the roles of the Italian-French-German-Russian classical repertoire. So yeah, I expect “@Come on now” to protest every time when a “White man/woman” role is cast with a “Black man/woman pretending to be white.” I have an inkling he won’t protest though…
I usually don’t bother coming back, but I do want to respond to this, and I thank you both for raising a valid point.
Firstly, I would struggle to name a white man/woman role, but if you can, we can have a full conversation about it. I’ll even buy the first round!
In an ideal world we wouldn’t have to talk about race at all, and I agree with everyone who says it shouldn’t matter, but there’s two things specific to this situation:
1. the racial characteristics of the performer is integral to the story.
2. applying makeup to appear as a different race is offensive to many, but especially when there is a long history of it being done to prevent people of that racial group from appearing on stage.
A lot of people seem to think that representation is about coming for the white people. It isn’t in the slightest, it is about equality of opportunity and inspiring future generations – this is what matters.
Kaufmann didn’t need to black up when he played Othello. There’s no need for the person playing Jonny to black up either. Those days should be in the past now.
You’re right. And no need to paint his face black either. THAT’s what the uproar is about. As usual, most people commenting here are missing the point.
I have never seen the problem people have with a serious actor wearing dark makeup to play a serious role like Otello. An actor wears make-up anyway. The role is not being disrespectful to the race. The guy is pretending to be a Moor anyway – it is there in the script! Where is the problem with him looking like one?
Yes, the Moor and his darkish skin color are the script and in the words sung by Otello himself and other characters.
“Where is the problem with him looking like one?”
It’s a problem only for the woke. The woke originated in the US, who have their own demons to exorcise, forgetting that the rest of the world has a different history. Actors have used stage make-up since forever, but try to explain artistic reasons to a wokie activist living in the woke echo chamber.
Hmmm… Wiki says this is an opera about a jazz fiddler and yet the poster depicts a saxophone player.
Which is it?
The poster is presumably a generic one condemning what the Nazis thought of as an illustration of degenerate (entartete) art.
It is a matter of interpretation. Some people prefer to see the saxophone as a kind of violin. It takes away the more vulgar aspect of the associations.
What’s next? It’s illegal to dress up as Santa Clause?
I’m filling up my space ship. This planet is getting hopeless.
“I would love to tour the Southland in a traveling minstrel show’
– Steely Dan
Does this mean that only Royals can play Macbeth, Hamlet or King Lear; only Egyptians (or Macedonians) Cleopatra, Ethiopians Aida, and only the physically disabled, Rigoletto? And as far as the Grand Inquisitor is concerned, surely he must be a Catholic priest at the very least. Authenticity, please!
“Shylock in the play is a Jewish merchant. He was played in the original production by an English actor wearing a caricature hook nose. The 2022 Gärtnerplatz production follows those guidelines.”
At best the producers are stupid and naive. As are those complaining about the complainants.
The slippery slopes of history to be navigated on this one. Or do we succumb to mindless wokeness? Blackface was the norm pre-war. A great opera like this deserves being played, with and without backface. If we can’t handle what history looked like (“them is US”), we can just as well roll over dead.
Black face was the norm pre-war, because Black people weren’t allowed on stage to play Black roles.
Is this so difficult to understand?