Opera America says sorry
NewsJust in, from the roof organisation of operatic activity in the USA:
To the Opera Community,
We apologize. Language used last weekend by participants on one of our listservs, an OPERA America platform, was hurtful, disrespectful, and plainly transphobic. In our statement of response, we did not effectively call it out for what it is. We’re truly sorry. In the clearest of terms, we condemn any language or opinion that questions the dignity, identity, or human value of anyone in our field.
As your national service organization, we have a responsibility to ensure our trans, queer, and non-binary colleagues are safe and respected in our field. We must break down barriers and educate. The OPERA America team is assembling a group of EDI specialists, LGBTQ+ advocates, and leaders in opera to bring this topic to the field in a national webinar in September. We encourage everyone to participate in this session and additional opportunities to stand with our colleagues, especially as gender-identity is under attack in our country.
To the artists in our community: We have let you down. We missed the way this incident exposed pain you’ve been feeling for a long time. The training infrastructure established to help you has not worked as it should, and we have allowed the problems to continue unaddressed. As artists, you are the lifeblood of our field, and should be respected for everything you bring to the artform at every stage of your careers.
We promised to be leaders in effecting change and we will. We’ve created two different ways you can share your experience. We will listen, trust your experience, and take meaningful action.
First, we invite you to participate in one of three listening sessions, beginning this Monday, July 25, and subsequently on August 3 and 23. We want to hear your feedback and ideas on how OPERA America can work with you to bring reform to the artist training infrastructure. These sessions are exclusively for you as artists in the opera community, with select OPERA America staff and board members in attendance as listeners. You can sign up here.
Second, we invite you to submit your feedback and ideas through an anonymous form. You are welcome to participate in the listening sessions and contribute through the form as well. What you share with us will inform the next steps we take. You can access the form here.
We support your advocacy to reform a system that has been hurtful in many ways. We want to be an agent for progress. We hope we can demonstrate our commitment and earn your trust as your ally for the future. We are committed to building a healthier, respectful, anti-racist, gender-affirming, and equitable opera field with you. Thank you for holding us accountable.
With utmost respect,
OPERA America
We encourage you to share this message and the opportunities to provide feedback with other opera artists in your network.
I have no idea what was said, and any so-called “phobic” comment is to be soundly eschewed by any decent organisation, but this post rather begs the question: how many trans are there working in top-tier (or for that matter other) opera?
And doesn’t LBGTQ+ pretty much include all sexual preferences?
Won’t take long for you to find the text/emails, but I’ll summarize:
Individuals on the listserv are complaining that today’s youth are spoiled brats and are difficult to work with.
There was nothing transphobic about her comments, no reference to gender. She was a little strident maybe, but her opinions about “youth” today are almost cliche. Not terribly incorrect, either, and the outraged responses prove her correct I think.
Scroll down and you can see them here:
https://operawire.com/email-leaks-reveal-opera-americas-professional-development-listserv-complaining-about-young-artists-entitlement-pronouns/
Well, the original post was illiterate. it was also pretty aggressive, and the very people she was accusing of feeling entitled to respect without earning it turned around and stated their entitlement.
The post on SD is as, someone else has stated, grotesque and grovelling. The grotesque grovellers are a bigger part of the problem than the demanding. People have always made demands: it’s how we got the USA, France, civil rights, women in the workplace, the removal of some) barriers to minority and gay people from workplaces, housing, etc. Yes, society has often resisted change, but there is a long way from speeding up change to caving in to all and any demands.
For God’s sake, these types have been creating litanies of everything the white people have done wrong in the world — and, yes, there is a lot to be sorry for and to resolve to eradicate from behaviour. But how about a concerted effort to list some of the achievements of the same people over the same periods? Or do the entitled resist any sense of playing fair (perhaps; fairness has not always been their lot) or at least honestly?
I am aware of Lucia Lucas who has the interesting task of being a trans woman, ahem, manning up to perform baritone roles.
I have also worked with a gender diverse bunch including fa’afafine in community theatre.
Er, no? As the abbreviation includes: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, 2/Two-Spirit, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Ally, Pansexual, Agender, Gender Queer, Bigender, Gender Variant, and Pangender. As in like not straight like.
Good grief, grovel much?
Never apologize to the mob.
I don’t like LGBTQ+ activists. But it’s a genetic predisposition of mine so I can’t change and don’t have to apologize or take responsibility for it.
The level of abjectivity, self abasement n loathing, contrition expressed here as a form of ultra competitive virtue signalling is grotesque n disgusting. You’d would have thought someone was tortured, raped, murdered, then burnt in gasoline! And all it was some transgender types were offended by comments they don’t like.
Pathetic. America really is crumbling.
“First, we invite you to participate in one of three listening sessions”
This should actually be read as “First, we invite you to participate in one of three struggle” sessions.”
No one seems to be protecting family life, only LGBT et al rights.
In what way is “family life” in need of protection?
Do people get beaten up for being Father and Mother (married in church, of course) + 2.4 children? Do they get refused service or sacked for it? Do people come on here making snide attacks on them?
To paraphrase comedian Yakov Smirnoff, in Soviet America you don’t go to reeducation camp, reeducation camp go to you.
Norman: Exactly what is this photo and what does it have to do with the topic at hand?
We should hold a competition to see what might have been said…
Come on, guys. Please. It’ll have read much better in the original Chinese.
Oh, Jeez. Imagine carrying on about something like this, and with such bathos.
It seems to me that Stephany Svorinic spoke the truth and has been silenced as a result. It is all resembling closely the last days of the Roman Empire , and our civilisation ( if it can be called that ) is disintegrating
Reading the original communication, I just hear a voice that is rather strident for American tastes but accurately takes aim at self-centered, opinionated-without-command-of-the-facts spoiled brats. Nothing wrong with that. I’ve encountered this sense of entitlement in the workplace in the US, too. And it truly gets in the way of an effective organization.
A certain part of “America” doesn’t like stridency or honesty these days. It would rather trip over itself and fall before causing any real or imagined offence.
The organization’s apology cited here is an accurate reflection of that in my opinion. Genuflection before reflection. Guilty until proven innocent. Driven by abject fear of insulting anyone – in a society brimming with victims. A complete lack of organizational backbone, loyalty … showing that anyone can make said organization do anything with just a little bit of social media threat and drama.
The rest of us middle-of-the-roaders are either silent or publically reject the extreme dictates coming from left and right – and want to get on with the MUSIC with the prima donnas please largely confined to the stage/pit. In the service of the performing arts.