Domingo’s gone, nothing has changed
mainMy friend Anne Midgette, in a reasoned and upbeat piece on her sparkling new site, argues that the world will be a better place now that Placido Domingo has been removed from public gaze, at least in North America. I’m not sure I can agree. Here’s Anne’s conclusion:
Domingo is, indeed, irreplaceable — because the world no longer has a place for this particular kind of artist, who has done so much to help the field and so much to harm it. And it may well be that without him, the field loses some of its patrons, and some of its funding. It may be, indeed, that the institution of opera fundamentally changes — which is something we should all aspire to if we want this intoxicating, bizarre, glorious art form to continue to be vital, now and in the future. Will the fall of Domingo bring about the fall of opera? Those who fear that are forgetting another operatic plot: the idea that Götterdämmerung is necessary in order that a brave new world can be born. (Read more here).
I don’t dispute a word of Anne’s observation but, looking around, I see no change at the institutions of opera. No-one has resigned from the boards of Washington and LA Opera, where Domingo presided and where his habits were known from the top down. Likewise at the Met, where Jmmy Levine’s predations were no secret at board and executive level. Nor from any other insttution.
Opera houses and orchestras, in their present diminished state, depend on a few box-office bankables. You can count them on one hand: Netrebko, Kaufmann, Lang Lang, DiDonato (in the US), Thielemann (in Germany) and that’s about it. It’s a dependency culture that gives unlimited license to the brightest stars to do as they please while praying on its knees that they don’t cancel their next engagement.
That’s unhealthy and humiliating, economically and psychologically.
Music needs to overcome its star dependancy and create a broad cadre of wholesome, charismatic performers to whom the general public can relate. Hollywood has no problem renewing its stock of stars year after year. Why can’t we?
Meanwhile, the board plays on.
Only 5 box-office bankables? That’s not true is it. There may not be hundreds, but there are more than 5.
There are six, but I can’t remember that 6th one, although he is very famous everywhere.
Why can’t we? Because of singing standards on a nosedive. Because practically everyone sounds alike and indifferent.
As we grow older our hearing declines and our ability to compare to artists of the past increases. These two factors alone tend to make us believe things were better when we were younger.
if more resources would have been invested in the musical education, the problem could have seriously been eased.
Agreed.
Opera is not about ‘star singers’ but about opera.
One of the problems of getting audiences’ attendance is the deplorable convention of Regietheater. If that trend were kicked-out once and for all, opera could be restored, maybe.
It is not about Regietheater. I usually have a lot of time for your posts, but this one entirely misses the point. (The point that has emerged early in this discussion, not the one Anne Midgette raised and Mr.Lebrecht has invited us to discuss).
To think it is about Regietheater is to think from the most elite circle possible. I would bet millions, at least thousands (as millions of opera fans might be wishful thinking) of opera fans and opera goers have NEVER HEARD of Regietheater.
Engagement with opera and classical music in general lasted until a few decades ago. As did a solid general engagement with literature and to a good extent with art. It lasted while: music education in schools and with the dread after-school lessons was widespread; classical music was a feature of radio broadcasts when there were fewer stations and it was part of the overall fabric, not relegated to specialty channels listened to by decreasing numbers in an increasingly fragmented market; it was a regular, not an isolated, feature of television programming; music stars made the cover of Time Magazine and the like, and classical music events were covered seriously and regularly in the daily papers.
In such an environment, classical music was a part of national conversations, taken casually, names like Lily Pons as familiar as that of Elvis Presley, Richard Strauss as much as Benny Goodman. People would turn on the telly to a Leonard Bernstein concert as easily as to a Lawrence Welk. People had various tastes — many would prefer Goodman to Strauss, or Elvis to Lenny. But on an Ed Sullivan show, you’d get a Joan Sutherland or an Itzhak Perlman as soon as a Tom Jones or an Ella Fitzgerald, and as families sat and watched the whole show together they were introduced to all manner of music without attitudes that hinted at one being “better” than the other. They were on — therefore they were worth listening to. Or watching — Sullivan was welcoming to ballet as well as show dancing).
In the UK the BBC had classical programming seeded throughout their range of offerings. It was part of the national, and natural, order of things. Names like Beecham and Barbirolli, Britten and Peter Pears, were as familiar as Andrew Lloyd Webber and Elton John would become.
Education, exposure, absence of elitism — these held classical music in its proper place, as a major part of the national musical landscape.
Not sure what stopped it — all these elements were still around until not so many decades ago, though in ever-diminishing quantities. That’s a socio-historical inquiry. My own starting point, were I to make it, would be the 60s, though of course the 60s did not spring, fully formed, upon the world — there were reasons for what unfolded then, some rooted in events centuries ago.
But one outcome of the sixties for future generations: the parents no longer knew about classical music. My mother would hum arias from operas, though she probably never went to an opera on stage in her life, as she went about her work. My youngest friends’ mothers hummed Alanis Morrissette, because their mothers hummed The Stones.
So there was absolutely no context in which to situate classical music, which was not being taught in school. Kids wanted to learn to play the guitar, not the piano or the clarinet. “I Want MY MTV” became a mantra. Madonna and Michael Jackson became (music) news, and became who a generation thought about. Pavarotti slowed the demise to some extent, but he also may have contributed to the downfall of classical music. By allowing pop singers to duet with him in his music (as he did with them in theirs) he introduced the notion that singers with good enough voices to carry the tunes and even hit the notes could sing classical music without the grounding that “real” classical singers had. That was all very well for his variety shows, but it may have led directly to the Jackie Evanchos of the world. And to the notion that Andre Rieu and Helmut Lotti were feeding a dutiful sense that people should listen to SOME classical music.
There are occasional ruminations on this site as to why Rieu fills halls and sells records while major classical artists play too papered houses. The answer is the same here as elsewhere (why nobody reads Dickens, why Kenneth Clark’ CIvilisation would not find an audience today when it was appointment TV when it came out) — dumbing down.
Not Regitheater, a sophisticated music follower’s pet hate in the opera house. Ignorance. Followed by attitude.
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
Very well stated but how do we, as a society which still has enough thoughtful and curious people, turn this downward spiral of dumbing-down ignorance around when even educated people are getting more and more addicted by the day and by the hour to their digital games and portable devices? How can we expect anyone today to sit through three plus hours of
Meyerbeer’s excruciating, “Le Prophete” when
we can’t seem to find enough of an audience for Mozart’s mostly delightful, “The Magic Flute”?
(Despite my antipathy to the irrational hostility you always express towards my wife) I find myself agreeing with you about the relegation and exclusion of classical music from once democratic platforms, like the Ed Sullivan show and real “variety” television.
I would add the following. I grew up in a mining town in northern England. My father sang in the male voice choir. The miners would come to our house after the concerts for supper and a sing-song. They would dress impeccably in their choir uniforms and bring along their well-worn copies of Messiah, and Vaughan-Williams songs, and Victorian parlor songs, among so many others. I knew songs like “Drink to Me Only” and “Love’s Old Sweet Song” and “The Road to Mandalay” by 16 (in 1986, while Duran Duran were it!). Classical music found expression across all social classes. But when the industry died, the communities fractured and dispersed. The community centers were shuttered and demolished. I’m convinced that it was in these wonderful communities across the UK – that gave us the likes of Sir Thomas Allen – that the real music education happened, and less so in schools, since Music is about doing it, not just teaching it. And I haven’t even mentioned the brass bands. We can not underestimate the cultural devastation brought about by the post-industrial age. To bring it back, we need to bring back a sense of community, which requires physical spaces, volunteers, and the will to turn back the clock.
I grew up in a similar, if not parallel, environment — a village in Scotland. Not mining, but my father was also a choir man, and our house was also the scene of many suppers and singsongs all my young life — I knew the songs you mentioned when even younger! We were working class, but I had piano lessons; music, including classical, was a part of my formation. The lullaby I remember most was “Guten Abend” — I could sing it in German by five. Dad sang opera arias while playing the piano. My mum was not a musician, as I said, but she still knew arias as well as songs of Scotland, another passion of my father’s. When we finally had a TV, my first opera — I was a teenager — was watching The Magic Flute and The Flying Dutchman with my father. It is that sort of almost casual (although my father’s approach was more focussed) availability of exposure to classical music that I was trying to evoke, and which you clearly understood.
As regards your wife: I have been hostile in attitude toward her. I was particularly vexed by her public hostility to Gustavo Dudamel. But my attitude was coloured by my feelings about Miami Cubans and their intransigence about doing anything to ameliorate US-Cuban relations while Castro — increasingly a reality that they simply would not face — lived. Their refusal to admit that the government he replaced was run by and for the Cuban elite, and had done nothing to help the mass of Cuban poor, is something I have been engaged with for many years.
I visited Venezuela in the late 80s a couple of times, and from the little I saw, it seemed a relatively pleasant place with very nice people — a country jogging along, as it were. I was not as hostile to Chavez in the early years as your wife, because, despite its many sins, I was aware of a lot of good things that had come out of the Cuban revolution and thought I would see some of them in Venezuela too. I am well aware that Cuba became a totalitarian state. (I have always thought that if the Americans had been more receptive to Castro when his side won, Cuba might never have gone Comm at all, but that is another conversation for another forum). But there is no doubt that health and education, among other things, improved under Castro’s regime.
The anti-Castro leadership seemed based on Batsta-esque service to those who had and who wanted more. I thought I detected some of this sort of thing in some of your wife’s public postings. But as the situation in Venezuela, which she obviously knows much better than I, has steadily deteriorated, particularly under Maduro, I have had cause to reconsider some of my views. I do not think it is yet a totalitarian state, but it is ideological at the cost of the usual victims of tyrannical leadership. That a country with all Venezuela’s riches of resources, natural and human, should be suffering so is a damnation of those in charge and I have come to understand your wife’s distress about it more than I once did.
I recently participated in some of the discussion here about Yuja Wang’s unfortunate recent visit to the country in which I now live, and where I have seen her play several times. In arguing some points, I tagged some people, including the blog-owner, with rushing to judgment, making a judgment in absence of sufficient information. It made me think about my comments about your wife and then rethink them in light of that discussion, and I now accept that I do not know enough about the situation, or about your wife, to have taken the stance I did. For that rushing to judgment on my own part, and if I caused her any further distress over comments I made, i now apologise unreservedly.
VLind… I have enormous respect for anyone who is analytical and conscious enough to allow their position – on anything – to evolve and change. That you apologise in this elegant way is all the more commendable, and I accept it in the same spirit. Gabriela will too. I also thank you for it, because I know you will have thought carefully about publishing it.
Maybe one day we can meet somewhere, and talk through what we have been doing and uncovering for the last ten years. You won’t find it in the newspapers.
Meanwhile, thank you for digging deeper. I wish more people would do the same in this world. I’ll leave you with something you might appreciate, a propos of everything. Kind regards…
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/aria-code/episodes/aria-code-rossini-cenerentola-joyce-didonato
I have been to a lot of opera in Western Europe recently, in full or nearly full houses, and not superstars. Most recently in Luisa Miller in London, totally crazy production but superb singing throughout from a acst from many countries. Fine if you want Netrebko or Kaufmann people may pay hundreds or thousands for tickets. But that’s between them, their psychiatrist and the credit card company
There are plenty of good singers around to put on good performances of many operas outside the Wagnerian heavyweight repertoire. As said above the problem is the abysmal productions they are asked to take part in, put on by talentless hacks who appear to count political correctness of higher importance than artistic integrity. Opera isn’t the only institution to suffer. The standard of productions at many famous theatres such as the Royal Shakespeare Company has gone downhill rapidly recently. I used to be a regular attender. No longer. A sheer waste of money the last few I have seen.
The opera world ought to start the renewal by finally letting real baritones take the contracts that Domingo has been denying them for years now, with less than zero vocal justification for doing so. To those inside the industry, it has long been a point of profound contention that opera houses have been so gutless as to permit this Domingo-the-baritone farce simply to squeeze every last drop of cash out of his once hallowed name. Domingo as Macbeth? It’s like casting Bocelli as Lohengrin. I’m surprised they haven’t! Just shows you how little the general public knows about opera that they keep paying, and how opera’s core artistic values have been abandoned since the glory days of Bastianini, Bruson, Warren et al. It also shows why it needs a process of renewal to educate the next generation in the true art of singing. Like most, I know nothing about what really happened behind closed doors, but on stage I have witnessed Domingo at his tenorial best and fake-baritonal worst. I will cherish the former, and bid a relieved adieu to the latter.
Hollywood is not a good term of comparison here, I think even football would be better. In fact, the kind of skills valued by opera fans have many ‘athletic’ analogies. They search for someone who can sing that phrase that way, with a stunning crescendo; and someone else that can reach that high note with the expected volume and vibrato, filling the entire room and winning the battle against the chorus. It is like scoring goals every night to your passionate supporters. Well, tell the fans of a big team in English Premier League that their top scorer’s social behaviour is not appropriate, and that he must be substituted by someone else immediately. If you can’t find a better substitute, the board will probably renew that guy’s contract and will pay the best lawyers to give him advice. You won’t find a Maestri every year to please your audience with the best Falstaff they can dream to listen to. And you don’t have one hundred Oropesas ready to sing ‘Les huguenottes’ at top level to your company. Of course there is nothing wrong with their behaviour, as far as I know. I’m just citing two stars that are unbeatable in their field, and even the best conductor or stage director can do nothing without such talents. They will be the first to ask for this or that name to sing a difficult role, and you need to secure his/her contract two or three years in advance. Of course we have a few smaller companies offering excellent seasons without big stars, relying on well chosen young voices and mature talents that didn’t reach the biggest stages or that are about to retire, but such theatres are probably preparing a new generation of top singers that will dominate the scene in five or ten years. And, you know, Pelés, Maradonas and Rummenigges are not produced in large scale.
Strange. No word here on SD about Team Domingo attempting to buy $500,000 worth of silence about details of the investigation from the musicians’ union leaders behind closed doors. The agreement luckily fell apart when someone leaked it to the press. This is how the mafia operates and showcases the sewer behind the veneer in the business.
Exactly Domingo offered $500,000 to keep the union report squelched. Is a similar hush-money scheme why the LAO report has not seen the light of day? This is the typical stuff of SD and the popular press is way out ahead. Ditto for Luz del Alba Rubio coming forward publicly.
Assertions like that require proof.
Domingo’s lawyer confirmed it on the record to the New York Times
How about the fact that both sides to the union controversy have admitted it to the New York Times. Sufficient proof for you even in the post-truth era?
When I started to visit opera houses the audiences were geriatric. Today there are as many young people as grey beards in the audience. Female opera singers went from being obese (though often brilliant) to slender beauty queen types more picked for looks than singing ability.
In Europe I see no change and Domingo still draws sell-out crowds whatever anyone in the US may wish.
Getting rid of him was a palace coup basically. Probably LA opera wanted a change of leadership and he’d been hanging around for too long hence whispers to the press
At the end of the day, allegations against him have not resulted in any lawsuits in a country noted for litigation so there is still definitely a question mark. It was a cheap publicity shot calling him out just as Weinstein was convicted, thus linking him with the latter’s behaviour.
It’s a good job rock stars are not held accountable for seducing young women; the courts would be full.
In a country that still revers the memories of that most priapic President, JFK and his brother Robert, I find the current attitude hypocritical to say the least.
And it does today’s women no good to pretend they are wilting violets. Just say NO and keep on saying it. Otherwise why should anyone believe allegations that date back ten or twenty years?
The only possible litigation around this story would have had to emanate from Domingo himself, if he felt he had been libelled. Of course, to press such a suit, he would have had to prove that the stories were untrue and might have subjected himself to some questioning…
For the gazillionth time: NOBODY has ever accused Domingo of criminal acts. He has been accused of inappropriate behaviour to women colleagues over a long period of time in a wide variety of places. That is a WORKPLACE issue, and the workplaces in question have dealt with it — they have let him go.
As it has not been raised in Europe, European workplaces have had no reason to dismiss him, though there have been some cases of transatlantic collegiality as in the Grigolo case.
But stop clinging lamely to this cry for a court decision — NOBODY SAYS HE BROKE LAWS. Courts are not there to satisfy fanatic devotees of a particular artist.
Lind: strictly speaking he has broken no criminal laws (hence no criminal trial). But he has broken his contract terms, which is governed by civil law, which has resulted in the termination of his contract. He has declined to sue for breach of contract.
Right on about rock stars. Also add pro wrestlers, lawyers and politicians, Hollywood producers and directors and opera impresarios. Most of the big name conductors of yesterday were notorious womanizers, who would make Domingo look like a Boy Scout. Domingo is a Latin. The women who were pestered should have had a boyfriend or husband show up with a knife and say “stay from my woman or else”. Domingo would have gotten the message in ten seconds or less.
All they had to do was ask him stop. He was just flirting and has no idea the woman were overly sensitive paranoid nutters.
Yes. It’s a small sample, but I personally know of two women who were delighted with his attentions, and did everything they could to get past his wife (not easy) to be with him.
If we were to put Domingo’s “help” on a scale against his “harm” as Midgette puts in the first line of the quote above, I think we will see that he has “helped” the field of opera far more than harmed it.
Opera is now at a point of reckoning. Domingo can be “taken down” because, quite frankly, people outside of opera don’t care about opera anymore. I would bet most people under 50-60 in the USA wouldn’t know who he is.
He will never hurt opera as much as he helped it, because he helped make it relevant for a period of time and now it is less so, so there’s not as much to hurt anymore.
Also, let us be clear, he keeps being hired as a baritone, not just because he is “Placido Domingo” (he is, and certainly this plays a large part in it) but also because there is a shocking lack of talent in the world. If there was some astounding Verdi baritone out there, he would not be in demand. It’d be like hiring an 80 year old soprano over Netrebko. Maybe once in a while, but not it really just wouldn’t be worth it at the end of the day.
Opera is going downhill in the USA at a frightening pace, and taking down Domingo is not the thing that is going to help it now, as much as some would clearly like it to be.
Sorry, but your comment on the lack of baritones is utterly false. The problem is that they are not getting their chance because Domingo is ubiquitous. I just heard two wonderful baritones, Àngel Òdena and Gabriele Viviani recently, not to mention an unforgettable recital by Stéphane Degout and a mesmerizingly good Macbeth with Ludovic Tézier. Then there’s the endless list of Eastern Europeans, Russians, and Koreans. Every one of them would sing the Domingo of the past decade off the stage, and they deserve their moment. Most of all, audiences deserve to hear them, and the art form deserves to be respected.
Agreed. The young Italian replacing Kwiecien at the Royal Opera House this summer will also be much the better Rodrigo in that series if the ROH persists in letting Domingo sing.
For the first year or two Domingo was doing this, it was easier to make a case that there were weaknesses but also strengths, and that while he wasn’t ideal, he still brought some worthwhile qualities. But he pushed it to the point of excess, diminishing returns set in, and he got (and sounded) older and older. Rather than being a farewell lap with one or two kind-of-suitable roles, it became one new role after another, no end in sight. Ernani at the Met and Trovatore in Berlin and Salzburg (brother to tenors about 40 years younger) were risible. They just reminded that he’d once been quite good in the tenor roles in those operas.
I’ve heard Domingo in all of his baritone roles. He was artistically thrilling, with great acting and captivated audiences. That alone is worth a lot. I never heard a night when I thought, “It’s time for him to quit.” I’ve also talked to baritones who attest to Domingo’s artistic validity and the paucity of baritones available to replace him. Get off your high horse.
I agree wholeheartedly that it is frustrating that the enablers haven’t been punished. This seems to be the true for all cases of inappropriate sexual behavior, not just in the opera house. I also agree that the standard of singing is desperately lacking in opera houses today. I am tired of going to operas where half of the singers have Hollywood looks, but are inaudible in the house. Opera tickets are far more expensive than movies or spoken theatre. Why would anyone spend the extra money when the one thing that makes opera unique from the aforementioned art forms (the singing) is mediocre at best and inaudible at worst?
It’s a curious perspective. How exactly, do opera houses and orchestras and orchestras “depend” upon stars that only 1% of them can ever afford to hire? In the UK, there is precisely one opera company that can afford Netrebko, Kaufmann, and DiDonato and one major orchestra that can afford Lang Lang or (even supposing it wanted to) Thielemann. I can’t speak for the USA but do any of these figures ever appear much beyond the Met and the “Big Five”?
And yet the remaining 99% of organisations, one way or another, seem to thrive. Many of them even get full houses…
I suspect that you’re confusing a couple of big record labels and dinosaur institutions (basically, the parts of the classical ecosystem that were big in the 1980s) with classical music as a whole.
“Music needs to overcome its star dependancy and create a broad cadre of wholesome, charismatic performers to whom the general public can relate”…
err…
Roderick Williams Allan Clayton Jamie Barton Angel Blue Andris Nelsons Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla Janine Jansen Hilary Hahn Angela Hewitt Yannick Nezet-Seguin Pretty Yende Karina Canellakis Bryn Terfel Yuja Wang Gabriela Montero Benjamin Grosvenor Stephen Hough Mitsuko Uchida Barbara Hannigan Tine Thing Helseth Esa-Pekka Salonen Mahan Esfahani Andrew Manze James Ehnes Simon Rattle Kirill Karabits Kristjan Jarvi Lise Davidsen Louise Alder Antonio Pappano Hakan Hardenberger Alban Gerhardt Gerald Finley Christian Tetzlaff Gustavo Dudamel Gianandrea Noseda Omer Meir Wellber Semyon Bychkov Sheku Kanneh-Mason Willard White Martha Argerich Leif Ove Andsnes Philippe Jaroussky Iestyn Davies Alison Balsom Nicole Car Julia Fischer Daniel Hope Karita Mattila Christian Gerhaher Philipe Jordan Pekka Kuusisto…(for starters)
Lise Davidsen, whom I first heard of here just before her Met debut (which I gather was a triumph), is about to make her ROH debut in Fidelio. Wish I could be there — I envy Londoners who can. She may be the vice of a generation.
I wonder if the PC warriors will win the war against sex.
There is difference between star power at the box office and administrative power. A famous music director as both types of power. A famous soloist who runs an institution has both as well. These allegations happen because the victims feel real fear for their careers once targeted. It’s really up to the board of these institutions to put short leashes on these types dual-role superstars.
Norman, you blow my mind.
In your first paragraph, you wrote: “My friend Anne Midgette….argues that the world will be a better place now that Placido Domingo has been removed from public gaze, at least in North America. I’m not sure I can agree.”
Yet, at the end of your screed, you write (in direct opposition to your earlier paragraph): “Music needs to overcome its star dependancy and create a broad cadre of wholesome, charismatic performers to whom the general public can relate. Hollywood has no problem renewing its stock of stars year after year. Why can’t we?”
Well, Norman – where exactly do you stand on this important issue?
Do you disagree with Ms. Midgette, as per your first paragraph, or not?
Thanks for providing a link to Anne Midgette’s blog. I was a little bummed out at not getting to read her work anymore.
===Netrebko, Kaufmann, Lang Lang, DiDonato (in the US), Thielemann (in Germany) and that’s about it.
Err, this coming on a site which is obsessed with Yuja Wang and Anne-Sophie Mutter . Strange thing to write
Whenever a company or organization uses the “we do not tolerate…” – they are indirectly saying that the organization as a whole is no longer liable, and that it’s the individuals/wrongdoers who are liable. The second point, is that the process starts with accusers using the legal process, and the legal process determines who stays and who goes. Maybe what’s being challenged here, is if the legal process is refined enough in these cases to bring justice to all the wrongdoers… but ultimately we have to believe that this system works or is getting better all the time, because it’s the only way to remove the wrongdoers.
I love that the image file of Netrebko is called “netrebko-bad-singing-500×500.jpg”
https://slippedisc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/netrebko-bad-singing-500×500.jpg
Placido Domingo was just a great singer who was maligned by envy and “sour grape” feelings by many who were not worth to be part of his larger than life artistry.
Crocodile tears for vicious people who went after him will evaporate as time goes by. Unfortunately, the modern world is destroying opera and is replacing it with trash.
Soon they will be wondering what happened to the erstwhile donors who will have nothing to do with the hypocrisy and the second-rate quality that are emerging in the world of opera and Art in general.