San Diego cancels new opera for fiscal reasons
OperaWe present the company’s press release without comment:
San Diego Opera has canceled performances of The Falling and the Rising. Originally scheduled for 2020 and delayed because of COVID, The Falling and the Rising was co-commissioned by San Diego Opera, which also created the production seen around the country.
San Diego Opera was excited to share this new work with the community, but as the Company navigates the new post-COVID world, with the cost of producing opera skyrocketing and box-office revenue down from pre-pandemic levels, the fiscally responsible action is to cancel these performances. The Falling and the Rising was part of an ambitious 2022-2023 season featuring two world premieres, in addition to a new production of The Puccini Duo, and a production of Tosca, a major financial and artistic undertaking for any opera company.
One of San Diego Opera’s core values is: “Through fiscal responsibility and nimble adaptation to changing environments, we ensure the future of San Diego Opera for our community.” Cancelling these performances, although difficult, is the correct thing to do. Ticket revenue only covers approximately 20% of expenses this year, down from 35% pre-COVID, and San Diego Opera, like every opera company in America, relies on generous donations from our community to balance our budget each season.
From the San Diego Opera website:
The Falling and the Rising centers around an unnamed female Soldier who is severely wounded by a roadside IED. Placed in an induced coma to help minimize the extensive trauma to her brain, the soldier must now make a journey towards both healing and home. With a libretto taken from dozens of interviews with active-duty soldiers and veterans at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, The Old Guard at Fort Myer, and Fort Meade, Maryland, The Falling and the Rising tells a story of family, service, and sacrifice inside a period of great uncertainty and features active military personnel in lead roles.
This opera is a co-commission between San Diego Opera, the US Army Field Band and Soldier’s Chorus, Seattle Opera, Arizona Opera, Opera Memphis, TCU, and Seagle Music Colony.
*The composer is Zach Redler.
The US government spends three times more on military bands than it does the entire National Endowment for the Arts. The funding for military bands is probably 10 times what the NEA gives for classical music. To top it off, we have this opera commissioned by a consortium led by the US Army Field Band with a plot centered around propaganda to support US militarism.
And if these details aren’t grotesque enough, one of of the opera companies in the consortium, San Diego, can’t even pay for the planned performances while military bands remain awash in money. This in a country with only one year-round opera house while Germany with one quarter the population has 83. Little wonder the USA ranks 39th in the world for opera performances per capita.
Mostly fair points, William. But I don’t see how this opera is ‘propaganda’, when it examines the darker side of being in the military head on. It doesn’t sound to me as though it would be glorifying the military, like a truly propaganda movie from the 1940’s. I believe most Americans are fully aware that there are many wounded souls walking among us, due to our military adventures abroad. I’m not going to get into which fights were justified, and which weren’t. But I will point out that if the U.S. didn’t spend so much money on military, special op’s and secret ‘dark projects’, it might just be that nations like Germany wouldn’t be able to spend so much of its taxed income on those 83 full time opera houses you value so highly. I almost feel like saying that if Putin’s army succeeds and begins rolling its tanks and armor your way (meaning Prague, Dresden, Berlin, etc.), don’t come calling for us to save the day – almost!
How the USA might rank in the world “for opera performances per capita” is a statistic not even statistics-crazy Americans will care about.
An opera about the long recovery from severe injuries and brain trauma hardly serves as propaganda for militarism. And your comments do little to serve opera.
Thanks for the detail. Is America in decline culturally – and spiritually?
San Diego Opera’s current challenges would not be eased by more money from the NEA.
This in a country with only one year-round opera house while Germany with one quarter the population has 83.
One might conclude that the US is on the low side of this scale but that Germany has gone way too far in the opposite direction.
I completely agree. And I’m waiting for the usual suspects to turn out in full force, denouncing socialist art funding and singing the praise of the American way of private sponsorship for the arts.
The USA ranks 39th in the world for opera performances per capita because the vast majority of Americans couldn’t care less about opera. Most of the rest actively hate it. The principal use of opera and other forms of classical music in the US these days is as a tool for dispersing vagrants.
When the govts. Fed, state, & local, decided to cut funding for the arts, that was the beginning of the end.
A nation that doesn’t support it’s artists, is a nation in decline, and there’s plenty of evidence to support that claim.
U.S. funding for the NEA is $207 million this year. Glad to learn from you that spending on military bands is $621 million p.a.
https://www.arts.gov/about/appropriations-history
I am an opera singer and former member of the US Army Chorus which is a unit of the US Army Band Pershing’s Own. While I deplore the lack of support for opera and the arts in general in this country, I don’t see the correlation with the bands which serve an important mission using top musicians who provide high quality music for diplomatic and ceremonial occasions. They are hardly awash in funding, and are not the reason for the lack of opera performance here. Egypt
What is your obsession with opera as a measure of US cultural health? I am pro-arts and culture spending but would prefer that no money go to opera which I and so many others cannot stand.
Here’s a list of the 117 cities in the world that have more opera performances per year than Washington, D.C. (which has the 9th largest metro GDP in the world.) (It took it from Operabase when they still ranked cities for opera performances per year.) Only 4 of them are American. Notice that many of the cities are vastly smaller and less rich.
Wien
Berlin
London
St Petersburg
Moscow
Budapest
Praha
Hamburg
New York
Dresden
Paris
München
Stockholm
Zurich
Frankfurt
Stuttgart
Sydney
København
Hannover
Madrid
Mannheim
Venezia
Leipzig
Wiesbaden
Wroclaw
Brno
Dusseldorf
Amsterdam
Aachen
Roma
Bratislava
Ekaterinburg
Köln
Oldenburg
Linz
Milano
Regensburg
Ulm
Salzburg
Nürnberg
Firenze
Coburg
Essen
Toronto
Karlsruhe
Bremen
Lyon
Kassel
Minsk
Barcelona
Erfurt
Riga
Oslo
Kyiv
Schwerin
Plzen
Magdeburg
Lubeck
Glyndebourne
Napoli
Ostrava
Bonn
Halle
Warszawa
Vilnius
Münster
Poznan
Pforzheim
Tel Aviv
Innsbruck
Torino
Duisburg
Ljubljana
Saarbrucken
Houston
San Francisco
Weimar
Neustrelitz
Tallinn
Verona
Krakow
Bruxelles
Bielefeld
Göteborg
Graz
Meiningen
Bucuresti
Odessa
Ruse
São Paulo
Buenos Aires
Kiel
Palermo
Basel
Tokyo
Chicago
Melbourne
Bydgoszcz
Sofia
Hagen
Liège
Lodz
Genève
Braunschweig
Szeged
Luzern
Mainz
St Gallen
Chemnitz
Detmold
Passau
Bologna
Klagenfurt
Cagliari
Beijing
Giessen
Beograd
You have made this list several times before, making you the SD chief opera-rater. What is your point, and what is your remedy to said point?
Having lived there for years, San Diego is not much of an opera town. Given their small season, seeming they are not building an audience with their current selections. Also I am not sure its draws the crowds in by having Stephanie Blythe sing the title role in Gianni Schicchi, but that is slightly off topic.
Wow, revenues = 20% of cost! No business can sustain that for long. And SD doesn’t have a King Ludwig -type donor to make up the difference, nor a huge endowment to draw from n give it time to replenish the money. Aside from the macro factors that have impacted classical music globally, I wonder if the repertory heavy with new works contributed to the blood letting. Would a season of the old warhorses have made a difference (to 35% of expenses)? Unfortunately I don’t see a solution, neither does anybody else it seems.
Always be wary when a core value cited is a “… nimble adaptation to changing environments…”
American opera lovers are conservatives and prefer the old masterpieces they are not going to pay money to see a new opera with questionable music and liberal woke agenda.
I am an opera singer and former member of the US Army Chorus a unit of The US Army Band, Pershing’s Own. Military bands provide highly skilled musicians who produce excellent and appropriate music for diplomatic and ceremonial occasions adding dignity and gravitas to national events. They are hardly awash in money and are certainly not the reason for the deplorable lack of funding for the arts here. Surely you do not propose that we emulate the Egyptians, whose amateur Military Band embarrassingly massacres other countries National Anthems
The opera can be streamed online. It’s more of a musical theatre piece than an opera. I personally rather have San Diego Opera stick to what they do best- standard opera fare with internationally renowned singers.
Egypt’s amateur Military Band is an embarrassment. I don’t think e want to go down that road!