Tonight, the 2017 Opera Theatre of Saint Louis starts with a perennial favorite in opera-land,
Madama Butterfly, or
Madame Butterfly, as sung in English translation. (For the record, all OTSL productions are sung in English.) The soprano in the title role in OTSL's production is Rena Harms, who is Caucasian. That's actually quite standard practice, given the realities of the demographics of opera singers. While 3CM the loser doesn't have numbers on hand, just from eyeballing rosters here and there, most opera singers tend to be Caucasian. That's no big surprise, since opera is fundamentally a European art form.
Plus, just from general upbringing, most Asian-American families don't really encourage their kids to go into the arts as careers. It may be a stereotype that Asian-American parents like to push their kids into professions like medicine, or law, business, or science or engineering, but there are reasons for that stereotype. So accordingly, even though you'll find lots of Asian-American kids playing in (reasonably affluent, and generally suburban) high school orchestras, there aren't many Asian-American opera singers out there.
The local classical critic, Sarah Bryan Miller, had
this article in the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch last Friday which addressed this issue, of non-Asians singing the relatively few Asian roles in standard repertoire operas, in the context of the "yellowface" controversy in the theatrical arts. Miller quotes OTSL artistic director James Robinson on the general question of trying to find Asian sopranos who can sing the role of Butterfly:
‘“A soprano can be many types of things. It’s not as if you can just pick up the phone and say, ‘OK, I need an Asian soprano — whether she’s Japanese, Chinese, Filipino or Korean — who can sing Cio-Cio-San.’’
‘Singers, he points out, “have to go through training like athletes do. You can’t just say one athlete can do everything. Nor can one singer do everything."’
Last weekend's SNLC mentioned Renee Fleming, who is certainly a case that illustrates Robinson's point. One of Fleming's signature roles was the Marschallin in Richard Strauss' opera
Der Rosenkavalier. But AFAIK, RF has never sang the much more vocally stress-inducing soprano roles of Salome and Elektra in the operas of those titles, nor has she taken on the big Richard Wagner roles like Brunnhilde in
The Ring of the Nibelung operas. In other words, Fleming was smart enough to know what was good for her vocally, and didn't abuse or push her voice in roles that didn't fit her. (No idea if RF ever sang the role of Butterfly in a full production, although she's certainly sung the opera's biggest hit, 'Un bel di'.)
Back to the main topic: when it comes to giving As-Am singes a chance, to its tremendous credit, OTSL has given As-Am singers (as well as Af-Am opera singers) many opportunities. Miller notes this as follows:
"OTSL has a longstanding commitment to diverse casting, putting nonwhite singers into a wide variety of traditionally Caucasian roles. Last season, Korean sopranos sang the leading roles of Mimi in Puccini’s La Bohème [Hae Ji Chang] and Zerbinetta [So Young Park] in Strauss’ Ariadne on Naxos” while singers of many ethnicities portrayed South Asians in Jack Perla’s Shalimar the Clown. Next year brings an Asian-American tenor and a South Korean baritone in the starring roles of Alfredo and Germont in Verdi’s La Traviata."
Given that opera is inherently "unreal" in terms of overall drama anyway, it's generally not a big deal to do "color-blind" casting in opera. If you see African-American or Asian-American faces in the Metropolitan Opera chorus in an opera set in Elizabethan England, medieval Scotland, or Renaissance Italy, in literalist dramatic terms, of course, that's nonsense, because it's historically impossible. (Taking the flip side, having a primarily Caucasian chorus for a production of Turandot, set in China....well, 'turandot' is fair play) But, taking a line from Miller's article out of her original context, in the context of this particular point in this diary, when it comes to opera:
"....realism is a nonstarter and having the right voice type for a role is the primary concern..."
Or, as Robinson puts it similarly:
"Opera is all artifice, with people walking around singing. It’s highly emotional; that’s not real life. I think we have to look at it that way."
As it turns out, the Asian-American tenor that Miller mentioned as being cast as Alfredo in La Traviata for next season is Geoffrey Agpalo, a Filipino-American tenor (and a very fine singer, BTW). Back in 2015, he sang the role of a factory workshop foreman in Tobias Picker’s Emmeline, which was set in 19th-century New England. Again, historically not possible that you would have Filipinos (or Filipinas, for that matter) in 19th-century New England as business staff, but since Agpalo wore the stage duds and carried himself with such authority, no one in the audience cared. Agpalo did another ethnic switch in 2016, switching to a Hindi role, as the sleazy village schoolteacher Gopinath Razdan in the opera Shalimar the Clown. He’ll do the switch back this summer, in the role of Jim Casy in Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Grapes of Wrath. Again, Jim Casy is a white role, to be sure, since we're starting in Dust Bowl-era Oklahoma, and Jim Casy is definitely not an Asian-American / Pacific Islander ethnic character. But again, given Agpalo's quality as a singer, I don't expect OTSL audiences to have any issues with his ethnicity in the role.
In the previous production of Madame Butterfly at OTSL, back in 2008, a terrific (and Caucasian) soprano, Kelly Kaduce, sang and acted the title role fantastically. Interestingly, the role of the American consul, Sharpless, that summer had the Af-Am baritone Lester Lynch in that role. In that historical era, roughly the latter part of the 19th century / early part of the 20th century, having a Af-Am government diplomat is pretty unlikely, to put it mildly. But because Lynch sang and acted the role so well, his ethnicity didn't matter at all. Self the loser isn't at the OTSL performance tonight, but I don't doubt that Harms will do a very fine job as Butterfly. It'll be interesting to read the review later, in light of Miller's preview article. We shall see.
With that, time for the standard SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories for the week.....