Earth to SF Opera: You Can Do Better Than This.

War Memorial Opera House

Photo by me

I've got email from SF Opera that I have to say is among the most ham-handed emails I've gotten recently from an arts organizations. Let me count the ways.

1. The top story is about legendary mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, who starred back in the 1980s as both Handel's and Vivaldi's Orlando. There's a link to an exclusive interview with her....and if you click that link, what you get is a PDF version of a story that must be running in the program for this month's Orlando (Handel).

Yes, right, a PDF. A PDF that is unreadable on a phone. A couple of years ago SFO, at I'm sure significant cost, redesigned their entire web site to be more mobile-friendly, but their email links to a PDF. C'mon, put it on a web page so that people can actually read this article.

2. "Family-friendly Hansel & Gretel": because there's nothing more friendly than a family with starving children whose mother sends them out to pick berries in a forest known to be occupied by a terrifying, child-imprisoning witch.

3. Nozze di Figaro is described as a side-splitting romp. People. Really, it's more complicated than that.

4. The next lines are "Prefer something a little more arresting? You can't go wrong with the opera that rocketed Puccini to success, Manon Lescaut." People. C'mon. You know which is the greater opera, and, yes, more arresting.

5. "The season starts with the most powerful love story of all time, Gounod's adaptation of Shakespeare's classic, Romeo and Juliet starring two of the brightest stars of our generation -- soprano Nadine Sierra and tenor Bryan Hymel. Don't miss out!"

Where to start. Whether this is the most powerful love story of all time is highly debatable, partly for cultural reasons - glorifying one European story over everything else in the world is just foolish and offensive. Also, because it's basically two headstrong adolescents doing a lot of stupid headstrong adolescent things and winding up dead as a result. We shouldn't be glorifying this particular story, however beautiful the language of Shakespeare's play.

Also, that sentence is so poorly written that it's saying that Gounod's version is the most powerful, etc. Hey, Gounod's nothing is the most powerful, etc. There are any number of operas that have more powerful and compelling love stories, with better music. I'll say Tristan und Isolde and Les Troyens and leave it at that. (It would be too perverse to mention Lulu, right?)

And what is that "brightest stars of our generation"? What generation is meant here?

Lastly, I believe I've already voiced my skepticism about who will sing Romeo in September.

6. There's a link to the upcoming Opera America conference, and an invitation to "check out some of Opera America's expert-led panels, etc." Well, I suppose one can somehow check them out from afar, because the cost of attending Opera America is really staggering: I looked this up a month ago, and the fee was something like $700. Make no mistake: this is a price for institutions and well-off individuals.

Oh, and: it's sold out. Yes, this email went out when the conference was already inaccessible even if you happened to have the ridiculous price of admission. Seriously, did the person who wrote this email know how expensive it was? This isn't something you can just attend casually!