Pretty far, it turns out.
Over on Twitter, there's a lot of justifiable outrage over an interview by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who were the showrunners - basically, the guys in charge - of HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones for TV. The outrage is because Benioff and Weiss knew, and admit that they knew, nothing when they talked HBO into giving them an enormous budget to make GoT. I mean, they use phrasing like "the first year was an expensive course in TV" and "we didn't know anything about costuming."
That's right: they were given tens of millions of dollars because they made a good pitch and they were white guys. They had potential. And it's pretty typical for white guys to be hired for something on the basis of potential rather than existing, verifiable accomplishment.
If you don't believe me, please cite similarly-scaled TV shows where black men or black women or white women or Asian men or Asian women who had little or no experience got to be the showrunners.
It's worth noting that one of the most successful opera composers of the 21st century got his first commission on the basis of potential. That would be Jake Heggie, composer of Dead Man Walking, Moby-Dick, It's a Wonderful Life, and other operas.
When he got the commission for DMW, he was working at San Francisco Opera in the communications department. He'd written a bunch of good songs; he had the support of some well-known singers; he had musical training (of course); I'm pretty sure he was and is a good pianist. All of this is beyond what Benioff and Weiss had.
But first opera commissions typically go to composers who have experience with writing large-scale orchestral works, which I believe was not case with Heggie. He got that commission from a big-budget opera company because, on the basis of his songs, he was seen as having potential.
In the case of opera I wonder if "potential" for a composer has more to do with "potential" for raising money in order to mount a production than the idea of "potential" as being able to write something that is worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteJake was utterly unknown 20 years or so ago, outside a small circle of art song fans - which happened to include Frederica von Stade and a couple of other prominent singers. I think he had zero fund-raising potential.
ReplyDeleteThinking about the composers who've written for SFO in the last 25 years or so....I dunno, John Adams and Andre Previn, maybe Mark Adamo, but maybe not, ditto Tobias Picker. Probably not Marco Tuttino, composer of La Ciociara.