A Bit More on Solidarity

My friends over at SorryWatch have a fine summary of what makes a good apology:

1. Use the words "I'm sorry."
2. Say what you are sorry for.
3. Acknowledge the effect of what you did.
4. Explain what you did, if need be.
5. Explain why it won't happen again.
6. State what you will do to make up for it.

I want to post a solidarity message, from Fireclay Tile, that gets beyond "we're in this together" far enough to acknowledge the specific problems with racism in their industry and their own complicity in the issues, complete with numbers about their workforce. They then go on to say "here are some specific things we are doing to try to make this better."

I think it's pretty good. I would not capitalize white as they do, though, and while I understand why they mention "a safer and truly equitable world for people of all colors," I would have kept the focus on Black Americans. Still, this is better than a lot of what I am seeing.

Our feelings mean nothing without action. 
There is no part of society that is not affected by anti-blackness and racism. In the design industry alone, only 2% of licensed architects in the U.S. are Black. In 2017, Interior Design degrees were awarded to a mere 6.3% of Black Americans (while 59.6% were awarded to White Americans). These disparities are a reflection of the lack of resources, mobility, and ultimately systemic oppression that affect Black Americans everywhere.

We will be the first to admit that change must start within our own company. While our team of 143 is largely BIPOC, only 2% are Black and 80% of our leadership is White.

We do not accept this. 
There is no going back to a “new normal”. It is up to us to reimagine a safer and truly equitable world for people of all colors. As Design Consultant Tiffanie White put it, “If we’re really Made in America, our organization must reflect the many faces of America, too.”

We’re getting to work. 
This week, we donated to Campaign Zero, a leading organization that aims to end police violence in America, and The Bail Project, which actively prevents incarceration and combats racial and economic disparities in the bail system.

We are also matching employee donations. We’ll continue to allocate funds to organizations that actively pursue justice for Black Americans and share them with our community.

In addition, we created a Diversity & Inclusion Committee and convened to organize a plan of action. Some of our action items included: 

• Implement training at every level of the organization to learn more about and dismantle the systemic racism in America
• Broaden our Fireclay Tile partnerships to include more Black Designers and amplify Black voices
• Evaluate hiring methods and revisit our employee handbook to make diversity an explicit priority
• Seek out diversity consultants to build an organization that is representative of our country and core values
• Research opportunities for tile contributions to help rebuild Black communities across the country 

This is just the beginning. We are actively working to back-up our actions with research and serious self-reflection. We will continue to keep you posted on our progress so that you can keep us accountable—we cannot do this alone.

While our road to equality will be long and imperfect, that’s how we know it is a journey worth pursuing. We hope you will join us. 

"Solidarity," etc.

So I've gotten vast numbers of emails, from musical organizations, museums, commercial enterprises, etc. this week, all making attempts to address racism and show solidarity with the protests that are quite rightly sweeping the United States following the murder of George Floyd.

First off, the protestors are out there taking very significant risks. They are at increased risk of exposure to COVID-19 and they're at great risk of police brutality. There are lots of films of police violence directed at peaceful, nonthreatening protestors; if you have any need to see these, Greg Doucette is keeping a running tally of links to them.

If you watch these videos, keep in mind that a lot of what you see will be video of cops beating up white people. Cops beat up, murder, and abuse Black people every day. It's only part of the ongoing systemic violence that Black Americans are subjected to. Imagine living with that.

If you're white, your skin color protects you from a lot of that violence, and furthermore, you probably were raised to believe that the police were there to protect you. No, really, they are not; you just have been lucky. Anyone who has been sexually assaulted will be happy to tell you how uninterested the cops are in either protecting you or properly investigating such assaults.

Getting back to all the solidarity emails: I have been deleting them as fast as I can. In some cases, they are coming from businesses and organizations that are at least donating to protest-related and Black-community-supporting organizations, and I'm glad to see the donations.

In most cases, all I can say to these organizations is, put your damn money where your mouth is, and I mean through your actions rather than your words. Talk is easy, action is harder. You could start by asking yourselves these questions:

1. When did you last perform a work by a Black person? How many are scheduled for your upcoming season? (Whenever that might be, I know, I know.)
2. When did you last commission a work by a Black person?
3. What's your audience like?
4. Can we see photos of your board and administration?
5. Can we see photos of the last decade of conductors? And your orchestra? Your actors, if a theater company? Your dancers, if a dance company? Your singers? Your instrumental soloists? Your directors? Your choreographers? Your stage and backstage crews?
6. Do you have processes in place for dealing with racist behavior inside your company? Are these codified in union agreements?
7. What are you doing to fix the issues you see when you give honest answers to the above questions?

UPDATES: 1. This post has gotten a couple of hundred views, and I want to note that I think the questions were inspired by a post I saw on Twitter.....and I can't find it, which I would like to do so as to give proper credit. If you see such a post, please do point me at it.)
2. Edited to make it clear anyone can be a victim of sexual assault. I should not have phrased it as I dd initially.

Friday Photo

Little Dipper School

The Jetsons, Title Sequence

30 Cannon St., London

May, 2014

Looking at the screen shot and photo above, you might think that the Little Dipper School was modeled on 30 Cannon, a striking Grade II listed London office building. But you'd be wrong!

The Jetsons animated TV show was in production for three years starting in 1962. 30 Cannon was built in the early 1970s. The influence might have gone the other way,

Ars Minerva Postpones Messalina

Email from the intrepid company Ars Minerva, following a statement of solidarity with those working for racial justice:

Unfortunately, due to the current Covid-19 pandemic that is still wreaking havoc in our lives and preventing the solace and joy that live artistic performances bring to us,  we have made the difficult decision to postpone our opera production of Messalina from October 2020 to early 2021.

WHEN & WHEREFebruary 12th, 13th and 14th 2021at ODC THEATER3153 17 St, San Francisco.

Ars Minerva is a small company, but we are determined to get through this difficult time with courage, strength and your support. We believe in the uniqueness and beauty of our mission; we believe in the wonderful artists we have the privilege to collaborate with; and we believe in our enthusiastic, supportive and dedicated audience. Ars Minerva will go forward.

Please stay tuned! Soon we will announce a small series of online events and concerts; and very soon, we will meet again in person!

No video or recording will ever replace live performing arts.  This situation is only temporary, and we are impatient to be on stage again and to share with our audience what we love the most: live performance.

Thank you very much for your understanding and support.

The Shape of Things to Come: SFSFF Postpones

Castro Theater

May, 2019

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which had postponed this year's festival from May to November.....has just postponed again, to their usual May slot, for 2021. 

Let Me Take a Guess Here.

Lincoln Center Plaza Fountain

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Here are some quotations from The NY Times article on the Met fall season cancellation:

The cancellation poses a major threat to the company. “The Met’s financial position was somewhat fragile before the pandemic,” Mr. Gelb said. “This has increased the economic risks significantly. On the other hand, it has become a rallying cry to the Met, and to its supporters, of the urgent need to address it and come up with solutions. Because nobody wants the Met to fail.”

Mr. Gelb added that he was already thinking about how a post-pandemic Met might change. “The future of the Met is going to be very different,” he said.

Later in the article:

But Mr. Gelb said that the Met will have to think and act differently in the future if it is to survive. “It’s really going to ultimately require an economic reset of the Met,” he said, declining to elaborate.

If I were reading the above, I might think Gelb is considering breaking or renegotiating the labor contracts, or even busting the unions, however that might be done. There might not be money to pay people just now, but there's surely money for lawyers.

Geez, Met. What is Wrong With You?

A tweet from a singer I have a lot of respect for makes it clear that the Metropolitan Opera did not bother to tell artists about the cancellation of the fall season before publishing the cancellation to its home page and sending out messages on social media.

Is there something wrong with you, Met, that you couldn't be bothered to contact individual artists with this news? This was Peter Gelb's news to break and he screwed it up.....badly.

The Shape of Things to Come: A Twitter Poll

Here are the results of my informal Twitter poll, in which 84 people answered the question "When will U.S. musical organizations be able to put on in-person performances?"

September, 2020:       9.5%
January, 2021:          15.5%
June, 2021:               29.8%
September, 2021:     45.2%

So, 75% of the people answering the poll felt June, 2021 - a year from now - or later. Maybe the Metropolitan Opera is being overly optimistic with its projected January, 2021, re-opening.

Metropolitan Opera Cancels Fall Season

Lincoln Center Plaza Fountain

March, 2018

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

A huge shock, though in some sense not actually a surprise: the Metropolitan Opera has canceled its fall season and announced changes to the spring season. All sympathies to the hundreds of artists affected by this: singers (soloists and chorus), orchestra members, directors, designers, stage crew, dressers, costume makers, makeup artists, wig designers, librarians, and anyone I've missed. All sympathies to other Met employees affected as well.

The link above is to Michael Cooper's article in The NY Times. I do not yet have a press release, but the Met home page has an update as follows:

Based on current information regarding the ongoing health crisis, we have made the difficult decision to cancel the first few months of the 2020–21 season. We now expect to re-open our doors and welcome audiences back to the Met on December 31, 2020, with a special gala performance, the details of which will be shared at a later date. Please take a moment to watch the message below from General Manager Peter Gelb.

Below the Gelb video:

Because of the lack of time available for technical preparations, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Don Giovanni will be performed in revivals of the Julie Taymor and Michael Grandage productions, respectively, rather than the previously announced new stagings by Simon McBurney and Ivo van Hove. These new productions, as well as the previously scheduled fall new stagings of Verdi’s Aida and Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel, will be rescheduled for later seasons. Van Hove’s Met-premiere production of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, conducted by Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, remains on the schedule as planned. Maestro Nézet-Séguin will conduct a total of 26 performances over the course of the revamped season, including performances of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, and Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette.

In February, when the house was previously scheduled to be dark, there will instead be additional performances of Puccini’s La Bohème, Bizet’s Carmen, and Verdi’s La Traviata. Soprano Angel Blue and tenor Joseph Calleja will lead the cast in La Bohème; mezzo-soprano Varduhi Abrahamyan will sing the title role of Carmen, with tenors Roberto Alagna and Russell Thomas as Don José and soprano Susanna Phillips as Micaela; and tenors Dmytro Popov and Stephen Costello will share the role of Alfredo in La Traviata. For scheduling reasons, the revival of Berg’s Lulu, originally planned to open March 5, has been canceled, and will be replaced by additional performances of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, featuring soprano Brenda Rae, who is switching from the title role of Lulu to her Met role debut as Rosina, with bass-baritone Adam Plachetka as Figaro. Tickets to these newly added February performances will go on sale to the general public on Monday, June 22, and further casting will be announced in the coming weeks.

In anticipation of changing audience expectations, the Met has moved up its evening curtain times to 7 p.m. whenever possible and shortened the running time of Handel’s Giulio Cesare from four-and-a-half hours with two intermissions to three-and-a-half hours with one intermission.

The shortened season will now feature seven Live in HD movie-theater presentations: Die Zauberflöte, Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, Don Giovanni, Dead Man Walking, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Verdi’s Nabucco, and Bellini’s Il Pirata. The three HD transmissions scheduled for the fall will be replaced by encore showings of past presentations of the same titles: Verdi’s Aida and Il Trovatore and Beethoven’s Fidelio.  

Ouch. The biggest personal pain for me is the replacement of Lulu with The Barber of Seville. I had hoped to see that Lulu. Well, at least Frau is still on the HD schedule.

Museum Mondays

Detail of a painting: the Virgin Mary and Christ, surrounded by angels and cherubim. The cherubim are winged heads.

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

August, 2015

Something You Can Do

UPDATED:  April 6, May 31, 2020

If a concert or other performance I'm planning to see gets canceled, I am not particularly going to suffer. But the people who would be performing, most of whom are independent contractors, aren't going to get paid if they don't perform. One artist I follow mentioned that if X is canceled, there goes a very high percentage of their income for the year. Multiply this by the thousands of musicians, dancers, and actors out there, and you can see a catastrophe developing.

There are things you can do.

• Make donations to organizations you care about, in the amount of the tickets you would be buying and donations you would be making, even if you're not seeing the shows.
• Write letters urging these organizations to pay the artists anyway.
• Urge your friends to donate.
• Find funds that are raising money to support the performing artists who are going to take this kind of financial hit, and donate to them. 
• Find other direct ways to support the artists you care about.

Here are the organized relief efforts that I know of:

• AGMA's fund 
• The Actors Fund
• MusiCares Financial and Addiction Recovery Assistance
• Opera San José Artists and Musicians Relief Fund
• Musicians Foundation
• Merola Artists Emergency Fund, for recent Merola Fellows
• New Music Solidarity Fund, for new/creative/improvised music freelancers (accepting donations but has closed applications for now)
• Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants (ENDS TODAY, May 31)

ALSO: a Google Doc of resources for arts freelancers.

If you know of others, please let me know, with a comment, a tweet, a Twitter DM, etc.

Also: donate money to food banks. And demand a better social safety net, including universal health care, paid sick leave, improved cash payment supports, a rollback of cuts to SNAP, and decent housing for all.

Friday Photo

Fruitvale District Sunset

September, 2013

Coming Up in Streaming at SFO

War Memorial Opera House

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

I've got email from San Francisco Opera about their next streaming, and it includes the following text:

We’re delighted you joined us for Jake Heggie’s thrilling Moby-Dick. But stay tuned: Next week’s offering boasts one of the biggest names in opera today. Past transgressions come to light as we broadcast a bel canto triumph seen only once on our stage. 

Get ready for rebellion, murder and one of Italy’s most infamous families as part of our next streaming title, available starting Saturday at 10am Pacific!

The opera is Lucrezia Borgia, and I think it's great that they're highlighting Michael Fabiano's appearance. He sang gorgeously in his company debut and has been terrific in everything I have seen since then.

Prognostications

[Two large question marks]

Further to previous postings (here and here) about the 2020-21 performing arts season, two points:

• Decisions by the state and local governments in your location will be important factors in whether there are performances and at what scale.
• For fall, 2020 performances, expect announcements, in the form of go-aheads or cancellations, to start around early to mid-July.

If you have guesses or theories or suspicions or gut feelings about this, and you have a Twitter account, please feel free to vote in my Twitter poll on when there will be musical performances.

Memorial Day, 2020

[The post is a photograph of the NY Times's front page from Sunday, May 24, 2020, listing hundreds of names of those who've died from COVID-19. The headline reads U.S. DEATHS NEAR 100,000, AN INCALCULABLE LOSS.]

Will There Be a Fall, 2020, Performing Arts Season?

After the mass cancellation of live musical performances from mid-March through (at least) early August, everyone is wondering what's going to happen come September, when large performing arts organizations typically open their season. So far, the signs are not good.

From London, the Southbank Centre, home of Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room, says that it  might not be able to reopen at all without large subsidies. The Southbank Centre expects that the current best case is that it resumes presenting events - some 3,500 annually - in April, 2021.

In New York, the Broadway League announced that theaters there will be shut through at least September 6, 2020.

Last week's announcement from the War Memorial Performing Arts Center, affecting San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet, postponed the seat replacement project that had been scheduled for Spring, 2021, to allow for more performing opportunities for SFB and SFO. That implies that there might not be the expected performances in fall, 2020.

There's an analysis at Parterre Box, by Dawn Fatale, that's worth reading; as always, read Drew McManus at Adaptistration for solid insight into the issues. The NY Times' arts writers interviewed presenting organizations.

At a minimum, it's going to be an extremely difficult season for big performing arts orgs.

The Cardinal Sin

Okay, maybe it's not the worst, but it's pretty bad: your organization provides a contact email on your web site, in an email, or on a brochure, but you don't reply to email sent to the address.

Friends, Romans, arts organizations: don't do this.

It's like lying to your patrons, by implying that the email address is monitored. Your patrons buy tickets and make donations to your organization. They are people you want to keep happy. If they have a question or comment or even a complaint, they deserve an answer from you.

You undermine their trust by not doing this, and you might piss them off enough that they reduce their donations or ticket purchases, or stop entirely. (An organization I donated to for years and years didn't respond to two direct communications I sent them, one of which included a donation. My third letter got a perfunctory apology from its executive director, the addressee of the second letter, and I have not donated since.)

So: if you have a contact email, make sure you read and reply to comments from people who take the time to contact you. It's a great way to earn the trust of the people who care about your organization.

Museum Mondays

Ivory Book Covers

Victoria & Albert Museum

London, November, 2019

Friday Photo

Chrysler Building, NYC

November, 2013

Ars Minerva Event (Friday, Mary 22)!

Ars Minerva is having an event on Friday, May22, 2020, on Zoom. It's from 3 to 3:30 p.m., Pacific Time. Joe McClinton and Céline Ricci will talk about Forgotten Operas and Operas Translation.

Here's the Zoom link:
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/73200724209?pwd=dkxiRnRwUHd0bDVYZnJiNzBBQTZXUT09

If you don't have Zoom yet, you will need to do a bit of setup, so click that link 10 or 15 minutes early.

West Edge Postpones

West Edge Opera did a lot to prepare to perform this summer, even if it had to be in some unusual form, but now, like other companies in the US, they've postponed performing, with the planned 2020 festival moved to next year:

Facing Covid-19 Concerns, West Edge Opera Postpones West Edge Festival Until 2021

"The safety of our artists, our staff, and our audiences must come first and it’s now clear that the risks outweigh the potential for reward." - General Director Mark Streshinsky

OAKLAND, CA, May 21, 2020 - General Director Mark Streshinsky and Music Director Jonathan Khuner have announced that West Edge Opera will postpone its annual summer festival until the 2021 season. Their productions of Katya Kabanova, Eliogabalo, and Elizabeth Cree, originally scheduled for July 25th through August 9th, 2020, will instead be presented starting July 24th of 2021.

"We are disappointed, but not devastated" reports Streshinsky. "New research has shown that it is nearly impossible to rehearse an opera with the level of safety and confidence we would need to feel comfortable. We had been holding out hope for a sharp reduction in cases or a medical breakthrough, but none of that seems to be happening in time."

"We're thrilled that almost the entire cast of our shows are available next year and are looking forward to creating the productions that we intended, without the uncertainty and other challenges that 2020 introduced."

According to Streshinsky, ticket holders for this summer will be asked to choose between a refund and donating the cost of the ticket towards the artists. "When we first realized that postponement was a possibility, making sure that our artists were paid was our top priority. It is unlikely we will be able to realize their full fees, but 100% of the ticket revenue donated will go straight to the artists and crew. We hope that our patrons back us in our mission to make certain this amazing team of talent is recognized and supported."

For more information and a full statement issued to the public, visit the West Edge Website at:

http://www.westedgeopera.org/articles/2020/5/20/statement2020

Long Beach Opera's 2021 Season

A great season next year at LBO:

Long Beach Opera 2021 “Season of Solidarity” Programmed by Yuval Sharon, Interim Artistic Advisor    The Lighthouse by Peter Maxwell Davies Directed & Designed by Andreas Mitisek Conducted by Stephen Karr   January 23, 30, 31   Les Enfants Terribles by Philip Glass Directed by James Darrah    Conducted by Christopher Rountree  March 20, 27, 28   Pierrot Lunaire  / Voices From the Killing Jar By Arnold Schoenberg / Kate Soper Directed by Danielle Agami & Zoe Aja Moore Conducted by Jenny Wong   April 17, 18   Comet / Poppea Composed by George Lewis and Claudio Monteverdi Libretto by Douglas Kearney Directed and conceived by Yuval Sharon June 20, 26, 27 Separate Release with details on Comet/Poppea here Season Announcement Video here I've seen The Lighthouse and Les Enfants Terriblest, both at Opera Parallele, and they are both terrific pieces. (The Glass is much better than the film it's based on!) Pretty great lineup (composers, directors, conductors) for the entire season. Be there or be square for Long Beach Opera's 2021 season!

War Memorial Opera House Seat Replacement Project

War Memorial Opera House Interior

December, 2019

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

My post last week about the opera house seat replacement project turns out not to have been too far off base. I just received this from SF Opera, over Matthew Shilvock's signature:

I hope this email finds you and your loved ones safe and healthy.

I am writing today to share an update on the War Memorial Opera House seat upgrade project.

As you know, due to the current COVID-19 health crisis, both San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet have had to cancel the remainder of their 2019–20 seasons. 

In looking ahead to the seat upgrade project scheduled for summer 2021, both companies have been concerned about the additional performance loss in 2021 needed to undertake the project. After much discussion, the Opera, Ballet, and the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center have agreed to reschedule the final phase of the War Memorial Opera House seat replacement installation originally scheduled for May–August 2021. This rescheduling will allow for as much performance activity as possible in the Opera House once it is safe to re-open to the public.

While this news is disappointing, I want you to know that all three organizations are dedicated to completing this project in a timely manner. We are in weekly conversations about next steps and, while discussions are ongoing and preliminary at this time, I am hopeful that we will find a solution that benefits us all. I will keep you updated as soon as we have news to share.

Thank you as always for your support and understanding. 

With gratitude,

As I read this, one implication is that they're expecting the fall season to be truncated in some way. As ever, I am sad, but not surprised. 

Museum Mondays

Lobby

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

May, 2016

If I Were the SF War Memorial and Performing Arts Center....

Interior of the War Memorial Opera House

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

December, 2019

.....I'd be thinking about re-arranging certain scheduled operations taking place in the next year at the opera house.

• San Francisco Opera fall and spring seasons (September 11 to December 6, 2020; April 25 to May 16, 2021)
• San Francisco Ballet winter-spring season (dates not yet announced, but let's try December 7, 2020 to May, 2021, if they can run simultaneously with SFO)
• War Memorial Opera House seating replacement project (May - August 2021)

The opera house seats around 3200, and during performances, there's an orchestra of 40 to 90, plus the on-stage performers, plus lighting, stage, costume, makeup, hair staff, plus ushers, plus people selling stuff at the concession stands and in the gift shop.

Let me guess that replacing the seats would take many fewer people than putting on performances and also let me conjecture that construction projects might be okayed at the state level before gatherings of thousands.

So I'd be on the phone to find out whether the seats (and maybe new carpeting?) could be delivered early. I'd be trying to figure out whether September to December, 2020, could be dedicated to replacing seats, with live performances starting up in January....and running through next summer, to allow SFO and SFB to perform as much of their seasons as possible.

This would be much easier for SFB than for SFO; the ballet is a repertory company of dancers, not a company that is highly dependent on visiting artists, most of whom are here for six weeks to rehearse and perform one work, then leave. (This wasn't always the case in opera; look at the Met archives from the 1900s to 1930s and you see singers here for multiple roles performed over several months.) But everyone's schedules are being disrupted for the next six to eighteen months, so maybe opera companies could find some way to work together on this. Or maybe everything can be recast with singers who don't have out-of-town engagements, or who have workable openings in their own schedules. Philip Skinner in a bunch of leading roles would suit me just fine, for example.