The Operatic State

Cultural Policy and the Opera House

Ruth Bereson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN:
  9780415868297
  9780415278515
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134469949
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The Operatic State examines the cultural, financial, and political investments that have gone into the maintenance of opera and opera houses in Europe, the USA and Australia. It analyses opera's nearly immutable form throughout wars, revolutions, and vast social changes throughout the world. Bereson argues that by legitimising the power of the state through universally recognised ceremonial ritual, opera enjoys a privileged status across three continents, often to the detriment of popular and indigenous art forms.

1

INTRODUCING THE POWER BROKERS

If financial support by the state is the prime yardstick of importance, then opera must certainly be the most important of the arts. Where the arts enjoy considerable state subsidy, opera receives the most significant share. This is true not only in countries such as Italy, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, where there is a long history of opera, but also in newer countries, both in Europe and outside of it, where there is no indigenous operatic tradition. Finland, for example, opened its new opera house in Helsinki in 1993. It has already by far the largest state grant of any arts organisation in Finland.¹ In Australia opera receives 26.9% of total government arts funding, the second largest group to receive funding after music companies and orchestras. Opera accounted for A

23.23 million, with Opera Australia (the national company) receiving the greatest amount of funding from government at A

10 million.² In the United States private foundations supported by government in the form of generous tax subsidies support the Metropolitan Opera, and the National Endowment for the Arts contributed US

1.27 million for the financial year 2001, up from US

1.25 million in 2000.³ In China opera is soon to become a major state-supported art form, as witnessed by the funding of new opera houses in Shanghai and Beijing. The new Beijing Opera is already projected to cost 4.7 billion yuan⁴ or over half a billion dollars.

When this kind of weighting is discussed, it is usually explained by politicians and funding bodies as if opera is, self-evidently, the superior art, somehow rising above the narrower traditions of drama, music and dance, from which it borrows, to form a whole which is, seemingly, much greater than its parts.

Yet this account does not go far to explain the extraordinary fact that governments, intent upon curtailing public expenditure elsewhere or otherwise indifferent to the arts, will go on supporting opera, and that companies will sponsor opera, and seek benefits from that sponsorship, even when they neglect the other arts. Nor does it explain why in Britain, where the argument that opera is consistently underfunded compared to continental Europe is regularly used, the Royal Opera House should be amongst the first recipients of national lottery funds and to date have received the largest share of any arts organisation.⁵ Furthermore, it does not explain why opera is supported by governments which, it might be imagined, would consider the art and its associations antithetical to their political vocabulary. In 1793, for example, at the height of the terror of the French Revolution, the Paris Commune supported the view that the opera be maintained, as did Napoleon Bonaparte, who closed the doors of other theatres.⁶ Neither does it explain why, immediately after the Russian Revolution in 1917, the new rulers of the USSR determined to keep the Bolshoi Opera House intact, while subjecting all the other arts – drama, painting, music and literature – to rigorous reappraisal.⁷ Nor does it explain why the first socialist government in France since the 1930s should decide in 1982 that the design and construction of a new opera house was of supreme national importance, developing it under the aegis of a major presidential project.⁸ Nor why a left-wing Australian State government should decide that an opera house was so essential to post-war Sydney that an international competition be set up to create it and a source of funding generated and designed specifically in order to finance it.⁹ Finally, it does not explain why in the year 2000 the Chinese government should choose to raze a central part of Beijing in order to construct a French-designed opera house. In every instance, the powers in question attributed to opera a significance much greater than that traditionally invested in an entertainment, a cultural institution, or a venue. These operas and many others performed the function of national showcases representing a physical demonstration of each of these states’ political, social and economic status or coming of age, through the maintenance or construction of a cultural monument.

Even more critically, however, the view that the opera is just another of the arts does not begin to account for the extraordinary way in which the history of opera, and the grand opera houses, is intermingled with the history of power brokers, most particularly with the rituals and public displays by which those who hold the reins of power demonstrate and reinforce their authority. In times of change, it is the opera, both the institution and the house, which remains constant, while constitution, governments, ministries, the stock exchange¹⁰ and even the church are in flux. This is most pertinently in evidence in France, where over the past three centuries the state has veered dramatically from absolute monarchy to republic, empire, different forms of constitutional monarchy and democratic enfranchisement, yet where opera as designed by a monarch has been ever present, a constant in a fluctuating society. We see too in the perceived home of opera, Italy, which until the nineteenth century was an agglomeration of states, that one of the unifying symbols was that of the opera house, whether it be the opera house of Palermo, where Garibaldi made his first great declaration, or the boxes of La Scala in Austrian Milan or San Carlo in Spanish Naples, so frequented by Stendhal and finally by Vittorio Emanuele and Mussolini, or La Fenice in Venice, the domain of Lord Byron’s trysts. Although its meaning was adapted in terms of superficial changes in society and taste, at no time was its role fundamentally challenged. In changing political contexts its meaning remained constant.

Again and again, successful revolutions, victories in battle, peace agreements and national commemorations are celebrated in the opera house. One spectacular example of this was on 19 June 1815 on the occasion of the return of the King of Naples to the ‘brilliantly lit’ theatre of San Carlo, which had been constructed by his father.

The king was moved to tears; and when his bust appeared on the stage amid the banners of all the Allied Powers, the theatre resounded with applause and continued cheering for half an hour.¹¹

But this kind of event is not relegated to the annals of history; one need only look towards the opera house in twentieth century Europe to find many other examples, as opera houses were turned into venues of state celebration by those whose aim it was to symbolically reinforce their power. Indeed, the liberation of Milan was announced from the stage of La Fenice in Venice during a performance of Madam Butterfly, and the liberation of Hanoi by The People’s Executive Committee was declared from the balcony of the opera. Göring and Hitler understood the importance of such practices well, as did Lord Harewood in planning the opening of a new English opera, Gloriana, to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, by looking at the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and bedecking the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with all the right paraphernalia for the occasion but not taking into account the ‘old practices’ of his audience. Certainly the use of opera houses by the power brokers makes over time for unusual historical alliances for the only element linking them is that they have a pre-eminent role in their society and that they act out their power on the operatic stage.

Plainly, opera is not merely the best supported of the arts, it is also a symbol of the continuity of governments and, most important of all, an integral part of state ceremonial. Like the grandest form of monarchy or religious rite, the operatic institution is an environment of complex ceremonial traditions, as expressed by the kind of audience which traditionally attends it and the monumental architecture which houses it. Opera is more than a composite art, or a social experience, it is a state ceremony and has important political consequences, giving it wider and richer significance than the other ‘arts’. In this way, opera can be seen to represent the quintessence of the establishment arts and patrician culture.

The intention of this book is to demonstrate that opera has performed the function of legitimising the power of the state through the use of ceremonial ritual since its beginnings as entertainments performed in the ducal palaces of Italy in the sixteenth century. These events served to support the spatial hierarchy of the audiences’ seating structure and contributed to demonstrating the power and glory of the court. In the present day these conventions have been adopted by and translated into the terminology of the modern democratic state. The Australian cultural historian Donald Horne highlights the ritualistic role which the British monarchy plays out with its coaches, uniforms, palaces, ceremonies and jewels.¹² Such performance is operatic in dimension, and these legitimations are in fact played out by all states with or without a constitutional monarch. It is this physical and functional iconography that the state makes use of which is worthy of consideration.

Opera houses constructed today sometimes disguise the codified structures of old. For example, in France the new ‘people’s opera’, Opéra Bastille, was designed with the specific intent of increasing accessibility to the house and creating an equality of distribution within it,¹³ and the house itself was situated in a popular quarter of the city, thus appearing to take into account the precepts of contemporary cultural vocabulary. Nonetheless, although the Bastille district is steeped in strong political, republican and popular historical associations, the new opera house reinforces, in the same way that all French opera houses have done, spatial configurations which denote ranks of hierarchy. One enters the house by ascending a massive staircase framed by a traditional arch. Certainly, there are no boxes in this new house and the aisles are kept to a minimum, thus divesting the traditional audience of certain privileges formalised in the structure of older houses. Yet its hierarchical configuration is well demonstrated on evenings when the opera house is used as a venue for a state event. The aristocracy and bourgeoisie of old may have been transformed into corporate clients by the 1980s, but the head of state has not been divested of his rank and the ceremonial duties which accompany it. Thus, one could witness, at the inauguration of the house on 13 July 1989, on the eve of the bicentennial of the French Revolution, the Presidents of France and the United States, representing democratic leadership of both the right and the left, seated in the central row of seats in the first level of tiers, the traditional position for the Royal Box. They are placed on the first balcony and receded, facing the stage directly, so that the audience is obliged to turn 180 degrees to pay its respects (often in the form of applause accompanied by fanfares, or the playing of the national anthem), as occurs on the occasion of state ceremonial presentations such as galas, before turning to the ceremony of the stage. But this kind of opening is not confined to the corridors of the European power brokers. The New York Times described the opening of the Lincoln Center in 1966 in the same register as that of European opera houses:

It was also an affair of state. Three boxes had been converted into a state box, in which sat the wife of the President of the United States, the secretary of defense, the ambassador to the United Nations, and President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines and his wife, the tiara-topped Imelda.¹⁴

And in 1974, at the opening of the Sydney Opera House by Queen Elizabeth II, we find yet again the ‘tiara-topped Imelda’. On such occasions, attendance and spatial segregation are no more democratic or popular in form or meaning today than they have ever been.

Opera in all senses of the word was not merely a backdrop for state ceremonial but sometimes took on an acute political dimension. It is no accident that establishment figures were often targets of assassination attempts at opera houses. In Sweden, for example, in 1792 the reigning monarch Gustavus was shot in the opera house; in 1820 the heir apparent to the French throne was fatally stabbed there; and Napoleon III survived an anarchist’s bomb on his way to the opera. The young Queen Victoria chose to mark her successful escape from an assassination attempt by appearing the following evening in full regalia at the opera. The opera manager Benjamin Lumley describes the scene:

Far more interesting in its way … was the appearance of the Queen in the theatre (Her Majesty’s) on the 31st May, being the evening after an insane attempt upon her life. The visit of Her Majesty had been expected. The opera house was filled in every part to overflowing; and on the entrance of the Queen the expression of enthusiasm was electrical. The whole audience rose to its feet, and one loud deep burst of congratulatory applause burst forth from the vast concourse of human beings. Hats and handkerchiefs were waved. Many ladies sobbed aloud. During this demonstration the Queen stood at the front of her box and curtsied repeatedly, while Prince Albert bowed in reply to the deafening congratulations. The audience would not allow the opera to proceed till the ‘National Anthem’ had been sung. … At the words ‘Scatter her enemies’, in particular, the most deafening acclamations arose, and one cheer more was raised when Her Majesty resumed her seat in the corner of the box.¹⁵

The opera house was a fitting arena for the monarch to demonstrate permanence and power. The opera houses in turn were sometimes closed by governments as precautionary measures if political ferment seemed too great, and their symbolic importance seemed likely to attract trouble. Sometimes the entire theatre was razed, as was the case under the orders of Louis XVIII after the assassination of the Duc de Berry, the intended successor to the crown of the ailing monarch.

Such events raise an inevitable question: how can an institution such as the opera at one and the same time represent certain formalised traditions which are steeped in the prescribed behaviour of past social and political systems, as well as assimilate a new meaning – that is, the arena of the enfranchised, the public which believes it has access to culture as a right? Furthermore, is this paradox compatible within the current subvention structures and is opera really competing on the same terms as the other arts for the same pounds, francs, dollars, deutschmarks, yuan, dong, roubels or kroners? In other words, is ‘opera’ an art in the sense that contemporary dance, theatre and painting are ‘arts’?

It is highly significant to this study that opera houses so closely resemble each other physically. Until the nineteenth century they contained iconographic references displaying classical conventions: porticos, grand staircases, allegorical sculptures, traditionally significant colour schemes of gold, crimson and blue, the private spaces of boxes and the more public foyers. The buildings themselves were of monumental design, resembling temples and palaces. Writers throughout the centuries have described the universality of the experience both as a building in the heart of a city and as an event, by making a connection between opera’s past and present imagery. And the similarities do not stop there; going to the opera in any century, whether one is transported to the opera by coach, métro or motorcade, anticipation and expectation are common factors in the experience. Catherine Clément unites the deceptive elements of time and display succinctly:

The House with its Greek pediment – the temple for music begins to quiver. Coaches, carriages, cars, taxis, subways discharge a delighted populace. Sometimes official retinues led by helmeted motorcycle escorts arrive in pomp. The brilliance of all the chandeliers is visible through the tall windows.¹⁶

T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introducing the Power Brokers
• 2 Princely Pleasures: Princes and Power – The Birthplace of European Opera
• 3 Of Kings and Barricades: From the Heart of Versailles to the Place de la Bastille
• 4 The Disunited Kingdom: London’s Operatic Battles
• 5 Along the Danube and the Rhine: Playthings of the Austro-Hungarian and Prussian Empires
• 6 The Jewel in the Crown – Stronger and More Permanent than Ideologies: Why Opera was Retained by the Bolsheviks
• 7 Magnificence of the Met – The Commercial Fable: High Society, Corporations and State
• 8 The Chip in the Harbour
• 9 Other Operas – Other Worlds
• 10 Back to the Future?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index