Three Stories about Opera and Opera Houses

Curmie has seen a couple dozen operas, mostly presented by the music program at a place he was teaching.  He helped on a few, and even appeared in one.  (Fear not, Gentle Reader, it was as a narrator, as literally no one wants to hear him sing.)  But to say he’s an aficionado would slide beyond the boundaries of exaggeration and into falsehood.

That said, there are three opera or opera house stories that caught his attention in the past couple of weeks.  They are presented here in chronological order. 

We start, then, with a story Curmie first learned about from a post on Chris Peterson’s OnStage Blog.  The Thomaston (CT) Opera House has recently undergone a $3.5 million renovation, apparently funded by the state.  The space is home to the local community theatre and shares a building with the town hall.  About $700,000 of that grant was spent on restoring the original ceiling… and that’s where things start getting complicated. 

You see, that photo at the top of this entry is of part of the newly restored ceiling.  It duplicates that original design from when the opera house was built in 1884.  According to an article by Tracey O’Shaughnessy for ctinsider.com, the ceiling was designed “to get visitors to look up, forget their troubles and just get happy.”  There are four panels representing architecture, literature, music and the performing arts.  The ceiling and the rest of the building served to enhance civic pride.  State Historic Preservation Officer Jonathan Kinney says that the opera house “was a sign of a municipality achieving a level of status that they had evolved to a point that they could provide that for their residents.”

Ah, Gentle Reader, but you’ll have noticed that some of that decoration looks rather like swastikas.  The original ceiling included them as symbols evoking good fortune or well-being.  Remember, the building was constructed decades before the Nazis destroyed the possibility of a positive meaning to those images.  Well, actually, they only sorta did so.  By this Curmie is not suggesting that swastikas in the sense we generally think of them are anything but a symbol of hatred, but the ones on that Connecticut ceiling are pointing in a different direction than the one associated with Nazism: that is, the lines coming out from the center of the symbol turn left/counterclockwise, opposite of the Nazi version.

Does that matter?  Well, the term swastika comes from the Sanskrit, so it seems appropriate to respond as Curmie so often did in his Asian Theatre classes: yes and no.  First off, the term “swastika” applies to both the left-facing version seen on that ceiling and the right-facing version hijacked by the Nazis.  In other words, yes, those symbols are technically swastikas, but they aren’t what we generally think of when we use the term.  That does indeed mean that the people who are upset about the decision to repaint the ceiling are reacting to a stimulus that doesn’t really exist.  What Curmie finds interesting is that there doesn’t seem to be any attempt by those who approved the design to point out the difference between the two symbols.

So, is it over-reaction?  Or misplaced anger?  Perhaps.  But even if so, are those who argue that restoring the ceiling to its original look was an “obvious mistake” just snowflakes who need to sign on to the “historical” restoration?  Curmie thinks not.  Going ahead with a project you know is going to offend people is generally bad form, even if you’re “right.”

There is the whole authenticity argument, though… or is there?  First off, the ceiling had been painted over in the 1930s precisely because of the presence of those swastikas, so returning to what things looked like nearly a century ago doesn’t seem out of line. 

More significantly, Curmie remembers touring Shakespeare’s Globe in London twenty or so years ago.  The new (1997) theatre was built to be as accurate to the original as possible: there was no structural steel, the tools used were those available to carpenters in the late 16^th century, and so on.  But, for instance, whereas the thatch for the roof was authentic, it was treated with a fire retardant chemical, and sprinklers were installed (the original Globe burned down in 1613, and repeating that particular bit of history seemed contra-indicated). 

Similarly, no one today really wants to see a show in an authentic 19^th century theatre: we prefer modern electricity, plumbing, etc.  So there’s not going to be absolute authenticity.

Curmie is enough of a literalist theatre historian to call the ethical cases on both sides of the dispute to be roughly equally persuasive.  If you’re going to re-create the original ceiling, which is both inoffensive and decorative, then do it.  Except… well, you see where this debate leads to, Gentle Reader.

But there’s one other factor: the publicity.  You don’t get extra credit for scrupulous detail in a renovated building; you do catch flak for even approximating one of the most divisive and offensive symbols in human history.  This is, after all, a permanent fixture now, not a piece of set dressing in a production of The Producers.  If Jewish patrons (in particular) are made to feel uncomfortable and will avoid the space in the future, maybe there’s a problem.  In sum, then, yeah, bad idea, although Curmie does not condemn those who disagree with that assessment.

The other two stories are less ambiguous in terms of right and wrong.  So, let’s go to London for the final moments—the curtain call, in fact—for the run of Verdi’s Il Trovatore at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.  Daniel Perry, a self-described “queer dance artist” (spare me!), unfurled a Palestinian flag in the middle of the bows.  Perry, who appears to have been in the chorus, successfully got the flag onstage despite the attempts of some backstage crew member to thwart them [they/them pronouns, not plural].

OK, this one is simple: Perry is an idiot and an asshole.  Curmie doesn’t care whether Perry’s empathy for the Palestinian cause is appropriate or not (in fact, Curmie rather agrees with them… up to a point, at least): this is not the time or place for such self-indulgent displays.  The opera’s administrators were absolutely correct to distance themselves from the puerile display and to ban them from further productions in the space.  One hopes that Mx. Perry will find that such grandstanding has some serious career consequences.

Meanwhile, there’s the kind of boorishness displayed by Amin Hashwami’s post on X in which he suggests that the opera administration is “more disturbed [by the incident] than the killing of 58000 civilians in Gaze.”  Oh, FFS, give it a rest.  It is not the responsibility of the administration, the audience, or the leading performers who had no idea of the silliness going on behind them to support your cause 24/7/365.  When you’re on stage at Covent Garden, you adhere to the company’s apolitical credo.  And if Curmie is in that audience, he’s going to label you an asshole and be less likely to support your cause.

Oh, there’s one more thing: our Daniel speaks from a place of considerable privilege.  He was trained at the hoity-toity Tring Park School for the Performing Arts, where annual tuition is a cool £48,000.  For context, that’s about five times as high as at the very reputable conservatory with which Curmie’s university has had a relationship for a quarter century or so.  This is of little relevance to the main story, but it elicited a snort from Curmie, and it might from you, as well, Gentle Reader.

But, intentionally or otherwise, Curmie saved the most horrifically hilarious of the stories for last.  Yes, it’s true that House Republicans are threatening withhold funding from the Kennedy Center if the opera house is not named for… wait for it… Melania Trump, presumably because, to quote a vulgar but not inaccurate meme, Trumps balls won’t lick themselves.  You can’t make this stuff up.

GOP pols have proven themselves the perfect storm of malevolence, cowardice, and hypocrisy.  They’ve done more harm in a variety of ways than even passing this nonsense would be, but even confirming the likes of Baby Bobby, Dr. Oz, and Pete Hegseth wasn’t as profoundly, awe-inspiringly, stupid as this.

Melania Trump has done literally nothing for the performing arts in general or for opera in particular.  She has less right to have an opera house named for her than Curmie does—he’s worked on a couple of amateur productions, after all.  The only upside here is that there has never been a clearer demonstration of the GOP legislators abrogating their responsibilities as a co-equal branch of government.  Not even passing that Big Ugly Bill or shutting down so they can avoid dealing with the absolute certainty that Dear Leader’s name is all over the Epstein files can compete.  Naming literally anything after a vulgar trophy wife known primarily for posing for some soft-core porn is beyond laughable.  Remember, this is the couple who broke tradition by not attending the Kennedy Center Awards during 45’s term.  “Appreciation of the arts,” my ass.  Curmie cannot improve on the line of comedian Andy Borowitz: “Karoline Leavitt defended the decision to rename the Kennedy Center after Melania: ‘Since President Trump took it over, the Kennedy Center has been like our nation’s First Lady: renovated and vacant.’”

Oh, and <insert late-night infomercial voice here> that’s not all!  JFK’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, hammered the amendment and, as the kids say, brought receipts… like the federal law that prohibits this kind of grandstanding: “after December 2, 1983 no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”  There are some exceptions noted; this bill doesn’t qualify.

It’s not clear whether Schlossberg would be as adamant had the proposal been to honor someone worthy of the recognition—Jessye Norman or Leontyne Price, for example—but the fact is, we’ll never know: because no one is going to try to do that.  This is nothing but sycophancy and delusion… oh, and, as one commenter put it, the Epsteinth attempt to distract from the issue that has, for better or worse, captured the public’s attention.

So there you have it: three stories about opera and opera houses.  Curmie may not write about either subject ever again.  But… never say never.

If you’re reading this on your phone, Curmie apologizes if some of the formatting is weird.  It looks fine on Curmie’s laptop, but not on his phone, and he doesn’t know how to fix it.