From the Fargo Moorhead Opera website

As I write, if you visit the website of the Fargo Moorhead Opera, you’ll find an evocative image of a beautiful young Asian woman used in conjunction with the company’s production of Madama Butterfly, playing this weekend in North Dakota. However, upon reading a feature story in yesterday’s Fargo Inforum about the production, you’ll learn that the lead actress in the show itself isn’t the woman who appears in the ads, and isn’t Asian at all, but rather a Caucasian of German extraction. So what’s the deal with the false advertising?

Mathew Edwardsen and Carla Thelen Hanson in Fargo Moorhead Opera’s Madama Butterfly (photo by Carrie Snyder)

I can think of any number of reasons why a marketing image might not match exactly what appears on stage – the cost of an original photo shoot vs. stock photography, the availability of performers sufficiently in advance of rehearsals to create the image for a months long campaign, and so on. But in the case of the Fargo Moorhead Opera, what they’ve done, whether intentionally or not, is a case of bait-and-switch, wherein they have sold what appears to be an authentically cast production of Madama Butterfly, but will be presenting one which traffics in yellowface. Why is an Asian face appropriate for their advertising, but not for their stage?

In the wake of controversies in Seattle and New York over yellowface productions of The Mikado, I don’t think I need to explain once again why the practice of casting Caucasian actors as Asian characters is offensive to the Asian community and an insult to anyone who seeks genuine diversity in performance. After all, people can and have read about the issue in recent weeks from Leah Nanako Winkler, Ming Peiffer, Rehana Lew Mirza, Nelson Eusebio and Desdemona Chiang, among others. I’ve had my say on the subject as well.

Any remotely reasonable rationalization about the chasm between FMO’s marketing and production of Butterfly goes out the window when the company’s general director David Hamilton talks about his views on the subject of casting roles with racial authenticity with Inforum.

“I don’t want to be limited who I can cast because I want the best performer for the role,” says David Hamilton, general director of the Fargo-Moorhead Opera. “We don’t have the luxury of unlimited choices to bring to Fargo.”

Hamilton says he hasn’t heard any rumblings about the FM Opera’s selection.

“Opera is about the voice and I want the best voice I can find to sing their role,” Hamilton says.

The “best performer for the role” argument is often deployed when casting in theater or opera has obviously failed to employ racial authenticity. It particularly fails for Hamilton and the FMO when one learns that the last time the company did Madama Butterfly, an Asian-American performer played the role. So the company has already shown that it can cast the role authentically.

That Hamilton “hasn’t heard any rumblings” about the casting, which I take care to note is a paraphrase and not a direct quote, may be because opera companies so frequently fail to cast for racial authenticity. It’s only this year that the Metropolitan Opera abandoned using blackface for their production of Otello – yet retained a Caucasian actor in the role. That Hamilton is unaware of any unhappiness over his casting could be a result of the circles in which he travels, and therefore hardly representative of anything more than his acquaintances, or perhaps it’s because Fargo has only a 3% Asian population. But whatever the reason, lack of protest doesn’t mean racial insensitivity is therefore condoned. Even in a community with a 90% white population, accurate representations of race matter.

As for the “opera is about the voice” argument, I must confess that this has always befuddled me. If opera were only concerts in tuxedos, or recordings, I might be prepared to grant the form more leeway. But once you have people in costumes and on sets, there is more to the performance than simply sound; what the audience sees is part of the experience. While there are many aspects of Madama Butterfly – and its descendent, Miss Saigon – that are deeply troubling to Asian-Americans, as both works trade in and perpetuate Asian stereotypes, if the work is to be done, at least let it be done with the most respect possible. That means Asian performers playing Asian characters. If there truly aren’t enough qualified Asian performers to meet the FMO standards, then that is a direct result of companies failing to cast artists of color often enough, and perhaps also a failing on the part of training programs – though if artists of color can’t get roles, that might be deterring them from pursuing operatic careers, in a vicious cycle.

“We know it’s not real, but we don’t care,” Hamilton told Inforum. “You have to suspend disbelief. … Under all that geisha makeup, who would know?” Well, I know, Mr. Hamilton, and Inforum readers know, since the reporter who wrote the story, John Lamb, made the effort to present an opposing viewpoint from Chelsea Pace, an assistant professor of movement in the department of theater arts at North Dakota State University. I think many other people are going to find out.

While it’s late in the game to have any effect on this weekend’s production, I hope David Hamilton and the board of directors of the Fargo Moorhead Opera are going to start hearing “rumblings” that they can’t and shouldn’t ignore, as a message to the FMO and other opera companies about demonstrating genuine respect and appreciation not only for vintage Eurocentric music traditions, but for all people who make up this country, as well as the performing community and its audiences – and potential audiences. That goes for the Metropolitan Opera as well, which is doing Madama Butterfly this season with two performers sharing the title role, only one of whom is Asian. Even half measures are not enough.

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this topic with Fargo-Moorhead Opera general director David Hamilton, you can write to him at director@fmopera.org.

Howard Sherman is the interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.

If you happen to know of any young people who you’re trying to dissuade from careers in the creative arts, you might want to casually leave around two new books for them to find. Scott Timberg’s Culture Crash: The Killing Of The Creative Class (Yale University Press, $26) and Michael M. Kaiser’s Curtains?: The Future Of The Arts In America (Brandeis University Press, $26.95) both paint dark pictures of the state of the creative arts and where they’re headed, enough to send one right into investment banking if it remains a choice.

Timberg, a former arts journalist at the Los Angeles Times who writes the “Culture Crash” blog for ArtsJournal, predominantly focuses on the music industry and the state of legacy media and journalism, with nods to architecture and literature, while Kaiser, former head of the Kennedy Center and now leader of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management, concentrates on the world of symphonies, opera and dance. As an avid consumer of music and journalism, my interests run closer to those explored by Timberg; professionally my background comes closer to the disciplines discussed by Kaiser, but (troublingly) neither book spends much time at all on theatre, my actual profession and leisure time avocation as well.

As a result, neither book reveals a great deal to me that I’ve not read about before, or experienced personally in some cases. But while both are published by academic presses (perhaps its own comment on broad-based interest, or lack thereof, in arts and culture), neither seems targeted at industry insiders. Instead, they are surveys of where we are now and how we got here, with a limited amount of prescriptive suggestions for how the tide that favors mass entertainment over the rarified or personal might be turned or at least survived in new forms. Both place a great deal of blame on technology for the woes they recount.

Of the two, I was more drawn to Timberg’s book, which, no doubt due to the author’s experience as a professional writer, is the more elegant, immersive read, peppered throughout with specific stories that support his thesis of cultural decline, a vision notably counterpointed with Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class (with a book cover designed to evoke that oft cited book). Timberg particularly worries about the loss of a wide range of social influencers who could guide existing and potential audiences to works that might interest them, from knowledgeable record store clerks to professional (paid) reporters and critics. While it’s a valid point, Timberg falls prey to making it seem, at times, as if he’s bemoaning his own employment status and that of his many colleagues who have been decimated by the contraction in print journalism, never more so than when he cites the decline in the popular portrayal of critics as having slid from George Sanders as Addison DeWitt in All About Eve in the 1950s to Jon Lovitz as Jay Sherman in the cartoon The Critic in the 1990s. That said, he does make strong points about the fracturing of a common culture even as a blockbuster mentality has overridden many creative industries, a seemingly oxymoronic concept. He also cites a wide array of sources, both from other writing and newly conducted interviews, and his fields of interest are admirably broad.

Kaiser’s book resembles a series of lectures about the state of the performing arts – a look at a golden era in the latter half of the 20^th century, where we are now, where we may be in 20 years time, and how we might make things better. Unfortunately, the lectures seem to spring wholly from Kaiser himself, as he quotes no experts, provides no data, and doesn’t include either an appendix or bibliography. It seems we are to take what Kaiser tells us simply on faith, even such sweeping statements as “While the outlook for the performing arts is dire, museums have better chances for survival” or “Theatre organizations should fare better than symphony orchestras.” In the case of the latter statement, much as I would dearly love it to be true, it flies in the face of recent studies from the National Endowment for the Arts, cited by Timberg but AWOL from Kaiser’s survey. Given how much of his brief book is taken up with prognostication, its unfortunate that Kaiser doesn’t extrapolate from existing data; in imagining 2035, it’s surprising that ongoing demographic shifts, especially in regards to race and ethnicity, in the country play so little role in his thinking. That’s not to say he doesn’t have some interesting observations, among them the thesis that while the end of Metropolitan Opera touring gave rise to more regional opera companies in the 80s, the success of the Met Live cinecasts may now be undermining those very troupes.

Reading the two books back to back, I was struck by the fact that both hit some similar themes (the loss of shared cultural language and experience, the impact of electronic media) yet diverge in their exemplars. While Kaiser’s book also doesn’t include an index, I did a fast pass through to see whether certain areas came up frequently, and found 14 references to The Kennedy Center and eight to the Alvin Ailey Dance Company (both of which Kaiser led) and a whopping 19 mentions of the Metropolitan Opera – all organizations which appear nowhere in Timberg’s index, which lists its greatest citations for areas of discipline rather than particular purveyors (the film industry, the economy, the indie music scene to name three). Both books may focus on the state of culture and its future, but their respective attentions are essentially balkanized.

If I were teaching a survey course in arts leadership, I might well assign both books early in the semester, albeit with a restorative break between them to replenish some sense of optimism. But both are merely starting points for a conversation, each in their own way raising areas of concern, yet stinting on any semblance of how those concerns can be addressed, battled or even embraced. To be fair, Timberg is a reporter, recording and interpreting, but Kaiser is training arts leaders, so its more incumbent upon him to offer something prescriptive. We can bemoan the fact that Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts are a thing of the past, or long for the one on one counsel of record and bookstore employees, but that’s not likely to bring them back. If our cultural appreciation and literacy has fallen, can it get back up – and if so how? That’s the book I need to read. Soon.

As the Sony hacking case has played out over the past several weeks, it’s a story that has been relegated mostly to the business pages and, simultaneously, the gossip industry. With no one explicitly claiming responsibility for the breach of the entertainment giant’s computer system, the focus has been more on the corporate ramifications, placing it in business reports, and the stream of buzzworthy stories including the e-mails between Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin and the pontifications of Aaron Sorkin have been fodder for everyone from The New York Times to Entertainment Tonight. That the personal records of Sony employees past and present, including medical files, had been taken and released publicly didn’t seem to figure into the narrative in a significant way; it was just one more data hack (e.g. Target) that only hit home if it had happened to you now or in the past.

Of course, things escalated this week when a direct threat was made against theatres showing the Seth Rogen- James Franco film The Interview. The air of genuine concern rose yet higher when the U.S. government asserted that the hack had been engineered by North Korea in retaliation for The Interview’s depiction of an ultimately successful plot on the life of their dictatorial leader Kim Jong-un.

“Kim Jong-il” in Team America: World Police

Yet if my social media feeds are any indication, the vast majority of people, even this morning, find the whole situation slightly ridiculous and still worthy of snark. In the wake of theatre chains, and finally Sony, pulling The Interview from exhibition, the prevailing response seems to be inordinate attention to the Alamo Drafthouse’s (in Dallas/Fort Worth) decision to screen Team America: World Police, which a decade ago rendered Kim Jong-il as a literal puppet dictator, as well as jokes about Rogen’s affinity for smoking marijuana leading to an international crisis and this really being the fault of NBC for canceling Freaks and Geeks.

Kevin Smith in Live Free or Die Hard

I’ll admit to having paid minimal attention to the hack story until the combination of the threat against theatres and theatre patrons, the yanking of the film and the U.S. pointing its finger towards North Korea reached a critical mass for me. Like many, I’ve probably been lulled by too many years of watching action and espionage films in which there is always some megalomaniac trying to get rich or conquer the world, be it Dr. No or Dr. Evil. As for hacking, it’s always been made to seem a bit romantic and alluring (Sandra Bullock in The Net, Angelina Jolie in Hackers) or all-powerful yet benign (Kevin Smith in his mother’s basement in one of the later Die Hard films).

But now we’ve moved from the world of fictional espionage into a real life amalgamation of terrorism and blackmail. Yes, as many have pointed out, it’s questionable whether North Korea or any malefactor could carry out coordinated attacks in movie theatres across the country. But it would take only one such incident to genuinely terrorize the country, with social and economic ripples far greater than those felt after the movie theatre shooting in Aurora, Colorado. Frankly, even if the perpetrator of the Sony hack was just bluffing, who’s to say that some copycat might not take the opportunity into their own hands in just one community? The very threat of terrorism is what has lifted the scenario into a much more troubling realm, and even if the ransom to be paid was the suppression of one film instead of one billion dollars, the result is that it worked, and set an awful precedent.

Any number of commentators, professional and amateur, have been quick to say that Sony “caved,” that they allowed the perpetrator of the threat to win, but that’s a simplistic response. Already faced with a massive economic hit from the data release, which will most likely continue, could the company risk being seen as insensitive to the threat, could it have taken the risk that there was no real danger? They’ve been in a no-win situation for weeks now, and no matter what choice they had made, it would have been seen as wrong. I’m not an apologist for their decision, but I can at least see them as having been given the proverbial Sophie’s choice.

I deplore what has taken place, which is a form of censorship by blackmail. Instead of providing a ransom to get something back, Sony has had to withhold something to, hopefully, eliminate any possibility of a violent reprisal. Their data is out of their control, never to be reined back in. And our constitutional right to freedom of speech has been infringed upon by some outside entity, even if it was Sony who made the decision to shelve The Interview.

The Death of Klinghoffer at The Metropolitan Opera

Watching a big corporation being hamstrung may seem pretty distant from the world of live performance, but it’s really not. The rhetoric surrounding the Metropolitan Opera’s production of The Death of Klinghoffer this fall, due to its supposedly anti-Semitic content, was marked with significant vitriol which never quite reached the level of threat, but still prompted major security measures to be put into place. Those with short memories may have already forgotten the threats against Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi, which forced Manhattan Theatre Club to implement a range of protections from those who decried it as sacrilegious. No one found those scenarios funny, and even if protections were being taken against individuals and groups, rather than a government, even if each played in one theatre instead of 2,000, the parallels are there.

Kim Jong-un and Dennis Rodman

As of this morning, our government is reportedly weighing its choices on how to address the North Korean actions, even as some are suggesting that it isn’t North Korea at all, or if it is, it’s North Korea in alliance with other people or governments. There are hawks already taking verbal flight to cry out for retaliation, but its worth noting that while Sony is a Japanese corporation, Japan may be more cautious than we are, since North Korea regularly fires test missiles across their airspace, and who knows what their leader might do if provoked. We may find his flirtations with Dennis Rodman hilarious, but this is a country that has been ruled with a vicious iron hand for decades, a country where citizens have virtually no rights or freedom.

The era of digital warfare has sprung into full view with the Sony hack and The Interview’s suppression. No matter who’s behind it, it has proven that through the control of computers and information, not only with armaments, free will and basic rights can be bent all too quickly. While the hack is real, perhaps the threat is an elaborate hoax. Of the latter, we may never know with 100% certainty. But the question now is how does America guarantee its right to free speech against opponents both domestic and foreign, even when that speech is as inconsequential as I imagine The Interview to be.

Update, December 18, 3:30 p.m.: for those who saw Alamo Drafthouse’s plan to screen Team America in place of The Interview as a stand against censorship, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. Paramount has withdrawn that film from release as well, despite the fact that it’s a decade old. This is how the slippery slope carries us all downhill.

Note: I fear the headline that ran with this piece was misleading, since the column focused more on how companies not known for traditional musical theatre were making it a part of their producing mix. That said, if the resources expended on opera were allocated to new musicals then, well, wouldn’t it be loverly?

Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson in Sweeney Todd. Nathan Lane reprising his career-making role in Guys and Dolls. Film actor Billy Zane and musical veteran Jenn Gambatese in The Sound of Music. Three intriguing stage productions with one common thread: none was produced by a theatre company.

Respectively, they were mounted by the New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall and Chicago Lyric Opera. They drew upon Broadway artists, but none were on Broadway.

It seems that when non-theatre companies want a sure thing they turn to musicals. While theatre companies, subsidized and commercial alike, seek to sustain audiences amid an array of entertainment options and ever-escalating price barriers, musicals are offered as budget balancers by symphonies and opera companies, with ever greater frequency. That’s on top of theatre companies which were once devoted solely to dramatic works having made an annual musical de rigeur. And when it comes to the big halls, it’s big names, both for titles and performers.

These events owe a great deal to the Encores! series at City Center, which has proven the significant audience for limited run versions of great musicals, some rarely seen. But they also attest to the broad appeal of musicals when companies step outside their own repertoire.

Thirty years ago, it was considered startling when the late New York City Opera embraced Sweeney Todd. Theatre only seems to attempt opera perhaps once every decade or so, notably with Baz Luhrman’s La Bohème and Peter Brook’s La Tragédie de Carmen. It seems that when it comes to producing across disciplines, for theatres it’s primarily a one-way street.

With the English National Opera’s announcement of plans to produce commercial musicals, it’s not quite the “unique” venture cited in their announcement. In their efforts to “embrace the new climate where audiences seem to enjoy the blurring of boundaries between opera, theatre and musicals,” one cannot help but wonder how the balance will play out if a West End berth, as stated, is a goal for these projects. Several years ago, the Metropolitan Opera announced a joint venture with its neighbor Lincoln Center Theater to develop works along such lines, but it has yielded little.

Given the budgets for major operas, or the musical richness of a full symphony, it’s easy to see why musical theatre artists would be eager to work outside their usual sphere. But so long as musicals are viewed as cash cows, economic pressure will dictate reliance on the tried and true, with the same repertoire being repeatedly mined by ever more groups. What musical theatre really needs is more resources and new models for sustaining new works beyond the hit or flop reality of Broadway and the West End. If only the symphonies and opera companies could help out there.