Written by
Matthew Buckman
Matthew Buckman is the General and Artistic Director of Townsend Opera in Modesto, CA
For more information, visit
www.townsendopera.com
www.operaremix.com
Focus On...
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Opera
presenter/performer over the audience, we provide an experience that is valuable only to people who have the same narrow interest, knowledge, or expertise as artists and arts professionals, which in this country is a smaller percentage of our population every year.
Arts organizations don't exist to serve the intellectual or artistic needs of the artists or managers who lead them.
Arts organizations exist to serve their communities. We are even granted tax-exempt status because of the special roles we fill for our communities. Yes, the work can and should be fulfilling to someone who leads or works within an arts organization, but fulfillment should come from making available to your community the art form you love. Instead, too many artists and arts leaders feel entitled to use their positions to satisfy their own artistic desires, instead of providing programming that meets the needs and desires of their communities or constituents. This has led to long periods of stagnant programming, an unhealthy fetishization of the art form, a formulaic and repetitive audience experience, and subsequently a tremendous decline in interest in the classical arts.
Which brings me back to San Diego Opera. The company had grown beyond what its community was able (or willing) to support, but that does not mean that San Diego didn’t want or couldn’t support an opera company. It just means it didn’t want the kind of opera company it had. As arts leaders, our jobs should be to provide the kind of organizations
Battling Artistic Entitlement
Written by Matthew Buckman
As the General and Artistic Director of a small regional opera company in the central valley of California, I watched the decision by San Diego Opera last April to close their doors with a combination of amazement and bitterness. I was amazed that a company that produces four operas annually with a $15 million budget and no debt would close down voluntarily, and I was bitter at the thought of the work our company could do for our community with a tiny fraction of that annual budget. But that decision, made at the urging of their senior management, helped bring into focus something I think has been a widespread problem for some time now, one which harms the sustainability of many performing arts organizations:
Artistic Entitlement.
Many artists and arts leaders act as though the position or expertise they possess, as either a presenter or performer, entitles them to pursue an artistic program that is personally satisfying, without regard for the audience experience. This often manifests itself with the notion that as arts professionals, our expertise makes it our place to tell the audience what kind of experience they should want to have, based on the experience we want to have. What I find problematic about that perspective is that it privileges the desires of the presenter/performer above those of the audience, when in fact it should be the reverse. By prioritizing the needs of the
that are responsive to the perspective of our communities, companies that can balance what we know to be substantial music with what our community values. Instead, San Diego Opera’s leadership was going to deprive its community of any professional opera because they were unwilling to consider anything other than their own specific conception of what constitutes acceptable opera. Fortunately the community fought back, reclaimed the company, and charted a path forward that would allow the company to continue.
While artists and arts managers should advocate aggressively for the arts, and should seek the highest possible quality our communities can support, we also have a duty to build arts organizations that are sustainable by our communities. This means adapting our companies to the interests and desires of our own unique communities, and acting more often on their behalf when making programming and other substantial decisions than on our own.
For our community in Modesto, this means Townsend Opera will be presenting artist programs in line with our community’s desires: more English language operas, operas that tell stories that have relevance to our community and our culture, and experiences at the theater that are enjoyable for the casual listener.
Our communities, and the support they provide, make it possible for opera to exist. As artists and arts leaders, our duty is to serve them—not ourselves—first.