An institution went into a coma with the bankruptcy filing of the Baltimore Opera Company, but this sadly is just a sign of the times for arts organizations.
As someone who studied opera in college and who has long appreciated its effect on the arts community in general, I feel terribly saddened to see the opera go in Baltimore, an institution since 1950 in the city.
Opera contains truly some of the most beautiful and powerful music ever performed on a stage. Since the age of kings, opera has entertained performance-goers with stunning, lavish productions eclipsed only by the power of music sung by its singers.
Opera, unlike any other music, is truly transformative for a singer. Its combination of acting and singing raw emotion is more stunning than even the ballads sung by Broadway stars in some of the best-known musicals. In opera, a singer needs to have an emotional experience on stage in the song for it to be truly effective in presentation, a form of musical method acting that rivals the work of Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando.
Opera has employed two friends of mine, one a singer and the other a ballet dancer, over the years. Opera has also given many new singers and dancers a chance to earn visibility and future employability by breaking in as chorus members and supporting dancers.
As pointed out by music writer Tim Smith, the Baltimore Opera Company brought some of the world’s finest musicians to grace its stage at the Lyric including Placido Domingo and Beverly Sills to say nothing of its founder, the legendary soprano Rosa Ponselle.
But sadly, opera in 2008 is dying out in certain markets because of several factors: 1. There are fewer new subscribers to see opera, with most attendees either senior citizens or well-heeled middle-aged folks, 2. With the economy having such troubles, fewer of the well-heeled are able to make as sizable donations to opera, and 3. Fewer corporations are able to give, or aren’t able to give as much as they had hoped.
When ticket sales don’t go as well as expected, as the BOC experienced for Verdi’s “Aida,” its season-opening show, little can be done except to ask for more donations from supporters. But in this case, the pot ran dry.
In New York, where my cousin works behind the scenes for the Metropolitan Opera Company, there has even been concern over the amount of donations this season.
But where this hurts the most is the lost opportunity for young people in Baltimore to see their first opera and fall in love with it, as many of BOC’s patrons had, years before.
At least not anytime soon will Peabody students and others have a chance to buy discounted seats to the shows and see and hear all that opera presents, the strength and beauty, and heart-breaking stories that comprise much of the genre.
To see the opera go in Baltimore is a sad day for the city’s arts community, but sadder still is that this is just the latest casualty of the awful economy the country is facing now.
The thousands of workers who’ve lost their jobs, and families who have lost their homes because of the recession can relate to the struggles the arts in general are having.
It’s nevertheless still pretty hard to face the fact that the fat lady may have finally sung her last note.
Tom Moore hosts “The AES Tom Moore Show” Saturdays 10 p.m. to 12 a.m. on AM 680 WCBM and he sings jazz and cabaret music professionally with his band. Visit www.myspace.com/tommooresings.
