Ned Canty – Memphis Flyer

My brain, like many others, is exploding, but I need to share this.

Early in my time leading Opera Memphis, I was in a multi-week workshop run by the Assisi Foundation. I was one of only a handful of non-social service organization people. One of the questions we all needed to answer was “what would happen if your organization closed.” This was mainly to find out who might have overlapping or redundant services, so maybe wasn’t relevant to an arts organization. However, the question has never left me. I ask it to myself often, moreso in times like these. I could answer, “We are the only opera company for hours in any direction, so our closing would leave Memphis without opera.” I, and many of my friends, would say that is a terrible thing. Maybe it is. I fear that far more people might never even notice we were gone.

This is turning into one of the most challenging times in decades for so many people, parts of society, segments of the economy, etc. I do not mean to imply that opera (or any live art) has it worse than restaurants or churches or hospitals; that is not my point. My point is that every single person who loves or makes opera must now answer the question: What difference did our shows make in their absence? Beyond the walls of the opera house, who has suffered when the curtain didn’t rise? And are we comfortable if that number, as I think it may be for many of us, is very, very small?

This is a time for all of us to think creatively, but most importantly to ask ourselves: Who are we without performances? What role can we play, or must we play in this crisis, and in our communities?

I say this not to preach but to remind myself that how we act in the next few months, or longer, will likely have more impact on the field of opera than any full decade before now. We all now have a chance to embrace the change that is going to be necessary; to view it as an opportunity, not a tragedy. I have no idea what opera will look like in 5 months or five years, nor does anyone. But I know it will be here for as long as people have ears and souls. I never worry about opera disappearing. I do worry that if we spend too much time fighting against change, we allow ourselves to be Blockbuster instead of Netflix; Sears instead of Amazon.

My job at Opera Memphis is to do everything in my power to ensure we are Netflix, and I intend to do so.

This week we started asking for folks who are cooped up by the coronavirus to email us at singtome@operamemphis.org. We are going to drive our van and flatbed trailer to where they are, and sing to as many of them as possible. Will an outdoor performance on a trailer that just last month was hauling hay in Mississippi be the same as a show on the stage of GPAC, the Orpheum or POTS? Nope. Not even close. But again, not the point. The point is that when times like these arise, we cannot respond by worrying about what will become of the old way of doing things.

We need to remember that this is Memphis. We invent things. We innovate things. We export music to the world. We don’t mope. We don’t wallow. We grit, we grind, and we get on with the work of making something amazing. Whether that something is for 2 people on a Vollintine-Evergreen porch, or for thousands at the Levitt Shell, I have no idea. Frankly, I don’t care. If I know that there is one more person out there we can reach, who will hear our music and feel? That is something worth trying. Worth getting up for every morning. And so I shall.

Stay safe everyone, and #keepthemusicgoing.

Ned Canty has been general director of Opera Memphis since 2010.

My father was fond of the ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” I think of it often when considering the state of opera in America, or rather the state of American opera companies. While opera, the art form, is doing well — artists have never been better — the model of opera production we have enjoyed in this country for the best part of a century is collapsing on itself. For those of us responsible for ensuring that opera continues to be heard as widely as possible, there is no doubt that we live in very interesting times.

In the latter part of the 20th century, opera was unique among the “legacy” art forms in enjoying substantial growth, buoyed by the innovation of simultaneous projected translation (aka surtitles). That trend has reversed in the new millennium. In the past 10 years, attendance is down almost 25 percent nationally. This slide was accelerated by the Great Recession, of course, when a number of opera companies disappeared completely and almost every company cut its number of productions. Fewer performances at fewer companies has played a role in this decline, but so has the explosion of alternative entertainment options. Today, our biggest competition is not just theater or movies or sports; it’s people staying home to watch Netflix.

I am fortunate among my peers at other companies in that I joined Opera Memphis in 2011, after this implosion process was well under way. Change is here, clearly. We need to take a step away from how we did things for decades and decide what is actually vital about what we do. What makes opera special and worth protecting? More importantly, what about it will allow us all to break free of two centuries of elitist baggage, whether perceived or real?

I think the answer to all of the above is simple. Some of the most powerful moments I have ever experienced in opera were in a dingy auditorium in Tel Aviv, working with the Israeli Vocal Arts Institute. The only orchestra was a piano. The only sets were things we could scrounge from classrooms and “borrow” from our hotel rooms. Props were brought in in your luggage or not at all. Everything about the circumstances worked against creating great, or even good, opera. Except for the singers. They were glorious. Some of the best singers from around the world, there to coach with staff from the Metropolitan Opera.

For three weeks every summer, their talent transformed that concrete-block building into the most lush opera house imaginable. With nothing but words and music, they transported that audience to heights of ecstasy and depths of despair.

Don’t misunderstand me. I love the acoustics of GPAC and the moving lights at Playhouse on the Square. I love beautiful sets and costumes, and I wouldn’t trade the Memphis Symphony in the pit for any band anywhere. But it all begins and ends with those singers onstage and the words and music they bring to life.

This deep belief in the basic power of the human voice has allowed Opera Memphis to expand its mission outside of the opera house and into the streets, schools, and parks of Memphis. Our annual month-long celebration of the human voice, “30 Days of Opera,” has brought opera to more than 50,000 Memphians in the past two years. My greatest pleasure is looking into the face of someone whose dinner or shopping trip was just opera-fied and seeing the tilted head and furrowed brow of someone saying to themselves, “Good Lord, did I just enjoy opera?”

All across America, getting people in the door has become an increasingly harder task for opera companies. So out that door we’ve gone, singing arias at the Levitt Shell and the corner of Sam Cooper and East Parkway, in nooks and crannies all around the city. And it’s working. People are following the trail of bread crumbs to the opera house, in our case to GPAC. More will follow.

I’m not sure what they expect to find when they walk in. I know it won’t look like what they’ve seen on TV or in the movies. But I do know what it will sound like. That hasn’t changed in 400 years. It will be the sound of the most beautiful, the most heart-human life distilled into words and music and brought to life by the glory of the unamplified human voice.

So here’s to interesting times!

Ned Canty is the general director of Opera Memphis. The company will present Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto at GPAC on the evenings of October 3rd and 5th. For more information, go to operamemphis.org.