by JAMES GOODFRIEND, Music Editor
SUPPORTING OPERA
THE financial plight of the Metropolitan Opera, which has been living on borrowed time and money for years, has finally become a national issue. Early this past March, the National Endowment for the Arts, on the recommendation of its advisory board, the National Council on the Arts, decided to release to the Metropolitan a cool million dollars, contingent on the Metropolitan's ability to raise a matching sum in new private contributions, and apart from the money they customarily get through such regular sources as the Metropolitan Opera Guild.
What apparently supplied the final impetus to the Council's decision was, according to Nancy Hanks, chairman of both the Endowment and the Council, "the fact that for the first time in many years the radio audience was responding to the needs of the Metropolitan in a wonderful way." This refers to the appeals to the radio audience for contributions, appeals which had been going on for some time and with some success.
Both Miss Hanks and Schuyler G. Chapin, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, expressed their thanks on the air to Texaco, which has sponsored the Saturday radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan for the past thirty-four years. Though that generous sponsor ship consists of little more (!) than paying for the air time, the broadcast production, and some advertising, putting no money directly into the Metropolitan's account, the broadcasts have obviously been a powerful fund-raising medium as well as simply a cultural one.
The Endowment's offer and the Metropolitan's acceptance of the offer plus the challenge that goes with it are certainly to be applauded by anyone interested in the preservation of large-scale cultural institutions in the United States.
But the action, and the necessity of the action, prompt one to re-examine the whole problem of such cultural monoliths in an age of continually rising costs, shrinking dollar value, and depressed musical tastes.
Leaving aside all other difficulties (which today are legion) the financial problems of the Metropolitan are simply stated. The cost of production continually goes up, the scale of contributions goes down, or at least does not go up in equivalent measure, and the price of tickets, though it is also continually rising (the top price for an orchestra seat is now $20), must to a certain extent be held in check to conform with even the wealthiest opera-goer's conception of a reasonable price to pay for an evening's cultural entertainment. Even if the Metropolitan always played to a full house, the resultant income would not be enough to keep things going.
What we have is the classic American case of a cultural product for minority consumption which can be produced only by using materials and personnel similar-and similar in cost-to those used to produce mass entertainment. In the latter case, those costs are reasonable in relation to the expected return; in the former case they are not.
Contributions have, in the past, closed the gap between high cost and low re turn, but it is obvious to everyone that the gap is getting larger each year. The effect on the artistic aspects of the Metropolitan that comes from the awareness of this situation is well known: it takes more and more courage each year to present an opera that is not likely to be sure-fire, to spend the extra money for first-rate singers in secondary parts, per haps even to allot the proper number of rehearsals to a new production. And yet, of course, if the Metropolitan does not make quality its primary consideration, it hardly seems worth supporting through contributions, either public or private.
Two million dollars is not going to solve the Metropolitan's problems. It will pay for things for a time and then it will run out, and the gap between costs and receipts will reappear, wider than ever. A sufficiently large endowment, in income-producing investments tied to the day-to-day realities of finance, might solve the problem-if it were well enough put together. But who is going to give that quantity of money? It seems inevitable that government-
federal, state, and city-will continually have to help support such organizations as the Met. A one- or two-time push until the institution in question can stand on its own will not do the trick, for these institutions can no longer stand on their own.
The ethical problem (and ethics seem to be a problem today only when what is involved is cultural rather than industrial) is simply stated: how does the government justify supporting an institution that is (1) local rather than national, and (2) of importance to maybe five per cent of the country as a whole? Obviously the government has had no qualms about aiding specific sectors of industry (one thinks of Boeing), where the real benefit accrues to an even smaller percentage of the population. But we do that in the name of economic well-being, international trade, and gross national product. Culture is something else again, for it involves the jobs of far fewer people, many of them not even Americans.
But I think the proper measure to be used is not cultural taste, but cultural availability. We do not have to concede that no more than five per cent of the country will ever be interested in opera, but neither are we at all justified (even if it could be done) in ramming it down the throats of the other ninety-five percent.
What is necessary is to make it available to all, and let each man decide whether he wants it or not.
RADIO has done much for the Metropolitan and for opera in general; television could do much more. There are dozens of ways in which the government could encourage industry to sponsor regular telecasts of productions from the Metropolitan, and from other major opera houses as well. Equally, there are ways the government can encourage the networks to cooperate fully with such plans. And I do not find it inconceivable that the government occasionally turn sponsor and foot the bill itself.
There are few places in this country served by only a single television channel. The viewer can always have his choice of whether to watch an opera or watch something else. But the opportunity should be there. For if it is, then such organizations as the Metropolitan cease to be of merely local and minority concern and become national cultural possessions, accessible to all, and quite as deserving of government support as the army, the oil industry, the railroads, or any inefficient manufacturer of long range bombers.
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Also see:
THE SIMELS REPORT by STEVE SIMELS
MELCHIOR RETURNS TO THE MET--A little ceremony and a lot of sentiment. by WILLIAM LIVINGSTONE