Editorials

San Francisco Opera General Manager David Gockley himself summed it up best in an interview with Daniel Wakin in Saturday’s New York Times: “Our business doesn’t work that way,” he said in a telephone interview. “It has been nobly color-blind over recent decades, and I certainly haven’t worked that way, and my record bears that out.”  

For those Planet readers who aren’t opera fans (probably quite a few of you out there), a brief replay of an ongoing drama: Last week the San Francisco Opera fired soprano Hope Briggs, who was under contract to sing the major role of Dona Anna in a new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, on the night of the final dress rehearsal, after a performance which many in the audience later reported was very good. She was replaced by a young woman who has been at the SF Opera for a couple of years as an Adler Fellow. 

I’ve known a lot of young musicians in the past 15 years, and Hope is one of the most outstanding among them, so I was outraged, as were many others, by how she was treated. My first reaction was that she must have been a victim of the increasingly appearance-based trend in American opera, which is suddenly contemplating possible riches from simulcasts in cinemaplexes and other fantasies.  

Gockley himself was quoted by Anthony Tommasini in the Times in 2004 noting that casting decisions are now “driven by several factors: voice, musicianship, appearance, etc.” Sometimes even height comes into the picture, he added in a statement issued when he was criticized for casting “a handsome German tenor with a thick mane of light hair” for a role that had been ably sung by another tenor described as “dark” and “hefty”—read stout. “People don’t understand that we are in danger of losing this wonderful thing about opera: the beautiful reality of the singers,” lamented the spurned tenor.  

I wondered in print whether in this case Gockley, with an eye to the camera and the mass market’s tastes, might have picked a cute young woman of European descent over an admittedly handsome woman with a classic African-American face and physique. Others had similar ideas, so a mini-storm ensued in the print press and in the blogs.  

The Planet ran a letter from one of his former co-workers defending Gockley from any perception of racism, although my own comments had carefully distinguished between conventional racism and what might be called “appearancism.” The writer pointed out that Gockley produced both Porgy and Bess and Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha at the Houston Opera, employing a significant number of black artists. I’m happy to give credit where credit is due, and I know from my own experience that unjustified accusations of racism or anti-Semitism can be painful, so I’m willing to accept the writer’s view.  

However. Putting racial considerations aside for the moment, the decision to cashier a singer who by almost all accounts was performing well at the very last minute with no prior warning still looks shabby. The rumor mills have been having a field day with back stories which purport to explain how this could happen. 

Back Story No. 1 (the most charitable, from a singer): 

The role of Dona Anna is notoriously hard to cast, because her solo arias require a showy voice, yet the ensembles call for musical cooperation and restraint. Management decided to go with the big flashy voice of replacement Elza van den Heever, but this had the inevitable consequence of unbalancing the ensembles on opening night. This theory was confirmed for me by an experienced critic who was present at both the Briggs-sung Final Dress and the van den Heever opening performance. She said that both singers had done a good job, neither one better than the other, that it was just a matter of taste. 

Back Story No. 2 ( the dishy one) was cleverly articulated by blogger Ching Chang on The Bay Buzz: 

“….there is mounting evidence from different sources suggesting that Hope Briggs dismissal from SFO’s Don Giovanni was not about race, but rather a carefully orchestrated deal to promote van den Heever, a new client of Matthew Epstein at CAMI [Columbia Artists Management Inc.] 

“A selected portion of an e-mail received from a credible anonymous source: 

‘... So, this supposedly “sudden” event has been planned for a long time, as I’m sure you suspected as well. Rhoslyn Jones was the official cover, and [her colleagues] had been hearing from her “why am I even here, sitting in rehearsals, spending all this time,” because she knew that Elza was in the wings and was being rehearsed, and kept informed of the production—very quietly. The only person who didn’t know was Hope. 

[...] Matthew Epstein works very sneakily. While Gockley is not known to be a fan of Elza’s around the Opera Center, he was supposedly convinced long ago by Epstein to make a big press splash like this, not only for SFO and the summer season, but for his new client Elza, as well as dumping a singer chosen by Pamela. Of course it would’ve looked even worse if they cancelled Hope earlier, to only replace her with an Adler (either Roz or Elza).’ 

“Elza van den Heever is an Adler Fellow, which is essentially a glorified intern undergoing advanced training. So, if SFO had replaced Hope Briggs earlier, they would have felt obliged to find an artist of stature to replace her, thus derailing a calculated plan to offer Matt’s client Elza her big break. This version of events seems at least more plausible than asking us to passively believe that [former SF Opera Managing Director Pamela] Rosenberg’s choice of Briggs could be so unfit as to merit an unceremonious dump at the last minute.…. It appears that Briggs’ name was dragged through the mud through no fault of her own.” 

If I were writing the libretto for this opera-in-the-making, that’s the plot I’d go with—it has the ring of truth. In fact, you could even call it A Star is Born—one of the oldest plots in show biz: plucky intern rises from the ranks on opening night to save the company. Gockley and Epstein, old pros both, might have thought they could fool the press and the public with this tried-and-true scenario, and it almost worked. 

Except that, as Cornell West titled his book, “Race Matters.” Using one of opera’s relatively few African-American singers as the scapegoat in this hoary plot was bound to garner public attention.  

Saying that opera is “nobly colorblind” makes no more sense than boasting about being tone-deaf. There’s nothing noble or even practical about being colorblind, it’s just insensitive, clueless. 

This is not about altruism, it’s selfish. I happen to love hearing the sound of unamplified human voices singing lush harmonies, but I’m painfully aware that European opera, like much of European classical music, is at risk of become an elite preoccupation for wealthy dilettantes. I also love jazz, but as music programs disappear from our elementary schools it’s starting to be reserved for kids whose parents can afford private lessons and jazz camp, and it’s the listeners who lose out. 

If Gockley’s San Francisco Opera really believes its own PR about broadening the audience for opera, blowing off a gala planned for African-American patrons in Hope’s honor was remarkably shortsighted. When two excellent singers were weighed in the balance, the fact that only one of them is an African-American should have mattered more than the ambitions of a powerful corporate agent who had a contract with the other one.  

And being colorblind was also a mistake for Yoshi’s jazz club and the Jazzschool in Berkeley. Both were lambasted last week for overlooking black musicians when they put together an anniversary CD and a festival program. It’s a valid question: I can name eight fine African-American jazz musicians almost within walking distance of the Planet office who could have handled a festival gig with panache—why weren’t they asked? Both organizations are attempting to make amends now, but the controversy still rages. 

I’m not qualified to speak about how this kind of shortsightedness affects African-Americans themselves. One of our readers tackles the broader question of the corrosive effect of the perception of racism in a First Person essay which appears in today’s paper, submitted even before last week’s furor over snubs to black artists. The jazz musicians themselves and their fans are duking it out in our columns and elsewhere. We’ve gotten opposing opinions from two of the very best black saxophone players in the Bay Area or perhaps the world. Hope Briggs herself graciously told the Times that she didn’t think racism was an issue in her case, and she gets the last word on that topic for now.