Destabilizing the Opera Universe - an interview with George Steel
A.J. GOLDMANN
After years of playing second fiddle to its bigger, more imposing neighbor, the Metropolitan Opera, can New York City Opera regain its unique position in the world of classical music?
George Steel, General Manager and Artistic Director Opera of NYCO, which is set to reopen on November 5th after an extensive $107 million renovation, exudes confidence.
The renovations to the David H. Koch Theater (formerly the New York State Theater) include adjustments in the hall’s seating and acoustics, as well as a new state-of-the-art media center. The expanded orchestra pit can now accommodate up to 100 musicians.
With all these new resources at his disposal, Steel is eager to shake things up. “It’s great to destabilize a universe that people know like rosary beads,” Steel said.
Let’s not forget that NYCO was founded in 1943 as populist alternative to the more tradition-bound Metropolitan Opera. In the company’s 66-year history, it has presented 29 world premieres and 61 American premieres of works like Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron. Let’s not forget that the company also launched the careers of many now-famous American singers, through their commitment to showcasing young artists. The roster includes Beverly Sills, Renée Fleming, Samuel Ramey. There have even been some minor European talents, like Plácido Domingo and José Carreras.
In recent years, NYCO seemed to have lost focus. It was increasingly artistically and financially adrift. While the Met had successfully revitalized its image under its new general manager, record producer Peter Gelb, NYCO struggled to attract audiences. The company, which was presenting a regular mixture of standard repertoire, repackaged Broadway fare and the odd new Handel production, had lost direction.
Under Steel, it seems that NYCO will finally be getting back to its role as “the people’s opera,” as mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia called it. But in this day and age, this means more than just offering affordable ticket prices. Steel wants to make opera intelligible to the guy off the street. If Peter Gelb’s has shown that opera can be financially viable in this day and age, then Steel – whose other job descriptions include pianist, conductor and impresario – has some pretty clear ideas about making opera artistically relevant.
The challenges that Steel faces suggest many of the larger concerns that contemporary opera and opera houses need to confront. How much will audiences tolerate new and possibly inaccessible works? How far should directors push the envelope in terms of onstage sex and violence, a recent question to emerge in the debate about Luc Bondy’s Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera? How to respect an opera house’s tradition and still attract new audiences?
“Traditional operatic repertoire and the audiences for them are getting smaller,” Steel noted, but with a positive spin. “But this is good news because you no longer need to chase the audiences. You can’t just presume that people are going to want to see masterpiece because they’re masterpieces. You need to entice them.”
The key for Steel is not to do “very old music with mildly radical stagings,” but rather to start with music that is “truly thrilling and radical.” “I have no fear about putting shocking things on the stage,” he says bluntly. Is that a promise or a threat? Steel declined to elaborate.
Steel can draw on his experience as Executive Director of Miller Theatre at Columbia University, which he ran for 12 years and turned into a vibrant destination for new music. “You want to sell out shows? Well, program composer portraits of Xenakis, Zorn, Ligeti, Varese, Nancarrow, and Reich. That’s six sold-out evenings right there,” he explained.
“I spend an enormous amount of my time putting these things on my radar.” Steel added that he is sifting through NYCO’s long-running program VOX: Showcasing American Opera, an annual performance forum for new composition, for what he calls “corn-fed American works” that have traditionally formed a backbone of NYCO’s programming.
The first production of the 2009-2010 season is a revival of Hugo Weisgall’s Esther, which was a 1993 world premiere here. It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to program a little-known atonal opera as the season opener. Steel says of Weisgall’s musical language, “It’s like Alban Berg, but more like Bill Evans.”
It’s a move that seems to have paid off. Ticket sales for Esther are so strong that the company decided to add an additional performance.
With Steel at the helm, will the NYCO finally emerge from the long shadow of the Met? Over the past four seasons, Gelb has succeeded in making Met a fashionable and fabulous place to be. NYCO can hopefully capitalize off the rejuvenated image of opera that the new Met has projected through its commitment to fresh new productions and by embracing technology. But we’re going to have to turn to NYCO for the unsung masterpieces of the 20th Century, as well as the daring operas of the future. NYCO still has a unique part to play in New York’s cultural landscape. And in keeping opera relevant and fresh.
