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The battle for the mind and soul of Los Angeles Opera, the Los Angeles Times and honest journalism.
Commentary by Carie J. Delmar
By Carie J. Delmar
OperaOnline.us
July 30, 2009 -- I suppose I always knew the press could make or break an election, but I never experienced its influence first hand. I also believed -- as those in journalism school do -- that the goal for any journalist is to practice his or her craft with integrity. Even with regards to criticism, the word “commentary” or “review” does not give a journalist carte blanche to print irresponsibly. If anything, when put in the position to criticize, a journalist must carry out that mission with honor and dignity, always cognizant of the influence one wields on the lives and careers of those being criticized.
Editors often send reporters and reviewers out with a predetermined agenda or slant on a certain subject. Most news stories should tell both sides of the story. Fairness in criticism is much
harder to come by. Most editors wield so much power over their reporters that it is sometimes difficult to surmise exactly who is to blame when something blasphemous is printed. An opinion does not necessarily go with a byline.
As more-and-more reporters and critics are given the ax due to the economy and emerging trends in technology, as the Internet becomes the communication vehicle of choice – news and criticism are reaching wider audiences, and sensationalism has become more sexy than truth.
Sources do not matter anymore. Organizations that should be managed with sound principles now plunge to the lowest depths in order to maintain their images, stature and very existence. People are forfeiting their beliefs, values and ideals for false acceptance and prestige. It’s all political. Values don’t count. Money can buy anything.
And the saddest part about this new societal norm is that our young people are taught that this is acceptable.
So how does this work? Recently, I sounded off on LA’s Ring Festival. The line between my vocation as author and critic became blurred with the activist in me. The brunt of the reaction to my activism did not fall totally on my shoulders though, but on those of a more powerful body, which has enabled me to be both participant and surveyor.
I have watched an opera company that was destined for success fall victim to a failing economy that could not have been prophesied. Productions are planned years in advance with pledged funding. Some of those sources apparently ran dry.
Were his views about the Jewish race so imbedded in his music that it is impossible to separate the man from his greatest achievement: his Ring cycle? He says they were. The question is: did Hitler, long after Wagner's death, agree? And what might Wagner have thought?
The result has been desperation and irrational behavior peppered with a twisting and turning of concepts, wordage and phraseology to save face. And I have been the surveyor. What I fail to comprehend is this company’s inability to consider available pathways for success which lurk at every doorway. I do wish success for LA Opera, but until the company is able to accept new and broader visions for itself with a foundation of honest and honorable principles and management, that success will tread between the illusive and tangible.
This commentary has nothing to do with my point-of-view on the festival. It is about the sources that bent the truth and the press that printed the misinformation which exploded into a media blitz.
LA Times reporter Molly Hennessy-Fiske wrote on July 14 that “Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich is demanding that Los Angeles Opera discontinue the Ring Festival LA planned for next year, calling Richard Wagner a ‘Nazi composer.’”
Antonovich’s press release and motion sought, instead, to “rearrange the festival’s programming” and “add other composers.” He never asked to cancel the festival or LA Opera’s production of the “Ring,” which is what was quickly disseminated through the Internet media waves. Pretty soon LA Times music critic Mark Swed was running with the story writing that if LA Opera was deprived of producing the “Ring,” opera in Los Angeles would be doomed, and Antonovich’s proposition “would bankrupt LA Opera” and harm the Los Angeles economy.
People started writing comments on the Internet and sending in letters to the editor. The Times ran with the story and printed their responses.
What kind of person would wish such doom on an opera company? How could Antonovich censor the music?
He didn’t want to: instead, he was attempting to balance the program of lectures, exhibits, films, German food festivals and light shows in honor of the racist, Wagner. Antonovich was not censoring anything.
The idea for the festival was hatched at the LA Times. This prestigious newspaper, one of the top three in the nation was, no doubt, promoting the festival.
Then on the day of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors’ meeting, Antonovich’s motion was wiped out by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky’s substitute motion, which simply endorsed the Ring Festival and urged LA Opera to publicize it.
There is no evidence to show that “the art and the man are indistinguishable,” Yaroslavsky touted. The music is “performed . . . in the state of Israel itself.”
No matter what you do or don’t believe, there are two sides to this argument and much evidence does exist to substantiate that Wagner’s “Gesamtkunstwerk” or “total work of art” includes his racist ideology. Plus the unofficial ban on performing Wagner’s music in Israel is still in effect.
Who knows who is giving what to whom. The supervisors didn’t question the misinformation and voted in favor of Yaroslavsky’s motion.
The newspapers had a field day. The bad guys became the good guys, and the good guy became the Lone Ranger.
A week later, I spoke to Dr. Michael Berenbaum who is organizing the seminar which will bring to light that the man and his music are one. Gottfried Wagner, the great-grandson of Richard Wagner, has been invited to present the evidence that Supervisor Yaroslavsky said didn’t exist. And Wagner scholar Marc Weiner will draw the connection between the man and his music in his keynote address, “When is the Artwork Guilty?”.
Berenbaum, a Holocaust expert at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, reaffirmed to me that Yaroslavsky’s comments were inaccurate. The board therefore voted for the motion based on erroneous information. If I were a board member, I would feel deceived.
I have no idea who educated Yaroslavsky on the issue, possibly someone at LA Opera, or maybe a professor who doesn’t believe Wagner’s own words, that “the severance of the artist from the man is as brainless an attempt as the divorce of soul from body.”
I only know that the vote was not based on accurate information.
Neither the press, the officeholders nor the opera company deserve commendations for their conduct. I do not know if all of this will be resolved. I only know that this story should be presented in journalism classes as an illustration of what can happen when politicians, journalists and artists lose sight of truth, values and why they became politicians, journalists and artists in the first place.
