In which I have a lot of messy feelings about Plácido Domingo and Verdi and tenors

[cahn]

-I absolutely think Domingo has been sexually harassing women

-I think it was absolutely the right decision that he not be at the Met anymore

-he's an amazing artist and to be honest I'm sad he won't be at the Met anymore even if I fully support that decision

-wtf Gelb for being all not-believing for frankly bizarre reasons (most of the complaints were anonymous? AP isn't reputable media? WHAT)

-it is the lowest of low bars but it was way more classy of Domingo to resign from LA Opera than James Levine's "I will sue everyone in sight" response

-(let me say I do not mean this as an excuse at ALL) I do kinda feel like he was set up for failure, by which I mean, the guy's career involved a whole heck of a lot of singing Verdi tenors -- they ARE ALMOST ALL SEXUAL HARASSERS (*) who are also considered the heroes, and not only does the narrative almost never call them out for their sexual harassment, indeed it usually celebrates them for being the hero. And it's not even like saying the culture is a culture of harassment, it's saying that your job is literally to glorify it! Honestly, it's surprising to me that all Verdian tenors aren't awful to women -- and of course we're seeing more and more that they are (see also the recent news about Vittorio Grigolo)

-I imagine it's not nearly as bad a problem with Verdian baritones and violence, if it's a problem at all, because that violence is always called out by the narrative even when our sympathies are with it (hiiiiii Renato)

-I suspect that if, for example, Jonas Kaufmann isn't a sexual harasser (I really hope he's not), that it may partially be because he's made a career out of interpretations where the interpretation subtext does the job of calling out the tenor for his harassment (e.g., his twitchy and half-insane Don Carlo).

-I don't know what the solution is, because obviously I ADORE Verdi and I don't want people to stop doing Verdi, nor do I think it's a tenable solution for all Verdi tenors to always be twitchy

-on the other hand, it's probably possible to generally stage things as a little less... leaning on the heroic sexual harassment

-(*) In related news, I realized a couple of weeks ago that Forza is a weird opera for me to listen to because the tenor comes on and my visceral reaction has been conditioned to be OH NO TENOR UGH and then my conscious brain kicks in and is all, oh, no, Don Alvaro is awesome and respectful of everyone! it's the baritone in this one who is the whiny awful harasser! and my visceral hindbrain is all WHAT THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE

Comments

[cahn]

I don't think I mind his baritone activity quite as much as you do, although it's so weird! I mean, it's basically... this... tenor... singing baritone notes.

Yeah, I thought he was a better person than that too :(

Yes, that's what I mean, they never get punished! They're supposed to be the heroes! When a baritone is horrible, at least he usually gets punished for it so you're in no doubt as to whether he's a good guy or not. (Hi Don G!) Well, I guess there's Peter Grimes :P (Which I am watching the Met version of right now. SO GOOD. Also concurrently watching the Met Ballo with Hvorostovsky, also SO GOOD and I am really really enjoying it.)