Volume 26 Issue 6 - March and April 2021

Maria Callas,
Madama Butterfly,
Chicago, 1955
REAR VIEW
MIRROR
ROBERT HARRIS
SONY
Toronto
‘woke leftist’?
Sounds like a plot
for an opera
ROBERT HARRIS
Here’s a reminder for those of you who think we
Canadians have no substantial international
intellectual clout. You are wrong. So wrong.
And how do I know? Because Le Monde, France’s leading
newspaper, told me.
You see, Paris is up in arms these days because our Alexander
Neef, now running the Paris Opera, has decided to stop ballet performances
in blackface, and pledged to improve the racial balance in
the makeup of members of his companies. He’s even wondered out
loud whether certain pieces might be permanently retired from the
Opera’s repertoire. (Please, take Madama Butterfly, please.) Everyone
from the President of the Republic to the monstrous Marine Le Pen is
beside themselves with alarm. “Woke, leftist ideas” they shudder, are
intruding into the rarefied world of French intellectual life.
But, as Le Monde pointed out, what can you expect? Neef spent
more than a decade in Toronto, they note, where, clearly, his mind and
soul were permanently debilitated. In other words, it’s not Neef’s fault
he has been polluted with these new ideas. It’s our fault. Take a bow,
Toronto, we are corrupting the whole world! And maybe, just maybe,
the world is ready for it.
As expected, or at least hoped, the pandemic has encouraged
musical institutions everywhere to reevaluate conventions, practices,
repertoire and ways of thinking, decades, if not more than a century
old. In mid-February, Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times’
chief music critic wrote a fascinating column espousing some of the
same ideas we’ve been talking about here for months. He hoped out
loud that when the pandemic finally runs its course, we wouldn’t just
return to business as usual with symphonic music. He’s encouraging
more creative presentation techniques, a less predictable, more nimble
scheduling policy that would allow programs to be put in place weeks
in advance of performance, rather than years, as is now the case. He
wants to hear works by new composers, see more racial and gender
balance in performers and creators – all in all, bear witness to a more
responsive, more relevant art form.
Yes, even here, in bad old “woke, leftist” Toronto (who knew?),
things seem to be pivoting as well. Two new appointments to major
Canadian musical institutions suggest that changes in thinking in
musical leadership are on the horizon. The first was the announcement
in November of Perryn Leech, currently managing director of
Houston Grand Opera, as Neef’s replacement as general director of the
Canadian Opera Company, with a clear focus on community outreach
and financial stability central to his mandate. But perhaps the more
interesting hire was the appointment of Ellie Hisama to be dean of the
Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto, effective July 1.
According to her Columbia University bio, where she currently
teaches, Hisama’s research and teaching “have addressed issues of
race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and the social and political dimensions
of music.” She has published volumes on Ruth Crawford Seeger,
and on hip-hop, and in her welcoming statement, she said that she
was looking forward to “opening and leading conversations about how
students, staff, faculty, alumni and administrators can work together
towards greater diversity, equity and inclusion...”
A more comprehensive and bold statement of changing directions
for the U of T faculty would be hard to find. Hisama’s appointment
puts U of T firmly on a new footing as regards the presentation, repertoire
and performance of classical music. And while it can be easy to
chalk up such an appointment to “political correctness” (something of
an intellectually lazy phrase), it’s important to note that the education
system is by far the weakest link in the entire classical music superstructure.
By and large, classical music education is intensely conservative,
primarily because, as someone once brilliantly noted to me,
students today are not learning their teachers’ technique, but their
teachers’ teachers’ technique. In other words, most classical conservatories
and faculties are rooted in ideas about music three or four
generations old. And when you realize how few musicians ever think
beyond what they learn in their student years (when many of them
But what, you may ask, do issues of
“diversity, equity and inclusion” have
to do with ... the nuts and bolts
of musical technique?
are still in their teens), it’s obvious that reform of music education is
central to reform generally in classical music.
But what, you may ask, do issues of “diversity, equity and inclusion”
have to do with questions of bowing technique, or vocal production,
or formal analysis? With the nuts and bolts of musical technique?
54 | March and April 2021 thewholenote.com