#after i had to read that 'don giovanni cast without poc is a thing that is horrid on principle' i'm just like

[janiedean]

stevetomjohn(.)tumblr(.)com/post/125974550995/so-i-just-saw-an-article-today-on-npr-about-how stevetomjohn(.)tumblr(.)com/post/124713803865/operainthearchives-fizzylimon What do think about this? Because while I agree that opera companies should avoid blackface and stereotypical portayal of non-Western cultures, I think that color-blind casting is the better choice, not only for the quality of the performance (more people to choose from, more chances to get the better voice for the role) part 1

But also for the minorities involved: if an opera house decides to include e.g. Aida in their season and they can choose from X sopranos among which one is a black woman, they’re going to put her in Aida, while the white women will have more choice (so, type-casting). Also, if the ethnicity of characters like Otello is important to the point of requiring a black man singing his part, you have to select the rest of the cast accordingly, so the other roles can be played only by white part or white-passing singers? (Not considering that if you find a black tenor who can play Otello well, you can’t still put him in every single Otello performance, you’re going to wreck his voice on the top of not giving him the opportunity of a satifying and wide repoertoire). I believe that there’s a racism problem even in the opera world, but I think that people should advocate to a more equal selection in all roles, not just the ones with POC.

........ good fucking grief.

okay, first thing of all, this person is completely living in a fantasy world if he thinks that people will stop performing both otello and/or aida based on the lead characters’s ethnicity. period. especially aida which is an extremely popular opera, and I don’t even like it personally, it’s one of the few verdi operas I’m very meh on, but like...... opera theaters need revenue because they’re almost always in the red not in the green, and popular verdi operas are sure revenue 100%, and if people think theaters won’t perform aida out of political correctness ESPECIALLY when it’s full of stuff singers die to do they’re delusional. period. and as far as othello is concerned is absolutely a demanding role (and not just verdi - rossini’s never gets performed because you need three tenors and there’s one singer in the world - gregory kunde - who can sing both verdi and rossini’s role, says all) and if you send people who can’t sing it properly to do it, you ruin their voice. and assuming that you can’t stage one of verdi’s best operas which is also a revenue and which bass singers die to perform in (IAGO’S PART GUYS) out of that is also equally idiotic. never mind that saying that those parts never went to black singers is ridiculous because I didn’t dream up leontyne price singing aida AND IT WAS IN WHAT THE SIXTIES OR THE SEVENTIES I mean let’s be real. it’s not that opera companies don’t employ poc singers on purpose, it’s that it’s not a given they’ll find poc singers with the right skills. also otello is not a role that young singers usually take on so you’d need to have someone who’s had a long career or at least enough to let their voice mature.

NOW, with that stated, I 100% agree with you and pretty much with what the person who was not OP was saying (admittedly I was rolling my eyes so much at halfway through that I skimmed but I think I got the gist), but the point is: we should avoid blackface - I mean, we all know othello’s supposed to be black even if he’s not we can play along without putting make-up on the singer -, we should do accurate productions (though I mean, I think they were complaining about butterfly or smth and like I hate puccini so I’m not an expert but at some point I found out that he actually did extensive research and the japanese back in the day loved it and I’m pretty sure that a while ago in italy they had a japanese director do the opera with japanese singers and so on and they perform it in japan so.... IT’S DOABLE AND IT’S NOT INHERENTLY RACIST even if to me the plot of that opera is atrocious but to each their own) and we definitely should have more nonwhite/poc singers in the opera world (though I mean if you watch videos of those singing competitions like that one in wales or that bi-yearly one in germany most of the singers are poc, a while ago I was wasting time on youtube and found out some a++++ five south-african singers both male and female who were amazing and I think a couple won so things are changing albeit slowly), but solving the problem by not doing blind casting is ridiculous because at that point it means that if you do idk l’italiana in algeri the poc singer can only be mustafa or his right hand man... and.... that’d be kind of sterotypical since it’s not like roles for poc people in opera were ALWAYS non-stereotypical. like, if we take just mozart, we could have poc playing just... mitridate, I suppose, MAYBE, the bad guys in serraglio and MAAAYBE sarastro in the magic flute?? MAYBE? ah, no, and monostatos. I mean, that’s not.... much of a repertoire??? (also I personally dislike productions where monostatos is suddenly ‘ugly’ and not black because I thought that the point was showing that others saw him as a monster and he had feelings too but NEVER MIND) instead last time I watched it from the ROH papageno was an absolutely handsome and charming half-caribbean guy who also sang amazingly

and that’s for mozart, but idk for rossini you’d just have the turkish/algerians from italiana and turco in italia or the people from semiramide, but semiramide is hard af to sing and you should find an all-around appropriate cast TWICE because you’d need the secondary company as you pointed out. and I mean I just saw that one of my fave bass singers who is russian is up to play assur at the MET, now he can’t do that because assur was persian and he’s russian?? samuel ramey’s career then would have been dead from the beginning because he played both assur and attila and he certainly wasn’t a hun? I mean, where do you actually find a race-appropriate attila anyway since it could be anyone from a russian to a mongolian at this point? like, if you don’t do blind casting you’re also confining POCs to roles that might or might not be stereotypical and leave most to the white people in question and honestly..... why? I’ve seen excellent chinese and korean singers around, and especially when there’s no ethnicity required (in theory) then just cast whoever. but as you said then if you do otello then the only black singer can be otello and everyone else can’t? I can’t have a chinese iago then, even if the chinese singer has the perfect voice for it? and like, juan diego flòrez couldn’t have played ANY role he ever was famous for because he’s peruvian and no one in operas is peruvian??? kathleen battle who is/was (I think she’s retired) one of my favorite sopranos is black and she played adina and rosina and susanna and a bunch of main leads back in the 80s, she shouldn’t have because sure as fuck l’elisir d’amore’s protagonist wasn’t black? come on.

like, the point is that you have to make sure more people have access to opera so more people want to become opera singers so you have more variety when you choose/audition and you can also do accurate casting when it’s required (ie aida), but you also can’t limit the singers. I mean, doing aida for sopranos is very good on a CV, if you get cast for it you shouldn’t take it because you’re not historically accurate? so we can’t have a chinese aida? or a mexican aida? why not? and maybe a black singer wants to do aida but also might want to play other parts? leontyne price or kathleen battle or pretty yende (just the first three coming to mind but there’s a lot more around) didn’t just play POC roles and I doubt they hate it. like, what that OP doesn’t get is that opera is also about what you get to sing, not the goddamned plot, because half of the opera plots in existence are hardly high literature. I mean, any soprano wants to sing violetta from la traviata because it looks great on your CV and is basically the top notch you can get with that work, no one gives a fuck what color violetta is. and there’s been non-white violettas for that matter. any bass wants to sing iago because it’s a good part, any tenor wants to play calaf  regardless of where he comes from because if you sing all’alba vincerò properly you bring the house down and same for rigoletto/the duke of mantua, and any baritone wants a shot at un ballo in maschera because that’s the only opera where he does encores and not the tenor XDD like ffs one of my favorite tenors who isn’t really a big bane is half french and half vietnamese and I saw him live once and fell in love TM and he was playing... don ottavio? IN PRAGUE? I mean don ottavio is spanish, not french-vietnamese, and no one cared? like the point is that you should have operas where everyone can sing and that are done respectfully and preferably with appropriate singers if  there’s the availability and if they have the right voice and it’s valid for every opera - I mean I’d totally be okay with an italiana in algeri where mustafa is white and lindoro is black WHO CARES [actually I saw one where mustafa was italian and lindoro was chinese soooo] -, not where you gatekeep what operas get to be sung by whom. idk according to this person polish singers can’t sing eugene onegin because it’s all russians?? srsly??

and other than that, OP knows kind of fucking nothing about what they’re talking about because:

if he wants canon lead poc roles for men there’s not just verdi’s othello, there’s rossini’s othello, then there’s assur from semiramide and actually all of semiramide as stated above should have a persian cast, there’s selim from rossini’s turco in italia and mustafa/haly from l’italiana who are algerian, there’s she sultan and osmin from mozart’s abduction from the serraglio (osmin mostly has an a++++ part), monostatos from magic flute (kinda stereotypical tho but I think a good direction could make it work very well), maometto II/mohamed II from rossini’s maometto II/le siege de corinthe (same opera different language), the pharaoh and his son from ALL the goddamned operas about moses that have ever been written first and foremost rossini’s mosè in egitto and the french version, plus verdi’s nabucco also has persians vs jewish people so I mean ALSO THE JEWISH PEOPLE FROM NABUCCO AND MOSE’ and so on if you consider jewish people poc, THEN there’s the fucking tenor from LOMBARDI ALLA PRIMA CROCIATA who’s **pagan**/muslim so definitely poc in theory and I’m not counting puccini bc I hate puccini but in theory turandot is all pocs, ALL OF THEM, and butterfly is all japanese and one american (WOW NOW ALL THE AMERICANS CAN ONLY SING PINKERTON I AM SAD FOR YOU AMERICAN TENORS), and ah yeah attila from verdi’s same-title opera is obviously hun.

if he wants canon lead poc female roles as stated above: FUCKING TURANDOT, semiramide plus retinue, elvira from italiana in algeri might not be lead but she’s important af, both female leads in nabucco, ulrica from un ballo in maschera (where it was actually a plot point that she was discriminated because she was black and characters in-verse pointed out it was shitty), if you want to go all the way then il trovatore has supposed to have an entire choir of roma travelers + azucena (and azucena is terrible but people would pay to sing her role BECAUSE IT’S A GOOD ROLE, and btw the last leonora I saw live was... japanese I think), zaida from turco in italia, ZELMIRA from rossini’s zelmira actually EVERYONE IS POC IN THERE TOO same as aureliano in palmira excluding the romans and ah yeah there’s also rossini’s ciro in babilonia where again it’s all poc technically. ah and cleopatra from haendel’s julius caesar I guess, if you assume she’s dark skinned, but julius caesar is one of those things I never could watch entirely without sleeping so idek but I mean...

I mean, I’m fairly sure that I didn’t even get all of them and half of those roles could absolutely be played by black people - algerians aren’t necessarily light-skinned and egyptians aren’t either - and anyway ULRICA WAS SUPPOSED TO BE BLACK EXPLICITLY but if we can’t find a black ulrica then we don’t do il ballo in maschera anymore when the main three roles are not hers?? I mean seriously let’s be real, taking operas out of performance for etnical correctness is unfeasible.

but again, OP other than not knowing the above obviously has only ever heard of extremely famous shit because if you say the only roles for black men and women are othello and aida you haven’t even scratched the surface just as verdi is concerned never mind everyone else in opera history.

obviously it’d be lovely to have all those roles sung by ethnically-accurate people but opera never was about accuracy in any way shape or form so maybe we should make sure everyone gets to sing everything according to their vocal abilities. maybe.

also it also depends on where the hell you are because of course a theater in the US will have more choice of poc singers and one in italy less, and still with that I’ve seen plenty of poc singers just at the rome theater never mind others. times are changing in the good direction already, let’s just keep on going that way maybe?