Opera is stuck in a racist, sexist past, while many in the audience have moved on

Cio-Cio-San (centre) during a dress rehearsal of Opera Australia’s Madama Butterfly at the Sydney Opera House in Sydney in 2019. Works such as this are attracting criticism from some modern audiences. Photo: Stephen Saphore/AAP

by Caitlin Vincent

Lecturer in Creative Industries, The University of Melbourne

In the first act of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s musical A Little Night Music, the long-suffering Countess Charlotte Malcolm mentions her younger sister, noting, “Dear Marta has renounced men and is teaching gymnastics in a school for retarded girls in Bettleheim”.

When first written for the show’s Broadway premiere in 1973, this was intended as a laugh line that transitions into the famous duet, Every Day a Little Death. But nearly 50 years later, it stands out for all the wrong reasons.

During Victorian Opera’s recent production of the musical in Melbourne, the use of the pejorative term “retarded” prompted an audible intake of breath from the audience, with many visibly shifting in their seats.

When the performers began the duet, the audience’s discomfort was largely forgotten. Yet the moment highlights one of the most significant challenges facing opera companies in the 21st century: an ever-widening gap between a repertoire that is frozen in time and an audience that is continuing to evolve.

This issue is increasingly coming to the fore in opera circles, as the stories presented on stage seem more and more removed from the modern realities of #MeToo and efforts to achieve racial and gender equality. In Australia recently, more than 190 composers, directors, and musicians signed a call to action to remove sexism and gendered violence from operatic works.

But the problem is deep-rooted and stems from opera’s nature as a historical art form

First published at The Conversation, July 10, 2019