The Economist 14Dec2019

The EconomistDecember 14th 2019 Books & arts 73

1

N

ot evenclassical music, politest of art

forms, is safe from politics. In the

mid-20th century, when performers affili-

ated with the Third Reich visited American

concert halls, patriotic audiences howled.

The Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad—

whose husband was a lumber magnate and

Nazi collaborator—had to sing in Philadel-

phia in 1947 amid stink bombs and protest

signs. When Herbert von Karajan, an Aus-

trian maestro and former member of the

Nazi party, brought the Berlin Philharmon-

ic to New York in 1955, demonstrators re-

leased pigeons bearing anti-fascist mes-

sages from the balcony of Carnegie Hall.

During the first world war, the concert-

going public in America had targeted for-

eign composers as well as musicians. Audi-

ences evinced a particular distaste for any

works featuring the German language, and

disdained pieces by living or nationalistic

Germans. Hence Wagner and Richard

Strauss were struck from playbills, while

the humanistic Beethoven generally got a

pass. Prominent German conductors of

American symphony orchestras were dis-

missed from their posts and locked up.

Jonathan Rosenberg chronicles these

instances of musical nationalism in “Dan-

gerous Melodies”, his survey of classical

music’s intersection with politics in the

20th century. The competing strain of

thought, he writes, is musical universal-

ism: the squishy notion that music “could

act as a balm, a unifier, a force for uplift,

and even as a catalyst for global co-opera-

tion”. Mr Rosenberg is as sceptical of the

universalists as he is of the nationalists,

but he ably covers both in his informative

(if occasionally repetitive) book.

The two great musical universalists of

the century were Arturo Toscanini, a leg-

endary Italian maestro, and Leonard Bern-

stein, an American composer who con-

ducted, too. Toscanini declined to perform

at Bayreuth while Nazi banners flew, in-

stead lending his prestige to the fledgling

Palestine Symphony Orchestra. He refused

to lead the fascist hymn “Giovinezza” at the

beginning of a performance of “Falstaff”,

breaking his baton and declaring, “La Scala

artists aren’t vaudeville singers.” In 1943, as

he walked to the podium to lead a radio

broadcast celebrating the collapse of the

fascist Italian government, tears of joy

streamed down his face. “Nothing should

interfere with music,” he later declared.

Bernstein went further. Rather than

simply resisting the efforts of nationalists

to co-opt music, during the cold war he ac-

tively sought to use the art form to bring ad-

versaries together. Touring Europe and the

Soviet Union with the New York Philhar-

monic in 1959, he stressed the ability of

symphonies to break down barriers and

calm hostilities. Music is “uncluttered

with conceptual notions, no words are in-

volved”, he said. “You can’t argue with a g-

sharp.” With lectures and concerts—not to

mention podium histrionics full of pas-

sion and anguish—Bernstein charmed au-

diences on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Yet despite these idealistic gestures, Mr

Rosenberg notes, all sides in the cold war

persisted in trying to weaponise their mu-

sical stars, with mixed success. The Soviet

composer Dmitri Shostakovich, twice de-

nounced by Stalin, said whatever his hand-

lers told him to say in public but would

rather have been left alone to work. Van Cli-

burn, a lanky American pianist, played the

great concertos of Rachmaninoff and

Tchaikovsky in a lush romantic style, prov-

ing that America could compete with Rus-

sia culturally as well as militarily. But he

was a clumsy statesman. When Dwight Ei-

senhower hosted him at the White House,

he brought a Soviet friend uninvited. The

president, no music-lover, paid Cliburn

back by skipping his evening concert. 7

Music and politics

Stars and bars

Dangerous Melodies.By Jonathan

Rosenberg. W.W. Norton; 512 pages; $39.95

and £28

L

aura o’dayis not a professional singer.

Nonetheless, last year she auditioned

for On Site Opera’s seasonal production of

“Amahl and the Night Visitors”, a Christmas

staple by Gian Carlo Menotti, because she

heard that chorus members would be paid

and she needed the money. She used to bag

groceries but now, at 58, is on medical leave

because of severe arthritis, chronic pancre-

atitis, lymphoma, diabetes and various

other maladies—“It’s easier to say what I

don’t have,” she says with a grim laugh—

which are a legacy of her years living rough

and addicted to drugs.

She heard about the auditions because

she lives in The Times Square, a Manhattan

building run by Breaking Ground, the city’s

largest provider of permanent supportive

housing for the homeless—and a collabo-

rator on the production. Ms O’Day thought

she would quit after a rehearsal or two, but

found the experience so rewarding that she

decided to join the acclaimed troupe for a

second year, performing in a sold-out re-

vival at the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen

that ended on December 8th.

On Site Opera has been taking opera out

of traditional venues since 2012. The aim,

says Eric Einhorn, the company’s co-foun-

der and artistic director, is to demystify an

art form that struggles to attract younger

audiences. By staging shows in unusual

spaces, such as “The Barber of Seville” in an

Upper East Side mansion and “Pygmalion”

in Madame Tussauds, the company found

it could both keep costs down (by avoiding

rent and doing without built scenery) and

create the kind of intimate theatrical expe-

riences that patrons like. As his team went

from staging one production a year to

three, Mr Einhorn became more ambitious

in other ways, too. Eager to produce an op-

era with a social impact, he contacted

Breaking Ground. The result is a uniquely

moving production of “Amahl”.

The title character of Menotti’s opera,

which had its premiere in a television

broadcast on Christmas Eve 1951, is a poor,

crippled shepherd boy who, with his wid-

NEW YORK

An opera company recruits singers from among the city’s homeless

Art and society

No crib for a bed

Suffer the little children