How to bring the ballet to your living room
Plus, the country that just made a big investment in the arts.
This year, so far, I have already found myself at two Philharmonic performances and six dance shows—soon to be far more now that New York City Ballet’s winter season is in full swing. Little compares to a live performance, but sometimes, you do have to get your fix in other ways. That is when I turn to YouTube.
You might be startled to see just how many incredible ballets, operas, and symphonies are available to watch for free, if only you search the right thing. Just the other day, I watched Diana Vishneva and Sergei Polunin’s 2014 Giselle. I’ve returned often to the Paris Opera Ballet’s production of Jerome Robbins’ Glass Pieces. We are almost too fortunate to be able to watch Gillian Murphy and Angel Corella in a 2005 Swan Lake. (I agree heartily with a commenter who called it “the gold standard” for the ballet).
You could also invite friends to dress up and watch the Paris-Bastille Opera’s Carmen or La Scala’s Tristan und Isolde.
There are manifold reasons to experience these shows live, in the company of thousands of others—watching to see how a performer will pull off a particularly tricky turn, waiting for intermission to whisper your early takes, and, of course, nosily eyeing all the other patrons in the theater for fashion inspiration or assumption-making about their inner worlds. But what’s most important is having access to these arts regardless of your finances or location. It may very well be the case that the arts are more available to you thank you may realize.
More and more artists are pulling out of their Kennedy Center performances. Most recently, the composer Philip Glass (a favorite of this newsletter)—who just celebrated his 89th birthday—canceled the debut of his 15th symphony, “Lincoln,” which was scheduled for June. He said in a statement, per the Associated Press:
Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony. Therefore, I feel an obligation to withdraw this Symphony premiere from the Kennedy Center under its current leadership.
The Center’s vice president of public relations responded, “We have no place for politics in the arts, and those calling for boycotts based on politics are making the wrong decision,” which is as stupid and incorrect a statement as Sydney Sweeney recently telling Cosmopolitan that because she is “in the arts” she is “not a political person” and is “not here to speak on politics.” Babe, art is politics…
Anyway, soprano Renee Fleming, who previously served as the Center’s artistic adviser, withdrew from two May performances “due to a scheduling conflict,” and the Martha Graham Dance Company announced it would be skipping the Center on its centennial tour (though it didn’t give a direct reason why).
The Washington National Opera previously announced that it would be leaving the Center., and now we know where it’s going—George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium (for its March productions of Treemonisha and The Crucible).
On top of all this, Trump announced on Truth Social that the Kennedy Center will close on July 4 for a two-year-long renovation. So far, details are scant. I guess this does make it easier for artists and performing arts groups to opt out of the venue altogether…
The Dallas Opera and the San Diego Opera are enjoying some recent spoils: The latter just announced a landmark $4.5 million gift, which is split with the San Diego Symphony, while the Dallas Opera secured a $25 million challenge grant from the O’Donnell Foundation. This is huge: with an additional $29.5 million that the company raised on its own, this grant will help more than double the company’s endowment, which means it will have the funds for more ambitious projects. We’ll keep an eye on what happens here.
You know who is not doing so well? That would be the Metropolitan Opera, which just announced that it would enact layoffs, cut exec salaries, and postpone an upcoming new production, saving the company $15 million this fiscal year and $25 million the next. You may recall that the Met just entered a tentative $200 deal with Saudi Arabia a few months ago, for which it was heavily criticized (fair). While this deal was intended to be real lifeline for the company, Met director Peter Gelb’s decision to enact cuts now points to some hesitation (though he said he was confident that the tentative deal would successfully close, though “the Saudis have had to recalibrate their budgets because of their own economic concerns,” the New York Times reported).
The Met does have other plans to potentially shore up some cash: it could sell the naming rights to its theater and it could sell the two massive Chagall murals in its lobby (valued at $55 million), with the condition that they stay in place—a buyer would get a donation plaque promoting their philanthropic work.
Amid these financial struggles, the Met is also reportedly considering reviving its retired 2009 production of “Carmen,” after the ongoing dispute about Carrie Cracknell’s 2023 production, which protesters interrupted in November. As it turns out, in the fall, the Met recently made changes to this production (removing some set pieces and restaging a bit) that displeased the original production team so much that everyone but an assistant stage director asked that their names be dropped from the program. Gelb said the changes were financially driven and saved the Met $300,000.
I would be remiss to talk about the news without acknowledging the violence that ICE has inflicted, and continues to inflict, in Minneapolis. It’s heartening to see that several major arts institutions, including the Walker Art Center and Minneapolis Institute of Art participated in a general strike on January 23. A long list of galleries and museums across the U.S. also participated on the January 30 general strike.
Gustavo Dudamel, who may very well be considered the Leonard Bernstein of our time (at least according to NY Philharmonic supporter Alec Baldwin), is expanding his influence beyond Lincoln Center, even before he takes over as music and artistic director of that company in the fall. After a successful show at Radio City Music Hall, he announced last week that the orchestra would start playing operas at Carnegie Hall. It’s all a part of his mission to grow the reach of the company. “We are starting with Radio City, which is a place the Philharmonic hasn’t played,” he told the New York Times. “We are doing opera at Carnegie Hall. We are keeping and enriching the park concerts, but even more, we are trying to connect with the cultural life of different neighborhoods.”
More arts news below the paywall…
