Should Opera Be Subsidized?: Operas and Citizens: Responds

...I am much more concerned about the role of the market, corporations, and private wealth than about public subsidies and discomforts posed to religion by secular humanism...

...Ackerman thinks that culture and state must be separated in the name of liberalism, that political liberalism requires neutrality towards the cultural texture of society...

...I also wonder if likening High Mass to a "performance" of secular art, as Ackerman does in the name of liberal "neutrality," might be found distasteful...

...So the Mass—I proceed with Ackerman's example although my point applies to devotional rites of any faith— has a singular and exclusivist mission, celebration of the Eucharist by believers...

...Opera's enriching role extends considerably beyond its limited (though growing) following...

...One consideration should surely be inequality in cultural opportunities...

...What of private donations...

...At the risk of repetition: not all "creeds" totalize in the same way...

...That concession generated a displacement of intolerant, religious public culture by a tolerant, more liberal one—a sorry development in the eyes of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalists through today, but a happy one in mine...

...Taking this role gives one entry into a realm of public reasoning, that of the liberal state...

...Well, I suppose opera does not necessarily enhance cultural—not to mention moral—intelligence...

...So liberalism (his, anyway) doesn't presume the "self" to be "unencumbered...

...Now, I am also aware that a good deal of 92 DISSENT / Summer 1999 our culture has religious ancestry...

...But can opera pay for itself...

...Opera's worth ought not to be judged by who can or cannot afford dearly priced tickets in market-driven societies, but by qualitative considerations, including opera's place in a society's general culture...

...They know that denouncing "individualism" or "free choice" won't get far—not in America, anyway —so other, cultural, means are deployed to their conservative ends...

...This obliged humanists to evaluate, to think for themselves, to make choices—prerequisites for a liberal ethos...

...Ackerman thinks it can, because he urges a "thoroughgoing disestablishment between the state and a specifically privileged culture—whether it be defined by the texts and celebrations of the Roman or Secular Canon...

...That's the government's job...

...These designations are not absolute nowadays...

...Given Ackerman's laissez-faire argument, I don't see how any funding of secular arts could be justified, let alone expansive cultural instruction in public schools...

...Looking at history, it seems to me that when illiberal outlooks accommodated to liberalism's rise, they were constrained to do so...

...and bridges all rest on structural foundations that come from physics, not the varied metaphysical belief systems of their builders...

...Consider: • Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites hallows nuns who are martyred during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror...

...moral breakdown...

...This, however, is to interpret the culture wars in terms close to those deployed by the right—as a contest of "creeds," each of them "totalizing" in their espousal of an ultimate meaning of life, all of them deemed to be of the same order...

...As I QUESTION the designation of the Mass as a "performance," so I also dissent from regarding citizenship as a "role" to "add" to a "repertoire...

...It would be facile to say that free speech is to democracy as opera is to culture because politics is not exactly analogous to artistic endeavor...

...Broad musical education as part of a state program is not "neutral...

...Authority no longer emanated downward...

...This is obviously not Ackerman's complaint, yet it seems to me that his liberal response to illiberalism must, finally, imperil his own values...

...Suppose someone argued that free speech is in practice largely a privilege of elites in our inegalitarian Western societies—that the rich, the powerful, or the well placed (say, law professors like Ackerman or political theory professors like me) are greatly advantaged in its felicitous exercise or in its exploitation...

...I don't mean to imply that grand exemplars of "absolute" music or great literary works or paintings are somehow "lesser" entities—only that this medium influences, embodies, and reflects the strengths, weaknesses, and problems of cultural life in a uniquely wide-ranging way because of its diverse dimensions, its plural nature...

...Mahagonny, by Brecht and Weil, has Marxist messages...

...Private cultural philanthropy is surely laudable...

...In Verdi's Don Carlos, the church and the Inquisition are castigated, but the opera's liberal is a naive duke who is unwise to the ways of politics...

...Traffic on bridges can go two ways...

...Indeed, modern tolerance did not come about because churches reasoned together and concluded that all individuals have the right "to live their own lives in their own way...

...I suppose I am one of them because I am troubled about the extent to which cultural life is mediated by the cash (and corporate) nexus, by means rather than ends...

...Many Renaissance humanists were religious, but their methods challenged the "totalizing" metaphysics of the Middle Ages and fostered intellectual pluralism...

...Funding might, for one example, defray substantially the cost of opera tickets but not allow higher fees for superstars and their agents...

...democratic citizenship began to create diversity below, and power began to flow upward...

...Although democrats hope it will be otherwise one day, most citizens are not much engaged in public life, save for exceptional circumstances...

...Yet don't these engagements cultivate or handicap liberal citizenship...

...it was not a matter of their internal dynamics, that is, judgments "rooted" in their own "comprehensive" views...

...When liberal democracy displaced absolutism, it did not eliminate that administration or coherence...

...But consider: the liberal democratic state descended from monarchical absolutism in Europe...

...The answer is straightforward: no...

...my argument is inevitably with this notion...

...Public funding for arts (opera among them) ought to help make varied forms of culture available in a fair manner to all citizens...

...If it is so liberal as to include Wagner's sensuality or Schoenberg's atonality, who knows what comes next?-1960s license...

...secular humanism is thereby subsidized 94 DISSENT / Summer 1999 surreptitiously...

...ONETHELESS, Ackerman sanctions "a broad-ranging commitment to musical –_ performance and appreciation as part of the state's program of liberal education...

...I too would prefer imaginative calendars, although I have less of a problem with a "ritual cycle of Mozart, Verdi, and Wagner" if only because I also find a ritual cycle of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau invaluable when I teach political theory, and it need not preclude Foucault...

...Bartholomew's Day Massacre...

...it is a problem to be solved...

...Augustine writes in the Confessions, "When I find the singing itself more moving than the truth which it conveys, I confess that this is a grievous sin...

...it is also about how to conceive the relations of individuals to society...

...In his recent book The Stakeholder Society, Ackerman is dismissive of people who speak of "decommodifying" provinces of life...

...Religion, however, cannot do likewise for secularism...

...In any event, no natural law says that comprehensive views are immutable or don't need to recalibrate to abide within a liberal society...

...This is not only because of the composers (and in some cases, apologies to Mr...

...Only in part...

...And what if a "devout religionist " cites Augustine's worry that music can corrupt worshipers because "the senses are not content to take second place...

...So do I; and I think it should range from Gregorian chant to George Gershwin...

...Its share at a given moment ought, like anything else, to depend on an array of considerations— mainly qualitative but also (alas...

...DISSENT / Summer 1999 95 accompanying perils that ought not to be overlooked —such as artistic priorities established by large donors rather than by artistic directors...

...Show me a philanthropist in this country who gives to the homeless...

...I think it is secular culture and religion that ought to be demarcated, and here my argument will perhaps ruffle religious sensibilities: so far as I know there have been occasional fisticuffs over unorthodox productions in opera houses but no St...

...96 DISSENT / Summer 1999...

...So it is as a social democrat—as someone committed to an "equality-friendly" society—that I would justify the principle of public subsidy of the most "elite" domain of culture...

...In the late twentieth century, the protest is against post-1960s "moral breakdown...

...This is why I think, pace Ackerman, that secular humanism must be privileged for a liberal democracy (or my preferred social democracy) to flourish...

...So the real question is whether or not we want this specific art form to thrive...

...ACKERMAN contends—he follows philosopher John Rawls in this—that a liberal state cannot take sides in quarrels among "comprehensive" outlooks...

...My response is easy because I think secular humanism should be privileged and I oppose public funding for religious activities (although I would support public funding to produce operas with religious themes or for public concerts of, say, Monteverdi's "Vespers" or Beethoven's Missa Solemnis or Messiaen's religiously inspired works...

...Do all these works display a common "totalizing" creed...

...So I offer a social democratic precept: in access to culture, including high culture, no citizen should be more equal than others...

...They give to something that's important to them...

...And it never has...

...Public subsidy in the United States is chiefly indirect, through tax deductions taken for contributions, as Jacob Weisberg recently pointed out in Slate...

...it suffused these forms with a new content, transforming them into something very different...

...Is it because Bruce Ackerman is a "liberal" and I am a "social democrat...

...his liberalism bids individuals "to enrich their project of social constitution by adding another role to their repertoire...

...European governments provide considerable financial assistance to their opera houses but an opera fan's social class is still likely to affect what seat he or she can afford...

...He adds, "I can't write checks to help the starving in Biafra...

...One can imagine our religionist then extrapolating far beyond the church's domain: Music, except in restricted usages, can threaten my profound, comprehensive convictions...

...One hundred million dollars a year of private donations goes into opera across this country and it translates into $25 million that would have otherwise gone to the Treasury.* I suppose Ackerman's argument compels him to oppose such deductions, and likewise for contributions to religious establishments and even to endowments of Ivy League schools (which, after all, cater secular humanism to an elite...

...The New York Times recently registered trepidations throughout the art world on account of today's spate of corporate mergers...

...Opera is distinguished from the other art forms by touching on and absorbing from—indeed needing—virtually all them...

...This hardly seems comparable to religion and the Mass...

...Finance both or neither...

...Our Platonist might then infer: my comprehensive creed makes it unacceptable for the public purse to subsidize broad music education...

...Even if every citizen were given a personal culture budget and spent it wholly on opera, it still couldn't pay for itself...

...That leaves a fair-sized gap—it would be substantial even with austere productions—which must be filled by corporate and private contributions...

...But I do think that instead of distinguishing between French "militant" secularism and American "neutrality" as Ackerman does, we would do better to distinguish between those people (secular or religious) who digest well the history of religious civil wars, persecutions, and intolerance and those who admit, even for their own liberal reasons, what the religious right wants: to make secular humanism and faith into commensurate contestants in the public sphere...

...Also, as companies forsake one region for another, art in deserted locales may fare like, well, like abandoned ex-employees...

...The grievance, of course, is not novel...

...If decent tickets are affordable mainly to folks who bond with dead ruling classes, this is not due to an intrinsic trait of the art form...

...Some readers may be surprised to find a liberal allowing this because "secular humanism" is usually censured by the most illiberal elements in Western societies...

...The latter fashioned centralized administration over and political coherence within given territories...

...Secular humanism (like opera) has Renaissance humanism as a progenitor...

...Yes, yes, Wagnerian acolytes imagine art as religion, Bayreuth as a tabernacle, and the Master's work as writ, but why should a liberal like Ackerman accept Romantic definitions of opera's cultural role...

...MITCHELL COHEN is co-editor of Dissent...

...Many other renowned operas, from those of Monteverdi through Wagner and on, are filled with Greek and Nordic gods or mythological figures...

...0 N A DIFFERENT plane, the same may be said for the qualitative differences between religion and secular humanism as two "totalizing creeds...

...Vilar, librettists) associated with this genre...

...New York's Metropolitan Opera, with its massive hall of 3,800 seats, covers only 60 percent to 65 percent of costs by means of its high-priced tickets (92 percent are sold) and sundry other receipts...

...They don't do it...

...A question inevitably arises: can a liberal state thrive if secular humanism does not have privileged status in the political (as well as more general) culture...

...its very structure brings together musical, poetic, dramatic, and visual components...

...But what if protest arises: this is really a secular humanist agenda...

...Could Ackerman dissent from our Platonist or religionist...

...Prosaic seasons of ornate productions are due to the market calculus, not public subsidies...

...Because Ackerman says that liberal citizenship enriches us in general, I take that to mean it enriches our nonpolitical engagements...

...One reason is its multidimensionality as an art form...

...And what, one wonders, may be expected in the future from Alberto Vilar, who pledged twenty-five million dollars to the Met endowment last year...

...How about the guy who wrote the check...

...Tolerance was conceded by exhausted holy warriors after they failed to impose their creeds on each other in bloody civil wars...

...So I conclude that freedom of religion should be defended fiercely but religious categories should not comprise the substructure of all discourse: they should remain in their proper realm...

...Only if that creed attests that human endowments can combine music and drama so as to present a vast spectrum of experience and human concerns...

...I know that some religious people (not just fundamentalists) object to such delimitation...

...Pfizner's Palestrina extols a sixteenth-century composer who defends polyphonic church music (and includes parts of a Mass in the opera's score) in the face of monodic novelty...

...This is not to deny DISSENT / Summer 1999 91 True Belief as an animating force, certainly not for the likes of Jerry Falwell...

...If, however, they are not of the same order—if there are different ways of "totalizing" with different consequences—then his argument falters, especially if we recall that today's liberalism is itself a long-term outgrowth of secular humanism...

...I am a secular being, but I can imagine the offense a religious person might take at such utilitarianism...

...Corporate Medici Lost to Mergers," New York Times, January 5, 1999...

...He asks in a recent New Yorker article: "Who cares who wrote the libretto...

...What if, say, a modern day Platonist cites Socrates inveighing in the Republic that "novel fashions in music is a thing to beware of as endangering the whole fabric of society, whose most important conventions are unsettled by any revolution in that quarter...

...I quote now—as I will at various points—from his 1994 article on "Political Liberalisms," which summarizes many of the assumptions of his brief on opera...

...I don't see how, given his own liberalism...

...Liberals," it is said, imagine that citizens can simply reason together publicly to fashion political rules, "unencumbered" by this or that worldview or cultural or particularistic bias...

...Obviously that is a matter of setting priorities...

...it ought only to establish parameters or a consensus permitting differing "metaphysical" systems to coexist...

...Ending those deductions would, of course, be calamitous to opera...

...True, absolutism and democracy are both "states," but the qualitative differences between them are decisive...

...Moreover, he makes secular culture and religion both analogs and fungible...

...Lebrecht reports that a long-time benefactor once offered the Met huge sums—provided they were used by her preferred producer...

...In "Political Liberalisms," Ackerman denies this by arguing that when individuals become liberal citizens, they "construct a new dimension" or "add yet another role" to their social identity beyond DISSENT / Summer 1999 93 "other engagements—with their families, jobs, religious communities, and the like...

...Still, I want to press distinctions because our disagreement is not solely about access to culture...

...economic needs, given limited resources and the fact that some cultural institutions raise funds more easily than others...

...Not because each of us has a homogenous "self," but because I think the dimensions of our lives are more interlinked and mutually structuring than Ackerman's "add-on" formulation allows...

...But individuals travel there over different "bridges," that is, by means of independent judgments "rooted" in their "different comprehensive moral views"—Catholic, Kantian, Ackermanian, otherwise...

...Granted, political models don't apply to all domains of life (nor do theatrical ones...

...Music in it may vary and be beautiful, but the Mass itself cannot, save by travesty, be varied into a celebration of humanity's rational faculties or of nature or of the state...

...I am disquieted by an unavoidable fact: corporations don't subsidize art for its own sake...

...This is hardly so in societies under theological dominion...

...2) public patronage of opera is a species of elite enrichment that, ironically, impoverishes this art form...

...It is a somewhat different matter when neoconservative Irving Kristol, devotee of fundamentalist strength within the Republican Party, is asked if it is legitimate for nonbelieving intellectuals to commend religion to others, and answers (as he has): "yes...

...In short, Ackerman and I worry about different things, at least when it comes to the relation between culture, money, and politics...

...But no important domain of culture should be accessible chiefly to social elites...

...Yet we would hardly minimize the vital animating value of free speech in a democracy, whatever the flaws...

...Must one not say the same of the effect of the general cultural framework...

...Recall that Philip Morris announced famously that "it takes art to make a company great"—about the time of the surgeongeneral's report on cancer (Norman Lebrecht notes this in his controversial book When the Music Stops: Managers, Maestros, and the Corporate Murder of Classical Music, 1997...

...Similarly, Masses are inappropriate analogs to opera because their concern in all circumstances is divine worship, which is qualitatively different from tendering a multiplicity of human possibilities...

...Mozart's Magic Flute is, indeed, animated by Freemasonry as Ackerman says, but his point is somewhat complicated by the fact that Mozart's Masonic circles had a Catholic orientation (as Nicholas Till shows in his Mozart and the Enlightenment...

...These contentions reflect debates among political theorists about—I simplify—how "embedded" people are in distinctive communities and/or outlooks and what implications this has for citizenship...

...for centuries "traditionalists" have spoken this language when challenged by liberal ideas...

...They tend to caricature it as a belief in human omnipotence...

...I think that if the secularhumanist air is too thin, liberal democracy won't be able to breathe...

...Ackerman's argument, in brief, is twofold: (1) secular culture and state should be as separate as religion and state...

...But there are *Jacob Weisberg, "Paying for Opera," Slate, September 26, 1998...

...Merged corporations lead to merged endowments and thus declines in cultural benefaction...

...Among my other sources in this article: "Met Opera Begins Effort to Raise $200 Million," New York Times, September 29, 1998...

...In those "neutral" circumstances citizens may make choices...

...That means that culture and cash should be uncoupled as much as possible...

...The first claim assumes that secular culture and religion are to be regarded as equivalent, at least as concerns politics...

...It requires the principals, a chorus, an orchestra, dancers, sets, costumes, stagehands, management, and so on and so on...

...If I understand him correctly, even were Ackerman to concede some public subsidies to the arts, he would still exclude opera as cultural welfare for elites and as injurious to operatic culture...

...If the answer is yes, then a liberal state needs succor by a secular humanism—a culture that is rich and diverse, that cultivates tolerant citizens surely, but also critical ones who make evaluations and pose questions, even to religion and even if those Ackerman calls "devout religionists" find questions disquieting...

...Turning to Greek and Roman authorities afforded alternatives to the One Authority of their times...

...The religionist might point to Calvin, who, following Paul, warned that as "evil words will pervert good morals," melodic accompaniment "will pierce the heart much more strongly and enter within...

...David Remnick, The Imperial Stagehand," New Yorker, February 22/March 1, 1999...

...I am a social democrat who values liberal precepts...

...It is out of respect for the different bridges that Ackerman insists here in Dissent: no subsidy for Mass, then none for opera, lest the state embrace his own (secular humanist) creed and enter "the business of saving souls by monumentalizing my own views of personal salvation...

...But allowing for a multiplicity of human possibilities is intrinsic to a liberal culture, and so the issue again is whether or not a liberal state can survive without a deeply rooted and privileged culture supporting it...

...As the Mass is a "performance," so "artistic souls" "officiate" at an operatic "holy sacrament...

...Although I do not espouse a marketless world, I do favor one in which market-thinking is kept to its proper place...

...But it is just this right that contemporary foes of secular humanism mean to frustrate...

...Ackerman has a certain "liberal" notion of those relations, and this underlies his opposition to public subsidy of opera...

...Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots protests religious persecution...

...It enhances aesthetic sensibilities at the expense of spirituality...

...He is a liberal who is concerned for social justice...

...So we favor liberal measures like the First Amendment for what they secure broadly, regardless of how few citizens make speeches on a corner or send letters to the editor—and regardless of how money makes some citizens more equal than others in getting their views into the public arena...

...But can we say that authoritarian family, workplace, or religious settings have no bearings on liberal democratic politics...

...And we diverge—markedly...

...I do not mean to tar all religious people as fanatics or reactionaries—that is plainly not so...

...It enables individuals to evaluate and to choose among various life options —secular, religious, or a mix...

...If opera is an expression of secular humanism, evidently secularhumanist culture can encompass religiosity...

...Frankly, that is just my point...

...But what of Ackerman's secular humanist counterpart to the Mass...

...Still, it seems to me that opera's part in Western cultural development has been especially fecund since its birth four centuries ago...

...0 NE REASON I am a cultural social democrat is that I want the highest forms of culture to be accessible to everyone...

...If you don't favor separation of culture and state, then opera should be one of many cultural goods supported by public efforts...

...What distinguishes liberalism, according to Ackerman, is its insistence on the right of citizens "to live their own lives in their own way...