NPR reports:
A listener-supported radio station in North Carolina, WCPE, is planning to withhold the broadcast of six contemporary operas this season from New York’s Metropolitan Opera, because of the station management’s objections to the operas’ content. It is a classical music controversy that echoes larger, nationwide culture war debates. WCPE’s protest comes at a time when the Metropolitan Opera is eager to showcase its commitment to recently written operas and works from outside the traditional canon of music written by white men.
General manager Deborah S. Proctor [photo] says that the libretto of composer John Adams’ 2000 opera-oratorio El Niño, which is about the birth of Jesus and which weaves together gospel narratives alongside texts by several poets and librettist Peter Sellars among other materials, is “non-biblical” and “unsuitable” for her listeners. “I have a moral decision to make here. What if one child hears this? When I stand before Jesus Christ on Judgement Day, what am I going to say?”
Read the full article. There’s much more, including a recounting of the LGBTQ, Black, and Latino-themed operas that Proctor refuses to air.
A North Carolina radio station announces that it won’t broadcast any of the @MetOpera’s new works this year (citing “language” and “themes” and in one case “non-biblical sources” for Adam’s’ El Niño) — but Turandot and Butterfly are a-OK pic.twitter.com/evYe1MCNrs
— Ben Miller (@benwritesthings) September 28, 2023
EXCLUSIVE: I talked to the general manager at WCPE about her plans not to air six of the Met Opera radio broadcasts this season — all the recent works & 3 of the 6 written by Black or Mexican composers.
It was an interesting conversation.https://t.co/z6wmdknYSO
— Anastasia Tsioulcas (@anastasiat) September 29, 2023