LLIcense to Learn

by Chuck Mishaan

Introduction

I’ve had the opportunity and pleasure of being a Bard LLI presenter for over 10 years. I’m frequently asked why I continue to maintain a heavy schedule of teaching at Bard and other Hudson Valley LLIs. My answer (though I don’t say this out loud) is because I’m selfish. I treasure the pleasure of doing the research, deepening my understanding of what I began learning in my long-ago college days, augmented by a lifetime of experience, knowledge, and a bit of wisdom.

Student-Teacher Engagement

But more than that, the enthusiasm and encouragement of my students is what warms the most. The familiar faces that welcome me each semester are far more valuable than (almost) any paycheck. Each of the schools where I teach has its own personality and vibe, some with lots of questions, others with lots of notes, neophytes and aficionados, but all of them with the shared interest in
fascinating topics on the intersection of politics and the arts.

Much of the pleasure of teaching, of course, is that I’m not the only teacher in the classroom. Participants are eager to share their own experiences and expertise. I have been so impressed with the knowledge and insights of students in the class. I had the foresight—looking back in hindsight—to develop an area that had been for me of passing interest—Opera as Politics.

Recent Controversies

My series of courses on Opera as Politics started as an idea borne of the controversy over the opera The Death of Klinghoffer in 2014 at the Metropolitan Opera. There were large crowds of protestors in the Lincoln Center plaza, TV cameras and news reporters, loudspeakers, and politicians. The opera was an exploration of the displacement of two peoples in the aftermath of World War II, and some of the complaints of the opera were of the depicted equivalence of loss of the displaced people of Palestine and the survivors of the Holocaust. Too hot to handle, The Death of Klinghoffer has disappeared from the operatic repertory.

In January 2015, while I was attending a performance of Tchaikovsky’s opera Iolanta, a protester marched onto the stage of the Metropolitan Opera (perhaps the most famous stage in the world) and unfurled a banner protesting Vladimir Putin and his 2014 annexation of Ukrainian Crimea. He pointed at Anna Netrebko, the soprano, and Sergei Gergiev, the conductor, both good friends of Putin, who were taking their bows. The audience and Met security were astonished at this breach, and the protester was walked off the stage and arrested. This experience deepened my exploration of opera as a political force. Netrebko and Gergiev have both been banned from performing at the Met because of their refusal to dissociate themselves from Vladimir Putin after his invasion of Ukraine.

That same year, 2015, saw the emergence of Donald Trump as a political candidate. That stimulated all kinds of discussion about authoritarianism, social media, misinformation, communication overload, and the threat to the American democratic tradition. We will see 10 years later what the arts will say about this
fraught time.

Political Messaging in Fraught Times

I have been presenting this series of lectures on Opera as Politics, quite popular even with those who don’t especially like opera, at area LLIs, including Bard,
SUNY New Paltz, Vassar, Marist, and Lifespring Saugerties, since that 2015 experience. Of particular interest to me was how opera, and the arts in general,
incorporated political messaging, in ways both obvious and subtle, and how the arts reflected the political and cultural issues of their times.

I’ve developed this narrative mostly by exploring opera and its political messaging. Opera was, to a significant extent, a means to communicate sotto voce—in lowered voice—political ideas deemed subversive by the ruling powers. It was a way to get around the censors who were always alert to any criticism and threat to the rulers. It became apparent to me that some form of protest and politics is present in most operas, a way to circumvent the censors by telling in song a fictional story about a time long ago, featuring a short tenor and a large soprano.

Current Politics and the Creative Arts

The political tradition in opera continues today with productions such as Dead Man Walking on the death penalty; Satyagraha on the young Gandhi; Malcolm X; Fire Shut Up in my Bones, a Charles Blow memoir of growing up in the American South; Doctor Atomic and the development of the Bomb, and others. I have expanded this exploration of arts and politics to include not just opera and music, but literature, painting, cinema, and architecture. All of the creative arts have been a rich source of material, and as history shows, one of the first areas of society that rulers seek to influence and control.

If you want to ensure your political power today, you’ll want to take control of the White House, the Congress, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.