On Opera and Courage

Anxious Readers, I bring you a sigh of relief: The Metropolitan Operas high definition broadcast of Carmen did not disappoint. Yes, we’re three of ten: the opera was set in the 1930’s.

And guess what? It’s now something of a relief, this surety that I have when I walk into the movies to see the opera. There will be popcorn, to which I will succumb. There’s the illicit Coca-Cola—more a tankful than a glassful—which I can slurp despite the disapproving eyes of Mr. Fernández, because guess who bought the tickets? And then the opera will start, and do I have to worry about seeing Egyptians and pyramids—that’s Aida—or poppies and the steppes of Central Asia (Prince Igor)? Absolutely not—the elephants will be strolling down Broadway, as happy to be out of that hot dusty desert as all of us men-of-a-certain-inclination were to escape our dreary Midwestern towns. Even elephants deserve a chance at the Big Apple!

So really, it has a certain comfort, like eating your mother’s tuna fish casserole—you remember, the noodles, the can of tuna, the can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, the soggy potato chips on top. Oh, sorry, forgot the frozen peas: that’s the vegetable! You wouldn’t, of course, ever make the damn thing, but you if your mother came out of the kitchen bearing mussels lightly sautéed in virgin olive oil dressed with raspberry vinaigrette on a bed of radicchio? Please.

Nor is having Prince Igor being Al Capone the worst that could happen, since here is what The New York Times had to say about a production by Peter Sellars of Don Giovanni:

YOU remember Mozart's ''Don Giovanni.'' That's the opera in which the Don Juan of the slums interrupts his singing of the Champagne Aria to take a heroin hit in the arm from his pimp and connection, Leporello. Donna Anna also requires a quick needle during her ''Non mi dir'' before she can launch into the coloratura section of that aria. Elvira, a Madonna clone, rolls back and forth across the stage like a bowling ball while making a hash of ''Mi tradi.'' And you certainly will recall how Giovanni sits on a stoop outside a slum building in what may be Spanish Harlem, enjoying his last supper (a Big Mac and fries) as a big-box radio pumps out those great 18th-century dance tunes. That, of course, leads up to the famous ''Stoned Guest'' scene in which the dissolute Don is pulled down into a sewer by a small girl, playing Lolita to his Humbert Humbert.

Full confession: small hailstorms of resentment have occasionally afflicted my days, when I realize that absolutely everybody in the world has had their book reviewed by The New York Times. But me and my iguanas? Are we so trifling, so insignificant? Mere chopped liver?

Now I see that there may have been that silver lining, because here’s a summation from the same review:

Evidently operating under the assumption that this 200-year-old work cannot speak to a modern audience unless it is trashed, trivialized and sensationalized, Mr. Sellars turns it into a depressing parade of easy jokes and vaudeville turns.

And here I have to say: however much that review ruined his day, Sellars had it coming. Because I checked out the first twenty minutes or so of the production—for this did God make YouTube—and yes, it made me remember my happy years in New York in the rough parts of Spanish Harlem. But the music of the time was hardly Mozartian, nor were the plots of the lives any of us were living at the time.

What was it like? Take a look!

So if we didn’t get Carmen as Lady Gaga or José as a character from Almodovar, we were lucky. It has to be said, though, that seeing that twenty-minute distillation of 1980’s New York made me nostalgic. The city was gritty, ugly, dangerous, and alive. If you were gay, and if you had any kind of a spine, you were protesting—if you weren’t emptying bedpans and putting cold compresses on your lover’s brow. Or often, your best friend or even just a friend, because who knew when it was going to be you—there in that bed with the pneumonia—and who knew when the disease would have so ravaged the city that there were no lovers, no best friends, but no one, nobody, to do for you what you were doing for others. Which is why you were throwing blood on the steps of the New York City Department of Health, throwing ashes of dead AIDS victims on the White House lawn, doing sit-ins at the CDC.

Maybe that’s why I’m a little underwhelmed that Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, came out as a gay man. Here’s The New York Times in gushing-effusion mode:

I give Tim tremendous credit for finally coming out publicly. None of us can know how personally difficult this may have been for him. But for someone of his age (he turns 54 on Saturday), from the Deep South (Alabama), who’s chief executive of what’s probably the most obsessively followed company in the world and who purports to be a private person, it couldn’t have been easy.

Know what? Coming out is easy, since you do it every day, virtually. I did it last Friday, when I wrote down Mr. Fernández’s name as my husband on a preadmission form—or rather, about thirty of them. So I sat back, and wondered which María or which José would have an issue with it. And—surprise—nobody did! Damn, I was spoiling for that fight.

So we always do this thing—Marc and Raf came out and cleared the way for a whole bunch of other people, including people like Tim Cook and Ricky Martin. And then, when they finally join the rest of us, we have to applaud? Look, at age 54 he’s younger than I am, and sure, the Deep South was a more daunting place for gay people than Madison, Wisconsin. But where is Cook now? In California—and his industry is hardly the most homophobic. If Cook were 80 and coming out in rural Alabama, I’d paid full tribute.

And isn’t there something a bit classist, this assumption that the rich and famous are risking more and thus more worthy of applause when they come out? Suppose Cook had had to resign, as did the gay CEO of British Petroleum, John Browne. Cook would still have—I presume—more cash than most of us, more resources than the rest of us, a softer fall than the rest of us. I doubt if Cook would have landed in a soup kitchen, but for many ordinary gay people living in places where they can lose their jobs and their housing for being gay? The soup kitchen is their only recourse….

In fact, I don’t have much issue with Cook, who at least had the grace to say:

I don’t consider myself an activist, but I realize how much I’ve benefited from the sacrifice of others.

Right—it was something we all heard in those days: I’m not an activist, I’m not really a political person….. Want the translation? I’ll just hide here in my closet, until you guys make it safe enough to come out. The answer to that idea, by the way, is that as long as there’s a chance you or anyone could get AIDS, you’re a political person. So get over it, sweetheart.

It’s totally amazing that 32 states have marriage equality, and I’m thrilled that—perhaps—I can get married in Wisconsin. But I’m worried that in Ladysmith, Wisconsin, there probably is some kid who is terrified—with very good reason—of coming out. There are always more fights than there is energy or time to fight them, which is why we have to choose the fight well.

Did we?