Tuesday (3/27) as the first in a series of columns for Huffington Post, Brooklyn Philharmonic CEO Richard Dare calls for a return to art communicating direct meaning. “Go to any opera nowadays and you’re likely to find a story rife with murder and rape, war and pestilence, political intrigue, backstabbing—in short, pretty much the same sort of content you read on The Huffington Post every day. Why then is it that the only real public discourse you’ll find in the press after the concert has to do with whether the soprano hit her high notes gracefully, or whether the conductor took this or that section at the right tempo? Does no one care about the meaning anymore? Doesn’t the content still count for anything? I think it should. Art has always tended to one degree or another to speak truth to power, to enlighten us, to challenge us, to stretch our understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe. … But to actually work, our art has to mean something. Our music has to say something. Artists have to be brave enough to get real, to actually connect with the lives of the people they’re trying to connect with—especially with the communities right around them.”
Posted March 29, 2012
