Young Venus

I am loathe to post anything negative on my birthday, on the other hand, when better than the actual day of my 65th birthday to call out yet another egregious instance of ageism in opera.

When I get the Times in the morning, naturally the first thing I read is the arts section, and today the first thing I read was this.

Yes, it's wonderful that someone had the ambition, imagination, and vision to mount a Wagner opera on a shoestring, with an orchestra no less.  And if this person was a 25-year-old conducting student, bravo!  I was just about waking up, putting down my last glass of bourbon, and rubbing my eyes at that age.

But why in Heaven's name do the singers in this production have to be young???  Does Wagner have to be hijacked by YAPPers too?  OK, so most of these no pay opera companies (the ones that rejected me out of hand for the most part) want to use young singers, so they produce things like The Marriage of Figaro or La Boheme, occasionally making a foray into heavier operas with large female casts (you always get more women than men interested in these things) like Suor Angelica or Dialogue of the Carmelites, using, by choice a heavily made up 30something in roles like La Zia Principessa or the Old Prioress.  But Wagner???  Yes, there is an outlet for older people to sing Wagner, I know.  The pay to sing that my teacher is involved in does concert productions of Wagner and Strauss (as well as other things) and many of their stalwarts are singers in their 50s (and some of the men, like my teacher, are in their 60s) who have been singing for decades and have moved into this repertoire slowly.

But how about something new and exciting for older singers who may be new and exciting?  Reading the article the word "young" was used 8 times; 6 times to describe the singers they wanted to use and gear this new company toward, once to describe the tenor singing the role of Tannhauser, and once as a synonym for "new" as in "young opera companies".  Their source of singers to cast this Tannhauser with?  YAP tracker.

This made me really really really angry.  Yes, I am way too old to play Rosina (nor would I want to).  But I am not too old to play Venus!!  I even have a usable B natural now.   And it doesn't matter if I have physical challenges.  All she does is lie on a couch. Marjorie Lawrence played Venus after she had polio for Pete's sake.

I am not saying that I am such a stellar package that I would have been cast in a role by that company.  But I would like to have known about it!!