Every time I read an article about a labor lockout, I can't help but have this Crowded House song pop into my head.
"I've been locked out, I've been locked in
But I always seem to come back againWhen you're in that room, oh what do you do?I know that I will have you in the end"
While the drama of the Minnesota Orchestra lockout resembled an epic poem, the recent Metropolitan Opera happenings were more of a mini-series. "Will the musicians' unions strike? Will the backstage unions strike in solidarity? Will the chorus' pay and benefits be cut? Will the season start on-time??" Film at eleven, in which the captain of the Flagship Opera Institution in the USA declares that opera is dying. Oh, for crying out loud.
Now I'm all for drama, when it's ON THE STAGE, but I'm also the daughter of an accountant. Opera is expensive. This is no mystery. There are no magical abacuses (abaci?) or slide rules that make opera not expensive. In the States, most houses are not repertory houses, which means you've gotta get the people there and back, house them and get them to/from rehearsals, clothe them in the designer's vision, build and dress and light the sets, rent and mark (and subsequently erase marks from) the orchestra parts, rehearse the orchestra, rent the venue (if you don't happen to own your own theatre), and turn the power on and off for the whole time. All before a single ticket-holder sits down, all before a single player/singer gets paid. It's a lot. I know significantly less about the costs of a symphony orchestra (namely because I work in opera) but my fingers and toes tell me that decreased income + mis-management of assets and investments + rising (or even level) expenses = someone's gonna come at you with a hat asking for money, and the next round of contract negotiations will not be pretty. This week, it's the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, who's just been locked out. Again.
Now before I start talking about what's at stake here, I'm just gonna put this out there: I live and work in Germany, where my breathtaking tax bill affords me rather good health insurance and care (as well as a host of other socialized benefits - paid sick leave, retirement, disability, unemployment, etc.) and subsidizes my job in the arts, from which I can actually support myself and my family. This has been the case for approximately one year, during which I was ill twice (as compared to every 6 weeks, when I was freelancing on the road year-round) and I sang easily twice the number of performances I'd sung in the previous season. At the end of my first season as a full-time ensemble singer [read: employee of one opera house], I came to a very real and tangible conclusion: Stability is something for which many people will sacrifice. Glitter and the promise of "the next big break" are seductive, but I'd much rather sleep in my own bed. This is me, knowing myself. This is also me, saying that my perspective is biased toward my own priorities.
For many orchestra musicians, seeking those coveted full-time orchestra positions is akin to my Fest job. They can buy a house instead of renting, send their kids to school, pay into their IRA, and they get to do the thing they trained to do - BE musicians, without fretting every single month if their gig will come through so they can pay their mortgage. Is freelancing more financially lucrative, on a per-performance basis? Absolutely. But it's a choice, and there are tradeoffs. AGAIN, speaking only from the point of view with which I have personal experience - opera - I can say that stability is not a glamorous choice. It's not a choice that (usually) lands you on the cover of Opera News, or even in a feature in Classical Singer. Stability is not very sexy. But let's also assume, for the moment, that stability is not always about the individual. It's not about whether or not the 4th desk 2nd violinist in the ASO gets to check off all the symphonies on his bucket list, or whether or not the principal viola gets to play the Bartók viola concerto. And it's not even about whether or not I'll ever cross Lulu off my list of "roles I really really REALLY wanna perform and would be SO absolutely perfect for me." It's about being able to afford to take your kids to the doctor when they get sick. It's about being able to pay the deductible when someone rear-ends you and pulls a hit-and-run [witnessed that for the first time last month - it made me ill] and it's about being able to take personal time when your mother/father needs help caring for themselves or each other. It's about the things that make us human, which are also the things that make us better artists.
I don't have a pithy punchline about the ASO. I feel for those musicians, and for their families, and I hope they come to some kind of agreement with management soon - one that recognizes the sacrifices they've already made, and also allows the organization to move forward. But I also hope that the unfortunate (and not recently developed) sentiment of "if artists do what they love and love what they do, they should be willing to do it for less/for free/for a sandwich" will be replaced with some more sound thinking.
