Rant
Nekulturnyi, Pavarotti, and Price Gouging

By Ruby Lips
Sunday, May 12, 2002: This morning’s Times is full of the gory story of the downfall of Luciano Pavarotti. No, the dear man isn’t dead yet, just depressed, disillusioned and direly dissed by the nekulturnyi of New York. The short version is that he was to give his farewell shout last night at the finale of this year’s Metropolitan Opera season. But, alas, he had a cold and couldn’t sing. When he bowed out of the show on the Wednesday preceding, for the same reason, the audience booed at the announcement that their big bucks wouldn’t get the big star. They knew full well that there are no refunds. Realizing that the old eminent probably wouldn’t sing at the big bang shew on Sunday, for which lots of folks had paid obscene amounts to be present at, the Met decided to do something dramatic and flew in a young singer from Italy who was exactly half Pavarotti’s age. The new boy who was cynically yanked from obscurity, of course, sang his heart out and the audience leapt to their feet to give him a standing ovation so that they could feel that they had seen and made the birth of a new superhero. While they clapped with their hands, with their feet, this hoard of boors consciously kicked the sick old Pavarotti aside into the gutter like yesterday’s slops. There was talk, right from the august edge of the curtain, that Pavarotti had declined to come over to Lincoln Center to apologize from the stage for not being able to sing. What? So the spoiled savages could boo him to his face and humiliate him!? Pavarotti knows full well that these grunting swine are not the same people who had long ago made him a star. Today’s audience is made up of uncultured thirty somethings who can spend obscene amounts of money, $90 for the cheapest ticket in steerage, to feel the taste of power in their presence at the opera. These are bottom feeders who gleefully spend nearly $2000 for the best seats in the house. This jeering crowd of smart asses don’t know shit from shinola.

Long ago, in the days when the sonorous soothing tones of the voice of Milton Cross graced the WQXR airwaves on Saturday afternoons with calm descriptions of the visual moment of the curtain rising for the cognoscenti, there was a breed of ordinary New Yorkers who thoroughly understood opera. In those days wise little old intellectual men with bushy eyebrows, berets, and shoulder bags held together with duct tape, who lived alone in stinky little apartments in outer Queens, could scavenge $30 bucks and take the subway into the City to see a live opera. Those old uncles (the funerals of whose wives, in 1972, marked the last time most Manhattanites went out to the boroughs) actually understood the languages in which the operas were sung. They could detail every line of the libretto from memory in German or Italian and then translate it into English for their nephews, all the while whistling the entire score so that the flavor of the music could be appreciated. They are all dead now, G-D bless them; and its for the best that they should not now have to experience being banished from their beloved opera by the obscene prices paid by New York’s nekulturnyi of today who only go to the opera for the thrill of spending money. My appreciation of opera, as a child, came from those old men. As a young man, I stood on the stage, knees knocking together in terror knowing that on the other side of the scrim thousands of eyes looked upon me. No, I didn’t sing, I was a supernumerary, a spear-carrier and penitent. I was the waiter who followed paces behind Placido Domingo to place the wine glass in his hand so that as Don Juan he could toast the women whom Leporello had just recounted in the famous duet in Don Giovanni. Today, old and disabled, I’m left to sit at home and bitch rather than being able to afford to sit amidst the refined stench of those with money. I can hardly pay my rent, and there are no dignified discounts in these greedy days.

In the mid 70s William Harness replaced Pavarotti at the last moment in La Fille du Regiment. There also, an apprehensive audience that had paid a fortune to hear the great tenor, awaited what was in store from the much less known Mr. Harness. What a thrill everyone got! Rarely heard, Mr. Harness made high Cs seem as easy as dancing in the rain. Yet, no one was so crude, at that time, to think of dissing the great master. He was indisposed, the audience got a suitable special treat instead, everyone was happy, end of story.

In the old days, the swells who sat in the boxes and orchestra front and center had earned their money the old fashioned way by corruption and the exploitation of workers. Their direct sense of guilt, or noblesse oblige, had them donate in largesse to cover the immense costs, over the ticket revenues, to put on grand opera. Thus, ordinary cultured pensioners could attend once in a while. Today’s nouveau riche have no such sense of obligation, having made their money off the backs of unseen worker peasants on the other side of the world. A fine thanks these money fed barbarians gave to Paveroti who gave so much the New York City. Even the Time’s commentator could not resist gleefully kicking the old tenor in the butt by noting that he, unlike the new young hero, could no longer get on his knees to chivalrously croon love arias to the diva. Damn shame. Its no wonder Luciano felt that they could all just go to hell rather than his apologizing to such uncultured ill-mannered ignorant churls.