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Does Dallas still need the Met?
By Wayne Lee Gay |

ARTHUR KRAMER LOVED opera.

And he loved the Met.

Whenever business took him to New York, the Dallas department store executive attended performances at the ornate old Metropolitan Opera House on Broadway. Like many opera lovers in those simpler times, he built a cordial, “drop-in” relationship with the staff and management at the Metropolitan Opera, and he made a point of paying his respects at the business office.

When he made those friendly visits, he always asked, “When are you bringing the Met to Dallas?”

One January day in 1939, after years of asking, he finally got an affirmative answer from Edward Johnson, the dark-haired Canadian tenor who had taken over as the Met’s general manager in 1935.

“This April, if you can guarantee $65,000 by the day after tomorrow,” Johnson said.

Kramer cabled Dallas, confident that he could raise the money. He was in for a surprising disappointment. Like Kramer himself, most of Dallas’ leading businessmen and community supporters were out of town on business or winter vacations. Commitments were impossible to confirm, and as the 48 hours ticked away, Kramer found himself far short of $65,000.

But Kramer loved opera, and he wanted the Met to come to Dallas.

When he met with Johnson again at the end of the two days, he crossed his fingers and bluffed. “I have a telegram from Dallas guaranteeing $65,000,” Kramer said.

“Great,” said Johnson. “I’ll take your word for it.”

A relieved Kramer returned to Dallas, and with the aid of other civic-minded businessmen, promptly raised $136,800.

Thus was born the Dallas Grand Opera Association, an organization with the sole purpose of sponsoring and promoting annual appearances of the Metropolitan Opera in Dallas. During its 45 years, the DGOA has presented 41 seasons. Its only interruptions were caused by World War II, by an upper-level management dispute in 1961 and by the remodeling of Fair Park Music Hall in 1972. When the curtain finally falls on Tosca this May, DGOA will have presented 171 productions.

Like every other business, the business of producing and presenting operas is entirely different in 1984 than it was in 1939. As the Met’s centennial year passes into history, its management is in the process of vigorously re-examining and questioning its role in the nation’s musical life. And in Dallas, thoughtful music lovers are asking what place, if any, the Met should occupy in the musical future of our community.

The Met tour boasts a history as old and nearly as illustrious as that of the Met itself. In December 1883, facing disastrous deficits at the end of the company’s first season in New York, Met General Manager Henry Abbey set his sights on Boston with the hope of recovering his losses. There, on the day after Christmas, Abbey’s company presented the first Met tour production ever, Gounod’s Faust-sung in Italian rather than French.

Abbey’s Italian-dominated administration never shook its financial woes, but the idea of touring stuck. In 1884, the Met’s newly organized German company took to the road, presenting a Wagnerian repertoire lightened by French items such as Carmen, Le Prophete and, once again, Faust, this time in German. Since then, only one year (1887) has passed without a traveling troupe of some sort issuing forth from the Metropolitan Opera House.

By 1889, a touring company from the Met was able to take an abridged version of Wagner’s monumental Ring Cycle to Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Chicago, Boston and St. Louis, attracting large audiences among the German settlements in those cities. The Italian influence crept back into the Met through the 1890s, and soprano Adelina Patti created a sensation around the nation’s whistle stops as much for her opulent, private railway car as for her voice. Neither Patti nor her car ever made it to Dallas, although Dal-lasites did have the chance to take in a Met performance of Wagner’s Parsifal in the spring of 1905, the last the Met would see of Dallas until 1939. The Met’s most notorious meeting with destiny came a year after that early Dallas appearance, when, in April 1906, the touring company found itself in San Francisco on the day of the famous earthquake. Sets and costumes for 19 Met productions were destroyed; fortunately, all Met personnel survived the devastation, including tenor Enrico Caruso, who, incidentally, never visited San Francisco again.

By the Thirties, when Kramer began clamoring for a tour stop in Dallas, the annual Met tour had become a traditional part of musical life in many large cities, including Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore and Cleveland as well as smaller musical centers like Rochester and Hartford. With the addition of Dallas and New Orleans to the roster in 1939, the tour added a southwestern spur to its otherwise basically northeastern circuit. Although World War II forced the Met to forego the long trip south for several years, the tour came back stronger than ever during the post-war boom. Dallas-thanks to Kramer’s pre-war initiative-remained the cornerstone of the Met in the Southwest. Even when stops were added in Oklahoma City, Houston and San Antonio, the DGOA retained first choice of repertoire as well as the right to have the Met come here first. In those days, Dallas was the main Met town in the Southwest, and thus the main opera town in the region.

During those magical years, the Met was good to Dallas and Dallas was good to the Met. When the Met train pulled into the station, an enthusiastic crowd greeted the leading opera stars of the day, from Pinza to Peerce to Pons. That night, after the opening performance of the series, the entire touring party of 300-including engineers, hairdressers, instrumentalists and chorus singers as well as famous stars-enjoyed a supper-dance given by local opera lovers. Old-fashioned, Texas-sized gestures of this sort made Dallas a favorite tour stop for years.

Arthur Kramer died in 1950, and the reins of both the DGOA and the A.H. Harris department store passed to his son, Arthur Kramer Jr. The department store was sold in 1961 and became part of Sanger-Harris. Kramer then went into real estate. As devoted to opera and the Met as his father, he continues to manage the DGOA on a volunteer basis.

The years since the younger Kramer took charge have witnessed dramatic changes in the tour, in the Met itself and in the whole shape of opera in America. In New York, Johnson’s rule at the Met gave way to the regime of Sir Rudolph Bing, which, in turn, gave way to the current dual leadership of General Manager Anthony Bliss and music director James Levine. The old Metropolitan Opera House fell victim to the wrecking ball, and a new theater rose to house the company in Lincoln Center. On the tour, the speed of the jet plane and the drudgery of airport baggage claims replaced the cheering crowd at the station, and a solid roster of seven cities (eight until 1983, when Boston dropped out) replaced the long list of whistle stops, leaving Washington, Atlanta, Detroit, Memphis, Minneapolis, Cleveland and Dallas as the only Met towns in America. American opera no longer consists of just the Met and a spirited collection of local companies now that major international companies have blossomed in Chicago, Houston and San Francisco (with an impressive set of second-tier companies in cities such as Dallas, Miami and St. Louis close behind). Add to those a substantial third string of smaller companies-the rejuvenating Fort Worth springs to mind as a leader in this group-and a host of chamber operas, collegiate opera workshops and touring companies from the big organizations, and you have a picture of America in which live opera is reasonably available to almost everyone.

As of 1984, opera is no longer exclusively a product of New York: It turns up with surprising regularity and strength in such places as Augusta, Des Moines, Blooming-ton and Santa Fe. In 1950, to be an opera town meant to be a Met town. In 1984, to be a Met town very nearly means not to be a real opera town.

Why?

Because, with the exception of Dallas and Boston, the Met’s continued presence has had a stifling effect on the development of locally based opera companies.

In Atlanta, where the Met’s annual appearance has been the crown of the musical and social season since the Forties, local companies have wilted like plucked magnolia petals while the Met’s sponsoring organization flourishes on local money. In 1983, the Atlanta Civic Opera once again ran short of funds and canceled its season. Cleveland, another longstanding tour stop, manages to support one of the world’s great orchestras as well as a week of the Met, but it has an on-and-off history with the local opera. Lake Erie Opera prospered several years during the Sixties with the Cleveland Orchestra in the pit but died when the orchestra went to a 52-week season of its own. Since the mid-Seventies, a small-scale company has survived in Cleveland on a repertoire done entirely in English.

An even more telling viewpoint on fund raising and the effect on local companies competing with the big boys from New York comes from cities outside the regular Met roster. In Toronto, where the Met has scheduled a two-week tour in 1984 as part of the celebration of the city’s 150th anniversary, informed sources within the Canadian Opera Company report new problems in fund raising and blame the blinding light of the Met. And in other cities, local opera companies recoil at the idea of a Met tour stop.

“The Met tour is the last thing we need in Cincinnati,” says James de Blasis, director of the Cincinnati Opera. “Except for Dallas, every town on the Met tour has had trouble keeping a local company alive.”

The Met cannot be blamed for the mismanagement of local companies, of course, and the disappearance of the Met from a city doesn’t guarantee a rush of support for the local opera company. When the Met left Boston off its itinerary for 1984, the Boston Lyric Opera (an adventurous small outfit, not to be confused with Sarah Caldwell’s company) promptly went under.

The fact remains that the Met tour requires money to be raised in various locales and paid in New York. And the pattern remains consistent: America’s greatest opera companies outside New York are in towns where the Met no longer appears.

In Dallas, meanwhile, the public cordiality that marks the relationship between the Dallas Opera and the DGOA makes a comment on the ever-abiding issue of community support. Dallas Opera General Director Plato Karayanis has stated on more than one occasion that he wouldn’t expect a sudden windfall of additional donations or ticket sales if the Met quit coming to Dallas.

“Yes, my job probably would be easier if the Met didn’t come to Dallas,” Karayanis says. “But they were here when we started. I’m not about to say, ’Stay out.’ You earn community support through what you do, and we at Dallas Opera obviously have earned and receive that support.”

The obvious reply of tour supporters is that the opportunity to have the Met appear live in any city is worth the sacrifice of losing part of the support that might go to the local company.

This would be a legitimate contention if the quality of the Met on tour had consistently surpassed the quality of productions by the local companies. In Dallas, at least, it does not. Olin Chism, music critic of the Dallas Times Herald, generally supports the presence of both the Dallas Opera and the Met, but he finds the Dallas Opera, on the whole, stronger than the Met on tour.

“The casts the Met brings to Dallas are moderate in general and sometimes inferior,” he says. “The sets are not what you see in New York. If I had to choose, I’d prefer the Dallas Opera because they do a better job.”

Michael Fleming of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram objects with even stronger language. “The Met in Dallas is a sham-a product being sold under a name. The Met on tour would be a good thing, if the Met actually toured.”

“The Met in Dallas is a staid tradition supported by old wealth,” according to John Ardoin of The Dallas Morning News. “Anything the Met brings here is taken as gospel by some people. Quite often, local productions are better.”

Ardoin also questions the DGOA’s selections from the Met’s tour repertoire. “With very few exceptions, the local board goes with the old favorite. We missed the chance to see Britten’s Billy Budd in Dallas, and we’ve missed a number of other things. I think the local board is wrong about the local audience. The audience is adventurous; the board plays it safe.”

In New York, critic and veteran Met-watcher Patrick J. Smith doubts the soundness of the tour in its present form. “The tour has always been a stepchild of the Met and one of the weakest aspects of the overall program. The stars don’t like to tour anymore, and the televised Met programs show that the productions in New York are of higher quality than those on tour.”

Still, the DGOA can claim a number of points in favor of the Met in Dallas. This year’s season, at least, defies accusations of a safe repertoire and second-rate casts with appearances by Marilyn Horne, Jon Vickers and Placido Domingo on stage and James Levine on the conductor’s podium, and with two rarely heard operas, Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio and Handel’s Rinaldo, to accompany Wagner’s Die Wilkure and Puccini’s Tosca.

The DGOA can also make a case for itself as an economical presenter of operas. Ticket sales and memberships account for $400,000 of the DGOA’s annual budget of $600,000; thanks to tireless efforts by Arthur Kramer Jr. and many other volunteers, office and publicity costs are held to an as-toundingly low $10,000 per year. Merrill Lynch recently gave the Met $400,000 specifically for the tour, with $100,000 to be channeled directly to the sponsoring organizations in various cities. As long as DGOA can hold costs down and receive outside money, it can claim a place in Dallas.

In purely economical terms, the fact that about 50 percent of the audience at the Met in Dallas comes from outside the Dallas/ Fort Worth metropolitan area also counts in favor of continuing the Met appearances. Every year, the Met attracts about 2,000 upscale out-of-towners who eat in restaurants, stay in hotels and shop while they are here. Whether this aging audience will be replaced in years ahead remains to be seen.

Kramer attributes much of Dallas’ present support of the Met to the Southern Hospitality Board, a network of women in several states that Kramer calls the “Salvation Army of the Met tour. They’re the ones who beat the drums and stir excitement for the Met’s three-day visit.” The new, young leader of the board, Diane Bumpas, has drawn a nucleus of younger people in the Metroplex- something that the tour desperately needs.

At the very least, the Met in Dallas provides competition for the Dallas Opera. Competition in the arts, when it encourages higher standards, can be a very healthy thing. Even if the Met disappeared from the Dallas scene, however, the newly organized Public Opera of Dallas, the Fort Worth Opera and the ambitious, innovative college opera workshops at SMU, TCU and NTSU would continue to provide the area with alternative opera and would probably receive greater community support in their efforts without the overshadowing presence of the Met.

With its solid financial foundation, its strong season for 1984 and the general goodwill of the community, the DGOA could be looking at a long future in Dallas in spite of objections, were it not for some dark clouds on the eastern horizon. In New York, where the most important decisions about the tour are made, the annual pilgrimage is under greater scrutiny than ever before.

The Met tour is announced one year in advance. With opera singers scheduling three years or farther in advance, it is safe to assume that the Met tour is set through 1986, including stops in Dallas.

Beyond that, the picture looks very hazy. From his office at The Boston Globe, music critic and Met-watcher Richard Dyer gazes into the future and sees a shortened, reshaped tour.

“One reason is continually rising costs. Another is that it’s hard to attract first-rate singers to the tour. There are more attractive places for a singer in the springtime than Detroit.

“Sooner or later,” Dyer says, “there will be contractual difficulties with the chorus and orchestra. Eight weeks in hotels in places like Atlanta, Cleveland and Detroit is no fun, and the unions are pressing for an end to it.”

Dyer is not alone in seeing a transformed future for the Met tour. His words are echoed off the record in cities across America.

Furthermore, according to Dyer and others, the leadership of the Met, including Music Director James Levine, is looking longingly at the eight-week tour period as time that could be more useful to the Met for more work with electronic media and more flexible touring. The Live from the Met series causes tremendous lighting headaches for the performances it tapes for television, and the Met is on the lookout for an alternative.

On the other hand, the so-called national tour could actually become national and not just a tour of the same six cities if a more flexible approach were taken. For the time being, the Met relies on the tour for its important grant-gathering status as a national opera company; the limited nature of the tour will probably eventually threaten that status. When major orchestras tour, they follow a different itinerary every year, with sponsorship provided on the local level by organizations with a vested interest in the community’s musical life beyond the presentation of a single event. The Met would benefit from such an arrangement and will probably eventually adopt it.

No wise investor assumes that the investment that paid well in 1939 or 1951 or even 1981 will be a good investment in 1985. Nor will a wise investor in a community’s cultural life assume that the events and organizations that paid off artistically in the past will bring dividends in the future. As the Dallas Opera faces the challenge of expanding beyond its traditional fall season while maintaining its unique national standing, as new companies and new possibilities for existing companies emerge in the region, and as the Met in New York attempts to reshape its tour, the Dallas Grand Opera Association looks less and less attractive as a long-term investment.

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