Conference Agenda

Opera’s economic structures, especially at its entry points, privilege singers who can afford the immediate costs of opportunities for young artists and take the risk of little to no pay for long stretches spent in training. Following John Pippen (2024), I assert that opera singers are working class in classical music’s class structure; they sell their labour power at a market rate, and they lack authority in the workplace. I argue that the market rate for singers’ labour, especially early in their careers, is insufficient for the necessities of life. This leaves singers who don’t have the support of wealthy families at a significant disadvantage. The realities of making a career in opera in North America disadvantage young artists based on class with artists from historically marginalized communities disproportionately represented among those who are squeezed out of the industry.

Early-career musicians are vulnerable to exploitation in the opera industry, and those with less wealth and privilege are particularly at risk. Young artist programs require significant financial investment from singers while providing opera companies with a constant stream of cheap labour concealed by claims about the essential work these programs do to launch the careers of their members. Then once in the door, singers face the dangers of an industry that frequently jeopardizes artists’ safety through careless approaches to staging intimacy and sexual violence and through the predators that frequently find safe harbour within opera’s rigid hierarchies. Less privileged singers are less likely to be able to leave an unsafe work environment due to the dearth of opportunities available and the fear of gaining a bad reputation.

Systemic change will be challenging in a capitalist society and may be impossible within the funding model that pervades North American opera. However, this paper considers two paths forward: more radically, the possibilities afforded by a public-funding model; and as a more incremental and pragmatic alternative, grassroots efforts to make improved working conditions for artists and an increased diversity among their ranks profitable to opera companies.

At a 2019-2020 donor fundraiser, a Level 3 American opera company (annual operating budget of $1-$3 million) raffled off a catered dinner party with a private chef featuring entertainment by its Resident Young Artists. The week of the anticipated event, however, the company ran into budgeting concerns and told the young artists that instead, they would be purchasing the groceries, catering the multicourse dinner, serving, and cleaning in addition to providing the entertainment. This shift in tasked labor was framed as non-negotiable, falling under the “other duties as assigned” clause in their nonstandard work contracts. While this clause grants employers considerable latitude, its nontransparency allows for potential abuses of power and exploitation. A subgroup of Young Artist Programs, Resident Artist Programs (RAPs) offer longer-term contracts (typically, six months to one year) while still providing skill-building experiences, performance opportunities, and professional development training. While these paid opportunities are highly coveted within the industry, RAPs are often a breeding ground for exploitative practices.

Mapping classical musicians’ labors relationally within a class structure, John Pippen argues that most are working-class (2024). And within opera’s hierarchical labor relations, young artists - despite their skilled status - have limited autonomy and authority. Young artists are particularly vulnerable to these forms of abuse due to their economic precarity, replaceability, normalization of “yes, and” mentalities, and lack of protections – leading many singers to accept working conditions that they otherwise would not endure. Applying feminist psychotherapist Maria P. P. Root’s theorization of “insidious trauma” (1989), I argue that young artists experiencing intersectional forms of marginalization, are disproportionately affected by these normative, (in)visibilized practices, often facing greater pressures to comply with unreasonable demands due to fears of career repercussions. Through in-depth interviews with current, aspiring, and former opera singers, I analyze the impact such exploitative labor practices have on young artists, how these abuses are amplified by intersectionalities of gender, race, and class, and how young artists reconcile these demands with their professional aspirations, personal well-being, and sense of agency within the opera industry.

In a 2022 speech, trans tenor Katherine Goforth quoted her colleague Sam Taskinin: “‘Think of all the artists…who never risked transitioning…who were never allowed to participate in music.’ Those who went before and those who are suffering now, are always on my mind.” Goforth invokes the absences and tensions her success reveals: her community of trans opera artists, at once present and invisibilized. Opera is at a reckoning point: its conventions, structures, and culture are often inhospitable to marginalized communities, and reparative measures are sparse to non-existent. American opera companies are thus newly self-conscious about diversity, equity, inclusion and access (DEIA), even as DEIA discourse rapidly complexifies. DEIA initiatives intended to train artists of marginalized identities (young artist programs and special awards) are characterized as improvements to the pipeline and to the circumstances of the target artist communities, but in the post-COVID era, amid low ticket sales and a transformed cultural climate, companies also financially benefit from DEIA initiatives by attracting new ticketbuyers and donors. If not undertaken in good faith, such DEIA initiatives risk perpetuating the exploitative conditions of young artist programs for the financial benefit of the company, compounding the precarious circumstances of a group of already-marginalized artists for a better bottom line.

Following Nel Noddings’ and Carol Gilligan’s groundbreaking studies, and building on Talia Schaffer’s idea of care as “meeting another’s need,” I introduce care ethics as a theoretical framework with which to evaluate these initiatives (which I dub “care initiatives”). Framing these initiatives as acts of care, I identify the relationship between artist and company as cared-for and carer, and evaluate whether the care provided, in reality, meets the need it purports to address. I articulate specific problems with DEIA initiatives, identify effective methods to solicit the stated needs of artists, and formulate plans to meet them. My analysis is grounded in a case study of the True Voice Award, Washington National Opera’s care initiative first awarded to Goforth, and in data analysis tracking DEIA at major American opera houses. In future, this framework could help formulate metrics to evaluate the efficacy of DEIA initiatives long-term.