Conference Agenda

Just like so many politicians, the contemporary American opera industry is beholden to a donor class. The concept of the “donor class” is rooted in American political science and theory, inspired by the back-room campaign-finance deals and influence-peddling occurring in statehouses nationwide, particularly among conservative and right-leaning politicians in the neoliberal era. The political donor class is responsible for the emergence of think-tanks, high-impact lobbying, white papers, and pre-authored legislation. While not nearly as well-organized as its political cousin, opera’s donor class nevertheless employs money and power to affect not just choices of repertoire, staging, and dramaturgy, but also to enact its own preferences and prejudices on the stage by influencing who gets to direct, design, conduct, and—ultimately—sing opera in America.

I analyze the impact of opera’s donor class on the contemporary art form using four lines of inquiry. First, I trace the emergence of opera’s donor class through the widespread adoption of the nonprofit corporate form in the mid-twentieth century, wherein the American opera industry pivoted from a for-profit model of private, investment-based enterprise to a nonprofit model of public, donation-based enterprise. Second, by analyzing annual reports and routine tax filings from several major opera companies over the last twenty-five years, I demonstrate how American opera companies rely on donations from a relatively small number of wealthy individuals and families to cover the significant annual deficit between the high cost of producing opera and the generally low yield from ticket sales. Third, I show how opera’s donor class has loosely cohered around a specific set of values—including prestige, recognition, and tradition—to wield outsized influence over both how opera is produced and who gets hired to perform it. Fourth, I show how these same values shape the behavior of both opera companies and opera singers, who are collectively incentivized to do whatever it takes to keep opera’s donor class happy. To conclude, I identify several cases in which donor interests appear to have directly or indirectly affected the hiring of opera singers, leading to enactments of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and fatphobia on American opera stages.