Don’t Miss Des Moines Metro Opera’s Virtual Festival

It has been six summers since I worked at Des Moines Metro Opera and yet every year when the weather turns warm and the nights grow shorter, my body aches for opera like the phantom pains of someone who has lost a limb. I have participated in every event that I can since then but that's no substitute for the excitement, the exhaustion, the anxiety of helping put the whole thing on. I miss it, especially now.

Des Moines punches above its weight as an art city. For America's 103rd largest city, it is blessed with institutions that can hold its own against any in the country. The Des Moines Art Center, which I've written about here before, is one of the most important collections in America. Des Moines Performing Arts competitively brings Broadway's best touring shows to the city. When I was a kid, it would be years before a hit New York show would wind up in Des Moines, now the leading productions nearly always visit the city on their initial tours. When Leslie Odom Jr. gave a concert with Des Moines Performing Arts and the Des Moines Symphony, the crowd demanded so many encores he ran out of music to sing, which was kind of embarrassing actually, as if we hayseeds are so starved for culture we wouldn't let the man leave until we heard "Wait For It" three times. Odom was very gracious and the orchestra, earning union overtime I'm sure, was all too happy to keep playing. The Des Moines Community Playhouse, at more than 100 years old, is one of the longest lasting theaters of its kind. With a fine symphony orchestra and a budding ballet company, Des Moines sports a rich cultural landscape.

But none of those companies do what Des Moines Metro Opera does, produce professional productions itself. Every year when there isn't a pandemic, 200 artists from around the world including singers, musicians, conductors, scenic designers and stage managers come to Des Moines (or, more accurately, Indianola, a town of 15,000 12 miles south of the city) and have about six weeks to put of the three operas that will be performed in repertory for the four weeks of the June/July season. Why Indianola? Well, most opera companies perform their productions in the fall and winter with a different show every month or so in some sort of cadence. Summer festivals, which Des Moines is one of the ten best in the country, are traditionally removed from big urban areas to present a sort of rural idyll for opera goers. Also, practically, Indianola houses Simpson College and its network of dormitories, where the artists can live for the ten weeks they are here. They don't spend much time in the dorms, however, as they are engaged in the business of rehearsing and performing from the moment they arrive. Sets need to be built, music learned, donors must be gladhanded, classes taken, and so on. That flurry of activity is intoxicating to be around, it saddens me that Indianola is not currently abuzz.

As sad as it is for me, it is devastating for the performers, who have uniquely suffered under COVID-19. Watching selfish people refuse to wear masks because of the assault  on "muh freedoms" is frustrating for most of us. For a singer, each case of maskless defiance pushes back the time in which they can get back to work. In Europe, opera houses are gingerly reopening, including this delightful concert for plants, but with America's recent surge in cases, and many of our neighbor's blasé reaction to doing the right thing about it, mean that its unlikely that performing arts organizations will be opening back up anytime soon (this is something to keep in mind as we have all been enjoying Hamilton on Disney+ over the weekend, those performers are in the same, grim boat). Iowans should be proud that Des Moines Metro Opera is honoring the contracts of each of the cancelled season's performers, a generous gesture to be sure and among opera companies, sadly extraordinary.

Still, that doesn't fill the gap of those who were looking forward to this summer's planned performances of Rameau's Platée, Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades and Sonheim's Sweeney Todd. The company made the prudent decision to suspend the season months ago but I had the dates of my tickets still in my phone and was unpleasantly reminded of what might have been last week when I was notified that in a different timeline, I would have been on my way to Indianola to see world-class operas at very close proximity. Worse still, Sweeney Todd was the first production I ever saw at Des Moines Metro Opera, 25 years ago and it was the piece of music that set the hook that would lead to a lifelong love of performing arts. Art is part of the uniqueness of the human soul, it gives us humanity, it reminds us of our potential, it provides us with empathy which is always in short supply. Opera combines all the art forms—music, drama, poetry, dance, visual art—and creates a gumbo so rich that when done well its unlike anything in existence, the kind of stuff that can turn composers into immortals, singers into gods and a small theater in rural Iowa into the very gates of heaven. It is tragic that this disease has forced those gates closed.

But only in a sense. Des Moines has made a number of prudent decisions as a company and none more than to revive a long collaboration with Iowa PBS some ten years ago. The opera company and the broadcaster forged a relationship in the 1970s to record some productions but when I joined the staff in 2010, the partnership had been abandoned. Since 2013, however, PBS has documented at least one production every summer, many of these broadcasts have won Emmy's, and Des Moines Metro Opera is making select recordings available nationwide for the first time as part of their virtual festival. The company is releasing full operas, director interviews and scholarly insights plus producing new artist recitals and cast reunions created digitally from the performers homes. This is an extraordinary free offering that removes any barrier a reticent opera-curious individual may have. And besides that, it’s rare. It’s easy to watch Hamilton and assume that every show has a high-gloss recording. Not so. Most filmed productions are for research purposes with a single wide camera and terrible audio. An expensive filmed production is a luxury that most shows simply can’t afford—and why would they assume they need content, it’s not like people will ever stop going to live theater, right? Des Moines couldn’t have predicted COVID but their prudence gives them something to offer while every theater is dark. I'll be the first to tell you that a film performance is not the same as the live thing but we are in the desert, friends, and a glass of water is a glass of water. 

The pandemic has entered its second act. We are more tired, more weary and less confident of a timely resolution. Now is as good a time as any to try something new. I encourage you to interact with this company, particularly with Billy Budd, which becomes available this Sunday and is harrowing and wonderful. But don't shy away from the other shows either which do a nice job of presenting the range of this art form that is too often written off as monolithic. Le Comte Ory, as far from Billy Budd as possible, is a delightful comedy that remains one of Liz Lidgett's favorite productions. I used to tell people that going to Des Moines Metro Opera was engaging in something rare. Because the company produced its own shows, each performance was one of only five or six of that opera in the history of the world before the cast broke up and the set was retired, never to be seen again. I'm thrilled that, because of the connection with Iowa PBS, some of these shows can be seen over and over again. They deserve to be.