DECENCY vs. INDECENCY, CIVILITY vs. INCIVILITY
HOW AMERICA AND ENGLAND CONFLATED FOR ME TUESDAY AT THE OPENING NIGHT OF THE ROYAL OPERA'S NEW PRODUCTION OF HANDEL'S "ALCINA"
(Above: Twelve-year-old Malakai M Bayoh who was booed and heckled incessantly by a lone, very loud audience member at the Royal Opera at one point in the second act at the opening night of Handel’s Alcina. It incensed the rest of the audience which gave him an ovation after his solo. The Royal Opera announced the next day that the man had been banned for life. Photo: Marc Brenner.)
With the election of President Biden over Trump back in 2020, America, I wrote then, voted for decency over indecency for I deeply believed - still believe - that the main difference between the two parties in America when it comes right/left down to it really is societal decency versus the lack of it within that societal context. There was much handwringing these last few months by Democrats, who seem to have handwringing embedded in their DNA if not their party’s platform, in fear that indecency would rise up yet again and defeat decency once more. There was much talk about a “Red Wave,” which I just never bought into since I could not imagine a world, much less a country, where the behavior and lies and downright fascistic cruelty of the GOP the last two years would be rewarded with more power. Indeed, there was a meme that the election on Tuesday had more of the feel of the first few moments of the Game of Thrones “Red Wedding” scene as Trump and DeSantis and the vulgarian MAGA majority and the lesser-MAGA more presentable minority (yet MAGA nonetheless in its policies if not its presentation, a distinction without a difference) go after each other for dominance in the GOP. It’s going to be quite uncivil, politically bloody, and, as they say over here in London where I have set up my home base this last week, a bloody good show to watch as they set out to destroy each other. Trump has made it clear he has opposition research on Ron and Ron, like a drove of driven prosecutors, must have it on The Donald ( as the wife Trump buried on a golf course once called him). The Ron and Don Show is going to be one with rhyme but no reason other than destruction of the other.
I was thinking of all that on Tuesday night as I settled into my seat in the Stalls Circle at the Royal Opera House on the opening night of the Royal Opera’s new production of Handel’s Alcina, a fantastical tale of wild fantasies and dark desires. I often joke that I am not educated about opera and ballet - even though I have been going to productions for almost five decades now - and describe the transcendent experience I often have while witnessing a sublime performance as what it is like to have really great sex with someone and then realize you don’t know the person’s last name. The experience is informed by the experience itself. That repeated joke of mine - I repeated it during the intermission of the yes, sublime, Men in Motion the other night during the interval to a new acquaintance during the interval who widened her eyes not in wonder but to grow a grimace politely and, well, civilly into a semblance of wonder at such a semblance of wit) too easily falls into philistinism perhaps, but the feeling I have when settling into such a seat, especially at London’s Royal Opera House, is the opposite of being a philistine. Attending the opera and the ballet has always been a civilizing experience for me - much like voting is. Civic duty and being dutifully civil have always served to balance my lower instincts to, say, make a bawdy joke that pushes the boundaries of good taste in order ironically to brag a bit about my good taste. I elide my love of what some would consider the elite arts and my anti-Eleatic reliance on my senses to make sense of the world not with darkness but with desire itself.
(Above: Splendiferous, both soprano Lisette Oropesa and Richard Jones’s new production of Handel’s Alcina at the Royal Opera in London.)
But there has been another kind of darkness at work in the world that elides with the menace of fascism’s rise once more and that is its own reliance on incivility in the too easily incensed. During Act Two of Alcina, the brutish vulgarity and cruelty given agency by Trump and the GOP and the MAGA crowd - even the racism perhaps - shockingly elided for a few moments in, of all places, the audience of the Royal Opera House when a lone man in what sounded to me like the Dress Circle erupted in boos during an aria by a twelve-year-old boy cast as Oberto. I was marveling at the child’s skillful handling of the musical terrain of Handel’s tempos when, at first, I thought the disturbance above me was a fight breaking out or someone calling for a doctor because someone had fallen ill. Then as I discerned the words being shouted were “Rubbish” and “Make him stop” and “Stop him,” I realized with alarm that the man was heckling the Black child on the stage, a child whose skill never waned during the onslaught, whose professionalism persevered. My own grimace did not grow to disguise what I was feeling: disgust at the shouted disgust at a child on the stage of the Royal Opera. Was the vulgar display in the audience a reaction to the child’s color or his talent - or a curdled combination of the two? Opera fans are, well, fanatical and can often make their feelings known rowdily and rudely within the confines of opera houses when they feel offended by a performance. I have been present for those kinds of boos. But this was something else. This was finding offense in a child and churlishly throwing the kind of awful tantrum that a less civilized child than the one onstage could have thrown in such an audience. The man was more than rude and out-of-line; he was cruel and abusive. At that moment I felt the world of decency and civility descending further into a kind of cultural and political abyss.
When the child finished, the man began to boo even more loudly but we in the audience immediately drowned him out with a sustained ovation for the child with lots of “Bravos” threaded through the thunderous applause much like the Americans across the way were rising up to thwart a the pundit-and-pollster predicted “Red Wave” that itself would have been, if it had come true, like a vulgarian in the Royal Opera House booing and heckling a Black child while denying it had anything to do with racism but instead values even as he - and GOP voters - trashed the very values on which well-considered art and a well-ordered society are based: the sort of civility and decency that are able to define - and even keep sorted - what is indecent and uncivil within us without resorting to it in our own lives.
America doing its civic duty on Tuesday balanced out the indecency and incivility of the fascistic MAGA crowd by mostly spurring on what is decent and civil within its people and here in London on Tuesday night, when an uncivil man booed and heckled a child on the stage of the Royal Opera House in a display of indecency, the audience rose up in unison to deny him the incivility of that indecency. Yesterday the Royal Opera House announced that the man in question would be banned from the Opera House for life. Now, America, will you do the same regarding the indecent and uncivil man in your midst who wants to move back into another kind of House and heckle us all from there? If, as expected, he announces another run for the presidency, ban him with your votes. Tuesday gave us all a start. But it was also a start. Decency and civility demand of us that we continue.
Onward.
Despite Britain’s perceived politeness it is a very hostile , racist society . I was stunned when I first came . Don’t ever attend a football match .
Bravo to decency and civility and respect for talent and hard work.