The Long View | Season Launch Blues

What’s the season? Why, it’s season-launch season! Buckle up and ready yourself for astonishing revelations from orchestras who have embargoed news of their Brahms symphony cycle until midday on a Tuesday (lest The Sun gazump it) and the opera company that promises to prove its staggering societal insight by reframing La Bohème from the perspective of Musetta’s poodle.

Season launches are frequently disappointing in both the short term, when we immediately write-off the wares being offered as insufficiently interesting (The Proms); and the the long term, when the mouth-watering delicacies outlined on paper proved disappointingly bland on the night (take a bow, European opera directors).

Perhaps that serves us right for trying to translate ‘information’ into ‘experience’. Judging a season in advance from its printed press release is like appraising a holiday from its printed itinerary. As the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once wrote: life has to be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards. Then again, you don’t need to spend a week in Rhyll to know that it will probably be eclipsed by a week in, let’s say for the sake of argument (and a rhyme), Seville.

Season launches have a particular ironic pertinence coming towards the climax of the season we’re already in. Where I live, the main opera season is just wrapping up and has been the best for at least six years. Some of the performances that failed to whet my appetite when announced have had the greatest impact in the theatre. My instinctive reaction on surveying next season is that it will be nowhere near as good, mostly because it contains far too few of my favourite operas. Though I would never admit to that, of course (oops), for the very reasons just set out.

But also because, shock horror, it’s not about me. Anyone holding forth on opera and concert seasons from their imaginary artistic director’s chair must be wary. As critics we are prone to seeing things from a highly distorted, idealised and obsessive view of the world. Few of us - even those who have worked as editors - have been charged with presenting a balanced offering before the public that caters to a broad range of tastes and expectations while also satisfying the litany of other pressures artistic directors face (financial, logistical, innovative, industrial, political and commercial). We rarely get wind of the projects or programmes that were lost to contractual failure, scheduling clashes or budget constraints.

Still, as journalists we have a duty to put things in context and pick out worrying trends, missed opportunities, overlooked talent and likely artistic misfires - as well as highlighting what are likely to be hot tickets, memorable triumphs and fertile meetings of artists with repertoire. A colleague recently pointed to a forthcoming English National Opera season in which the company’s music director is presiding over just one production. Go figure. I’ve made a mental note of another company that proclaimed Wagner as its heartland repertoire in advance of a new production in March and in April announced a new season that doesn’t include a note of his work.

There’s an added imperative in the post-pandemic world, when so many of our major institutions effectively promised change and yet so many clearly haven’t, in the end, had the character to follow through and deliver it. Strapped for cash, some opera companies and orchestras are presenting their thinnest, dullest and most predictable seasons in years - running for the safety of the same-old-same-old.

Perhaps they have no choice (or perhaps, to posit another counterargument, the way you build back is by cultivating audience trust in new, bolder ideas). But that shouldn’t stop commentators from highlighting the point. Because it’s not poor performances that have the potential to sew steady box-office decline for orchestras and opera companies (particularly outside London), so much as a creeping creative stagnation that has the potential to facilitate a wholesale disconnect. And that’s one domain in which the pre-season critic, more often than not, is bang on the money.