Content note: this essay mentions rape, suicide, and other types of violence.
When is it okay for a radio station to censor content?
A classical radio station in North Carolina recently made national news for proposing to withhold six live broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera’s upcoming radio broadcast season, which begins in December.
In a letter to listeners, the station's general manager mentioned the operas’ “vulgar language” and “inappropriate subject matter,” such as rape, suicide and murder.
There are a lot of problems with these proposed deletions, not the least of which is that radio stations sign a contract that we will air all operas during the Met's broadcast season.
Another major problem was that every opera they proposed withholding was written by a living composer. It also included the only operas in the Met’s season by Black or Mexican composers, as well as the only operas with explicitly LGBT+ themes.
Many musicians and journalists, including Rhiannon Giddens and Celeste Headlee, have written great commentary calling out this racism and homophobia, so I won’t belabor those points.
What I want to focus on is the ratio station's concerns about protecting audiences from the “inappropriate content” in these contemporary operas.
What is a radio station’s obligation to shield its audience from particular kinds of content?
First and foremost, almost every opera out there features the same types of “inappropriate content” as the contemporary operas the North Carolina station wanted to withhold.
The entire plot of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” centers around Figaro trying to protect his fiancée Susanna from being raped by his boss.
The title character in Bizet’s “Carmen” is murdered by a lover for her infidelity.
Okay, you say, but what about operas for children and operas presented in productions for families?
Well, among the plot points of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” one character nearly dies by suicide, another one tries to rescue a princess before she’s raped by her captor, and that same princess is instructed to murder her own father by her own mother.
As for Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel,” the title characters escape the witch’s house by shoving her into her own blazing oven.
Although radio stations sign a contract committing to air the entire Met season, we can ask for exemptions. In 2022, the Met granted Classical IPR an exemption from airing their production of Verdi’s “Aida” on Christmas Eve.
We decided that an opera that ends with two lovers being imprisoned in a vault to die together wasn’t quite Christmas Eve fare.
Perhaps that makes us hypocrites in light of what I’ve written, but our instinct was that listeners would want to hear carols and “Messiah” and other holiday music on Christmas Eve, not an opera that ends so horrifically.
It wasn’t about protecting our audiences from the content, it was about programming the kind of music on a holiday that we thought listeners wanted to hear.
For the record, Classical IPR will broadcast the Metropolitan Opera Radio Network season in its entirety starting December 9. (No exceptions this year.)
Just know that nearly every opera that airs on Saturday afternoons from the Met will likely include violence and adult themes. We’ll make all the operas available, though, and leave it up to the listeners to decide if they want to listen each week.
Note: a version of this piece originally appeared in the Traverse City Record-Eagle as part of the "Tuning In" series.
