CULTURE

North Carolina radio station plans to reject broadcasts of 'inappropriate' Met operas

September 29, 20233:29 PM ET
Anastasia Tsioulcas

A listener-supported radio station in North Carolina, WCPE, is planning to withhold the broadcast of six contemporary operas this season from New York's Metropolitan Opera, because of the station management's objections to the operas' content. It is a classical music controversy that echoes larger, nationwide culture war debates.

WCPE's protest comes at a time when the Metropolitan Opera is eager to showcase its commitment to recently written operas and works from outside the traditional canon of music written by white men. Three of the operas that WCPE plans to reject in the 2023-24 season were written by Black or Mexican composers. This past April, WCPE also refused to broadcast another Met-produced opera written by a Black composer that included LGBTQ themes.

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WCPE's general manager, Deborah S. Proctor, sent out a letter to station patrons about seven operas in particular: one that the Met staged earlier this year and the rest that the Met is scheduled to present in its current season. Proctor wrote in her letter that she was seeking feedback from her listene. ... The letter was published on Aug. 31 but recently gained traction online. Most of WCPE's objections relate to depictions of violence or the presence of LGBTQ subject material; in another instance, Proctor objects to a composer's "non-biblical" meditation on the birth of Jesus.

Link to tweet

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In the NPR interview, Proctor called WCPE's programming "a safe refuge from the horrors of life." Repeatedly, Proctor also appealed to the sensibilities of any children who might tune into her station or come across it online and said that her personal values were integral to her decision-making. Breaking into tears on the phone, Proctor said: "I have a moral decision to make here. What if one child hears this? When I stand before Jesus Christ on Judgement Day, what am I going to say?"

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