Paris Opera vows to address lack of diversity, ban blackface on stage
The 350-year-old Paris Opera is not racially diverse, and has recently decided to do something about it. The Black Lives Matter movement brought reflection from within the institution, and a report published this week offers recommendations, including rethinking how works are performed and overhauling the recruitment process.
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“The Paris Opera is not a place of diversity. Let’s be frank: on the whole, it is a white world, far from what contemporary French society looks like,” states the report, written by historian Pap Ndiaye, and the rights defender, Constance Rivière.
Because France does not allow the collection of racial statistics, the report and the drive behind it are “based on intuition”, remarked Rivière during a press conference to present the report on Monday.
The intuition exists even within the institution. In August 2020 over 400 people, a quarter of the Opera’s 1,895 employees, signed a manifesto stating that racism exists in France and that “the Paris Opera, the noble institution that we serve with passion, is no exception.”
“In many people’s heads, to join the Paris Opera, you need to be white,” Guillaume Diop told RFI. He is one of five black dancers, out of 146 in the Opera ballet, who launched the manifesto.
Black Lives Matter
Diop was disappointed that the Paris Opera did not follow the lead of the New York Metropolitan Opera in supporting the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd by police officers in the United States in the May 2020.
During the summer Diop and his colleagues had time to reflect, as the Opera has been closed during the Covid pandemic.
“When you are young, you don’t necessarily notice racism, as it goes over your head. I must have been about ten years old when I heard a friend say: ‘Letizia, she will never be able to enter the Opera ballet because she is black’,” recalls Letizia Galloni, a prima ballerina, a step below danseuse étoile, or star dancer, the highest rank at the Paris Opera ballet. The ballet has not yet had a black étoile.
The manifesto was published just as Alexander Neef arrived to take over as director of the Paris Opera. He had previously directed the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, where he had been addressing these issues.
In September he tasked Ndiaye and Rivière with three objectives: to identify discrimination faced by employees; reflect on how operatic works are presented, especially when they include blackface, makeup used on non-black performers to portray or caricature black characters; and to look into access by racial minorities to the professions, both on and offstage.
Importing North American values
Neef has faced criticism from the conservative world of opera, especially when he warned that "some works will no doubt disappear from the repertoire".
Critics recoiled from the idea that opera favourites like Swan Lake and The Nutcracker might be cut because of problematic passages or staging. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen called the Opera’s focus on diversity "anti-racism gone mad".
Others have warned that France is being too influenced by American political correctness, though on Monday Neef insisted that the focus on diversity “is not about importing something from outside. It’s about finding our own solutions, which is more important.”
After three months of research, interviewing over 100 people, Ndiaye and Rivière published the 66-page report with 18 recommendations, addressing staffing, recruitment, but also how works are represented.
Opera’s racist roots
“The mission of the Paris Opera is to maintain the repertoire, a lot of it coming from the late 19th century, with works that often exoticised the non-European world,” said Ndiaye.
Western opera started in the 17th century, and developed through the 19th century, as Europeans were exploring and colonising Africa, Asia and North America. Operas had exotic scenery and costumes, giving spectators glimpses of far-off locations onstage.
The report insists that addressing the racism and stereotypes in these works does not involve eliminating them from the repertoire, but contextualising them.
The authors say they are not censors. Rather, they would like to encourage reinterpretation and creativity when considering roles and representations, which is not new.
“For a long time we have not been bothered that an older singer performs the role of a young lead, or that a woman sings the role of a man,” writes the report. “Why is it that only that which deals with skin colour must be fixed forever?”
Blackface
At issue for many spectators and performers is blackface, when non-white performers put dark makeup on their faces to portray black characters, or yellowface for Asian characters.
Banning the practice, which the Opera has committed to do, should not infringe on the artistic works, insists Rivière: “Just putting on makeup is a weak artistic solution, which could be replaced by other things that do not increase stereotypes.”
In 2015, the Opera's ballet director Benjamin Millepied revised the Danse des Negrillons (the Dance of the little Negroes) in the opera La Bayadère, which is often interpreted by performers with darkened faces. He removed the blackface, and renamed it the the Dance of the children.
”All opera houses in the world are asking themselves how to represent the role of Othello, either with a white or black tenor,” said Neef. In the Verdi opera, based on the Shakespeare play, the character, if sung by a white tenor, often wears blackface.
He says he does not want to impose anything on a director, but there are other solutions: “It’s up to the artists to define with us the representation of this work…. What is the root of these works? Is it about skin colour? It can go deeper than that.”
Ballet blanc
The report also addressed the question of ballet blanc, a 19th century tradition in which the female dancers all wear white dresses or tutus. The idea is that everyone looks the same, and that has been interpreted as everyone having the same skin colour, meaning that black dancers rarely appear.
The report takes the position that homogeneity is not what makes something beautiful: “The beauty in dance is the energy of a collective of individuals on stage, not a painting where nothing is out of place.”
To shift the racial makeup of the corps de ballet, the authors suggest an overhaul of how the Opera recruits dancers. Unlike the orchestra musicians or the singers, who are trained outside the institution in conservatories, dancers are trained in-house.
The Ecole de danse was founded in 1754, and today has very few applicants of colour. This is partly because they do not think to apply, but also, the report says, because the selection process is based on appearance, and recruiters still have stereotypes that date back to the 19th century, that black people have “more visible” muscles or flat feet.
One of the ways to increase diversity in performers is having role models. Ndiaye points to Misty Copeland, the first black dancer to be appointed to the prestigious American Ballet Theatre in New York.
“We saw how in the US, the promotion of Misty Copeland in New York played a role for African American children, who were inspired,” he said.
France lacks such role models, and the report, recognising it might take a while to produce them, suggests inviting international artists, or recruiting international dancers.
First steps
Neef has welcomed the report, and is committed to change, even in the face of resistance. He said the Paris Opera will follow the lead of the New York Met and name a diversity officer.
The Paris Opera is already addressing some of the issues raised in the manifesto, providing a larger colour palate of tights for the dancers, not just pink or white, which turn darker skin grey. Makeup and hair are being adapted for darker skin and different textured hair, and lighting technicians are being trained to light darker skin.
Neef also suggested that many things were already being put in place, even before the report’s recommendations.
“Out of 22 candidates for the dance school exam in October, six were minority, four were admitted,” he said, also pointing to the recent appointment of Ching-Lien Wu, from Taiwan, as the Opera’s chorus director, as “a message for diversity”.
“This report is not the conclusion of a process, it’s the start,” said Neef. “This will not end, it will live with us for years.”
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