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This editorial was originally titled WORKING-CLASS ‘SURVIVORS’ and appeared in the August 25, 2000 issue of the Capital Times on page 6A. It is available online here from the Capital Times.
In the glitzed-up, substance-free world of contemporary entertainment, it is all too easy to get lost in the made-for-TV tales of safety-net-protected endurance and faux heroism best exemplified by programs such as “Survivor.”
But true stories of survival, heroism and endurance are more compelling, as evidenced by “Esperanza,” the groundbreaking two-act opera that debuts tonight in the University of Wisconsin's Music Hall. The product of six years of creative thinking, diligent fund raising and difficult organizing by UW Professor Karlos Moser and Madison arts activist Kathleen McElroy, the opera is a tale of working-class perseverance of a far more inspired character than the manufactured survival stories that pass for entertainment these days.
Moser and McElroy did not make up a hero, nor did they invent an epic tale. Rather, they plunged into the depths of American labor history, plucking from its dark recesses the amazing story of Hispanic women who supported a 1950s strike by the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers union against the Empire Zinc Co. of Bayard, N.M. That strike would have been lost altogether to history were it not for Joe McCarthy.
The Wisconsin senator's anti-communist witch hunting in the early 1950s led to the development of a Hollywood “blacklist” that left dozens of the most talented people in the American film industry essentially unemployed.
The artists and writers of Hollywood, who were persecuted because of their involvement with labor causes and campaigns for racial justice, recognized in the strike by the Hispanic zinc workers a struggle worthy of their attention and talent. Working with Local 890, they wrote a script, raised money and hired actors and crews to make the film “Salt of the Earth.” The movie broke so many racial and cultural barriers, and spoke so much truth to power, that it was suppressed by the political and corporate forces that never hesitate to silence the voices of working Americans.
With “Esperanza” -- through the work of Moser and McElroy and dozens of colleagues, collaborators, friends and funders whom McElroy, in particular, has dragooned into supporting the project -- a vital aspect of American history is dusted off and represented. And it is done so with a rare mixture of ideological, historical and artistic integrity that makes the opera at once reflective and visionary.
Employing opera, with its elitist reputation, to tell a working-class story is adventurous. But at a time when television and film are so vapid, opera may bethe perfect medium.
“What excites me about this is that it is a real American work,” Moser says of “Esperanza.” “The idea of current stories in opera is very sparse indeed. We're hoping this might make a slight change in people's perception of opera.”
With strong support from organized labor, the Wisconsin Endowment for the Humanities and The Evjue Foundation Inc., Moser and McElroy have pushed the limits both of their art and of our history. In so doing, they have restored an ancient and far superior standard for the stories of survival that merit retelling.
