Eric Boutin: Opera as artistic therapy
All the World’s a Stage: LANY alumnus Eric Boutin
is showing a new generation of arts patrons what opera can teach
us about ourselves
The Rake’s Progress, written in 1951 and based on a series
of 18th-century sketches, is Eric Boutin’s favorite opera
– the Duke alumnus and New York City management consultant
has seen it three times. A former opera novice, Boutin says he sees
Stravinsky’s morality play as a cautionary story with enduring
relevance.
“The Rake's Progress is a Faustian tale, where the protagonist,
Tom Rakewell, consistently allowed himself to be misled by the devil,
reasoning ‘what's one more questionable exploit’ in
light of the many already behind him,” explains Boutin. “This
opera helped me discover that being open and honest with someone,
even if it is awkward and painful at the time, usually offers the
greatest benefits to both parties. Honest and dishonest choices
both build a kind of momentum: a force that affects future decisions.”
Now, Boutin is on a mission to turn other young people on to opera’s
seductive and timeless power. Through his Opera Club for Young Professionals,
Boutin and a couple dozen fellow New Yorkers are taking in performances
at the Metropolitan Opera, followed by lively discussions over drinks
or brunch.
Boutin first discovered opera as a junior at Duke while enrolled
in Leadership and the Arts in New York (LANY), a spring semester,
full course load program offered through the Hart Leadership Program.
Participants explore questions of leadership, policy, philanthropy,
and creativity in the arts, and view dozens of plays, operas, dance
performances and arts exhibits. As an economics major, Boutin relished
the opportunity to explore issues of ethics, morality and self-awareness
through works of art.
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A scene from the Met's production of Puccini's La Boheme.
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“LANY had a big impact on me,” he says. “It’s
more than just learning to appreciate opera and theater. You take
a piece of a performance and look at the motives and actions of
the characters and use that to learn about yourself. It’s
fascinating; it forces you to step outside yourself for three or
four hours and look at different characters’ perspectives.
You can find small pieces of yourself that force you to question
who you are and why you do what you do -- and what does that mean?”
During his senior year at Duke and then after graduation in 2001,
Boutin says he missed the intellectual vigor that defined so many
arts-inspired conversations during his New York semester. He signed
on to help LANY director Bruce Payne as a teaching assistant leading
post-performance discussion groups, then served as a teaching associate
leading student consulting projects, and now continues to be a volunteer
faculty member.
But Boutin didn’t stop there. He wanted to spread the word
about opera’s power even wider, so in the fall of 2002, he
recruited five people from work and the group went to eight operas,
followed by coffee and discussion. Last year, he recruited 22 people
for eight performances and gave the group its official moniker.
Most members of the Opera Club for Young Professionals are in the
22-27 age range and a few years out of college. Some have seen operas
before, but the majority haven’t.
“I wanted to create a forum for post-graduates to discuss
the relationship between leadership in the arts and leadership in
the workplace,” he says. “I wanted to get a group of
my professional peers excited about an intimidating art form and
its real world applicability. We’ve introduced almost 50 post-graduates
to the world of classical opera on the premise that we can learn
valuable lessons about ourselves and our relationships by studying
the intersecting themes in the business world and in the performing
arts.”
As with LANY, the Opera Club for Young Professionals does its homework.
Boutin sends out preparatory readings and post-performance discussion
themes. Opera can be intimidating to the newcomer, he says, and
audiences benefit greatly when they know the subtleties and nuances
of a particular work.
“Opera can be a difficult medium for a first time viewer
to absorb, but I believe the obstacles to audience-building go far
beyond the foreign language, the music style, or the perceived ‘un-coolness,’”
he says. “My experiences with students and young professionals
have led me to believe that most newcomers simply aren't prepared
for the way an opera libretto unfolds, or for the conventions that
seasoned viewers take for granted. For instance, one powerful aria
can be enough to convince the opera veteran that a cold-hearted
princess has fallen in love, that a god-fearing diva must commit
murder, or that a vengeful father has become forgiving. For a first-timer
who doesn't understand the convention that life-altering actions
can go from question to decision in the course of one powerful song,
the story and its characters can seem ‘naïve’ and
‘over-simplistic.’”
And in an age when most entertainment caters to short attention
spans, he says, many of the inherent subtleties in opera can go
unnoticed. “Consequently, the newcomer walks away without
a complete understanding of character complexities or motivations,
resulting in the impression that ‘there just wasn't much going
on.’ In addition, few first-timers are aware of the history
behind the opera, the political climate in which it was composed,
or the different ways the leading roles have been interpreted throughout
the years. Compound this with the fact that the opera environment
and crowd can be intimidating, and you have an Emperor's New Clothes
scenario where few newcomers are willing to admit or discuss what
they didn't like or didn't understand for fear of seeming ignorant.”
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A scene from the Met's production of Wagner's Tannhauser.
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Boutin’s philanthropic mission is to create
a new generation of arts patrons who are deeply committed to art
forms – be it opera, theater, or dance – not simply
looking for an inexpensive option for a Saturday night date. “Newcomers
are price elastic; if you give them a cheap enough ticket they will
come but you won’t build an audience unless you are giving
them the framework to understand it. That’s why the post-performance
discussions are so important. One question that I like to ask is,
‘What didn’t you like most?’ That opens people
up, lets them get comfortable and reflect on what troubled them.
And if the same things troubled each of them, we can relate as a
group to the work.”
While LANY director Bruce Payne attended one or two operas and
discussions last year, he plans to attend as many as he can this
season. For the group’s inaugural opera this season –
Carmen, on November 12 -- Payne circulated a study question of sorts:
“The hero of this great French opera is a gypsy, which is
to say that she's a member of a minority in Spain that was oppressed
and despises, and also feared,” Payne wrote. “Her independence
from the rules of bourgeois society was shocking in the 1870's,
and her unwillingness to settle down with a soldier she's seduced
away from the army still shakes my students. They find her extreme
devotion to freedom puzzling, and its connection with a certain
kind of fatalism even more mystifying. Why is Carmen so brave? What
are the sources of her strength? Why does her bull fighter seem
to be winning a kind of commitment from her that Don José
never could? Are Carmen's claims about love and commitment plausible
in our world?"
The group’s season also includes Wagner’s Tannhauser
and Die Walküre, Offenbach’s
Tales of Hoffmann, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and La Bohéme,
Verdi’s Nabucco, Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier.
Payne, Eric’s former teacher and the director of LANY, said
recently “Eric Boutin’s passion for opera is matched
by remarkable gifts of leadership. He understands that great art
is both challenging and very richly rewarding, and his enthusiasm
shows other recent graduates that deep learning and great delight
in the arts are compatible with very competitive jobs and high career
aspirations. The opera club he’s begun will have a long association
with our New York program. We’re eager to support this effort
to deepen and enrich the intellectual lives of young professionals.”
In a sense, opera can be seen as a form of artistic therapy, Boutin
says. “Live theater gives me a rare opportunity to step outside
myself, to step into another life with different emotions and motives,
and then look back at myself from a new perspective. Thus, the opera
is able to teach me not only about the human spirit in general,
but by forcing me to question why certain things make me feel the
way they do, the opera can help catalyze self-discovery and unlock
the hidden truths that are inhibiting my interpersonal growth.”
Boutin says he is convinced that audiences whose thoughtfulness
has been cultivated by reflection and discussion will have a lasting
impact that goes far beyond a single institution's prosperity. “With
an active opera audience, members could become more reflective,
more understanding of their joys and discomforts, and more willing
to overcome interpersonal barriers,” he says. “These
developments could in turn spill over into the markets for theater,
dance, and musical concerts. All such audience members could develop
the abilities to consider disparate value systems, to think before
they act, and to more carefully weigh the consequences associated
with physical and emotional retaliation.
“By reflecting on our reactions to the narratives and characters
we can explore our deepest ethical concerns and grasp the complexity
of contemporary leadership challenges,” he continues. “Live
performances offer excellent opportunities to see ourselves more
intimately, to sharpen our perceptions, and to change our perspectives.
Thus, the arts can further our quests for meaning, insight, and
social betterment, and enable us to overcome our narrow sympathies
in articulating broader visions that inspire others to action."
-- by Bridget Booher
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