Politics & Power Quote by Carlisle Floyd

A complaint that small is really a diagnosis of cultural triage. When Carlisle Floyd says, "Opera is given so little attention in the national press", he is not merely lobbying for column inches; he is pointing to how a country decides what counts as public life. Opera, in this framing, becomes a canary for seriousness: if the most collaborative, expensive, tradition-soaked art form can be treated as niche noise, then the press has quietly accepted a narrower definition of culture itself.

Floyd’s intent is practical and political at once. Practical, because attention drives philanthropy, ticket sales, touring, commissions - the ecosystem that keeps a composer’s work alive beyond a premiere. Political, because the "national press" is less a mirror than a gatekeeper: what it covers becomes the shared conversation, what it ignores becomes local, private, optional. Floyd wrote operas that insisted American stories belonged on grand stages; the subtext is that the press often treats opera as an imported luxury, not a living civic art with regional roots and contemporary stakes.

The line also carries an artist’s weary clarity about media incentives. Opera does not fit cleanly into the quick-hit cycle: it asks for time, expertise, and criticism that risks alienating readers. So it gets displaced by easier cultural currency. Floyd’s sentence lands because it’s plainspoken, almost bureaucratic - the tone of someone reporting a fact - while the implication is existential: neglect isn’t just silence, it’s a slow erasure.