My name is Harold Granderson, and I’ve been the director of the Cleveland Opera for 39 years. I’m sure that doesn’t sound like much, what with the picture of Cleveland as a post-industrial wasteland deprived of fine culture, but I can assure you we don’t harbor talentless hacks. I make sure of that. Admittedly, it’s difficult to attract equally discerning ears. We live in the shadow of the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame, where the off-key caterwauling of drunken pseudo-poets is worshiped. Even the partly admirable ambition of “progressive” rock is shunned here. On the talentless hack front, I recently had to fire one of our tenors. My idiot assistant had hired him while I was on sabbatical. Because of our…