Editorial: Magda Sorel and
State ADAP
Waiting Lists
Gordon Nary
Gordon
Nary is editor of the
Journal
of Timely and Appropriate Care
of People with HIV Disease
and
executive director of Medical Advocates
for Social Justice.
 Journal
TOC |
ADAP
Main Page |
Magda Sorel is the name
of the principal character in Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera
The Consul
which
was the first
opera I saw as a teenager.
The Consul
had a special resonance
for me at the
time because many of my family lived in Hungary under
Communist rule. Several of them were freedom
fighters in what became the
Hungarian Revolution—similar to Magda’s husband, John, in the opera.
I was totally overcome
with both the powerful score and libretto of
The Consul
and with Patricia
Neway’s emotionally shattering performance as Magda Sorel who fights to
obtain a visa to escape
the inevitable tragedy of a life that had no value
to those who had the power to save her.
The recent news of the
increasing number of deaths on AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) waiting
lists rekindled those memories of a performance more than a half century ago
because the subtext of
The Consul
is a scathing
denunciation of the dehumanization of those on waiting lists for the
opportunity
of survival.
The Consul
provides us with a
glimpse into a life that becomes defined by a waiting list and the eventual
loss of hope—a life that ends in suicide when, at the end of the opera,
Magda turns on the gas to an oven
and places her head inside. To her, death
has become a better option than living another day in the
dehumanizing
experience of being on the waiting list —a thought that must often occur to
those on ADAP
waiting lists who are dehumanized by a Congress whose failure
to provide adequate funding is essentially a
message that their lives have
no value.
The second scene in Act
Two opens inside the consulate with the usual group of people who come there
daily
in hope of obtaining a visa. They are all on the consulate’s waiting
list. One of them is Anna Gomez, who spent
3 years in a concentration camp
and whose husband (in answer to the question on the visa application form)
is
“prisoner, whereabouts unknown.”
When the Consul’s
secretary tells her that there is nothing that can be done, Anna replies,
“Everywhere the
answer is the same. They don’t know what to do with me.
Nobody cares.” When the secretary responds,
“There are too many cases like
yours,” Anna cries out, “Must we all die because there are too many of us?”
And how many of those on ADAP waiting lists have cried out the same words as
Anna: “Must we all die
because there are too many of us?”
Then, it’s Magda Sorel’s
turn in the queue. She has been at the consulate before and filled out the
forms and
answered the usual questions. Magda believes that her child’s
recent death, her mother’s illness, and her
husband being sought by the
secret police will at least make her plight more immediate. She steps up to
the
Consul’s secretary and asks “Any news for me?” The secretary responds, “What
is your name?” Magda replies,
“Don’t you remember me?” The secretary asks,
“Why should I remember you? ” Magda replies, “But my name is
Sorel, Magda
Sorel,” as if her life held at least a fraction of the value to the
secretary as it did to her.
Having to answer the
same questions over and over again to identify herself (“What is your name?
Age? Color of
eyes? Color of hair?”), causes Magda to break down into an
impassioned response to the bureaucracy designed
to dehumanize the
individual. She reaches into her pain and replies, repeating the same
questions but with new
answers:
Name? My
name is woman.
Age? Still young.
Color of hair? Gray.
Color of eyes? The color of tears.
Occupation? Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.
Waiting.
Magda then sings “To
this we’ve come that men withhold the world from men…” This powerful and
uncompromising aria could be the anthem of all on ADAP waiting lists: The
men (and women) of Congress have
chosen to withhold the world of life from
those on state ADAP waiting lists by failing to support adequate ADAP
funding. HIV drugs are the visa to life for those with HIV disease. Congress
has chosen to withhold that visa. That
is why the women and men on these
lists are dying. Fifty-three years after the premier of
The Consul,
we learn
that although Life imitates Art, Death also imitates Art.