The Fat Lady Is Singing
commentarymagazine.com
commentarymagazine.com
This isn't to say that art is dead, and I always hate the common complaint about audiences abandoning classical because schools cut back on music education. Music, like television, has become far more diverse in style and complexity. At the same time, audiences have become far more diverse in taste. The end result is that, in New York at least, the music world is thriving! Venues host musicians from a huge breadth of backgrounds and styles, and audiences can now choose from a huge variety of musical styles.
On the other hand, the scale of these productions has gotten smaller. Television shows that used to have audiences in the 10s of millions now get by with fewer than 1 million viewers. Savvy producers now know how to create TV shows on smaller budgets, and savvy content networks know how to build a breadth of shows to satisfy a wide range of audiences. The same must be true with music productions.
Ultimately, the Met is declining because there's more choice to be found elsewhere, and they're too big to slim down to the point where they can remain competitive.
Related, and worth reading: On 10 Years of the New New-Music Scene, and 30 Years of My Own - http://www.vulture.com/2018/06/ten-years-of-the-new-new-musi...
This seems to be borne out by the fact that so many American musicians do incredibly well overseas while provoking absolute yawns in their home country.
The same thing happened to silent movies: the technology moved on and the remnants remained as the domain of enthusiasts ("Battleship Potempkin" or "The Artist"). That's not a tragedy, it's simply the nature of things.
Opera has devolved to popularism. Obviously much opera always was populism, I mean how many drinking songs can you stomach? or, merry widows?
TB isn't romantic unless its mimi dying. Clowns are horrid but tragic. Killer clown movie! no.. its opera son..
But try and stage a modern opera, or an opera which genuinely comes with shocks (Klinghoffer is still sometimes opposed by members of the Jewish community. I can't say I understand this totally, but thats what I read)
Why do Americans listen to Opera in languages they don't speak? The English watch English operas, the French French, Italian Italian, etc. This is because the newly wealthy 19th century Americans wanted to seem fancy like they thought the rich Europeans were.
The less pretentious form is just musicals, which are as popular today as they've ever been.
And for Wagner in another non-German speaking country: https://www.operasofia.bg/en/component/k2/item/download/512_... (Wagner in an actual cave was quite fun)
Is "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" not a valid film for me to enjoy because I can't appreciate it in its native Mandarin? That sounds even more pompous to me.
Some (e.g. Vienna) have a seat-back system that shows subtitles.
Surtitles, on the other hand, are pretty much ubiquitous.
If you go to see a live opera, there are often subtitles above the stage. If you watch them on video, there are subtitles.
You're correct to compare them to Musicals though, in terms of content/storyline they are very similar, the musical style and social class of the audience (in general) are the big differentiator. You can also listen to Opera without visiting an Opera house though.
Opera is a remnant of the worst kind of nouveau riche status seeking.
This is a bit reductive and unfair - people can enjoy the music of Opera without thinking it makes them better than others.
But... There is something to be said for listening to an Opera in a language you don't speak. It completely bypasses any part of your brain that tries to intellectualize, and just hits you in the feels.
It's not always about status seeking, it's about getting away from the ugliness that pervades the world around you and getting lost in something beautiful in it's own right.
I don't often enjoy 'watching' Operas, the visual context keeps me locked in the state of mind I'm trying to escape from. Only listening. Rare exception to the special treat of a singer belting out in a random spot on the streets.
Just wanted to point out that not everyone looks at art as a social ladder, or even take the same things out of art that someone else does.
Thinking about the topic, I can think of at least a couple of cool resources that could be used to plug opera to wider audiences:
- 'The Doctor' from Star Trek Voyager
- Bohemian Rhapsody, of course
- Just about all of 'Bat Out of Hell'
Those 3 sell me on opera.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL2ODmcB5hE
Edit: more Jon Vickers:
It works for any new style of music.
On your original point, even discordant music can grow on you. Pino Forastiere uses a lot of dischord and I didn't like it at all at first. But I let it play out a bunch of times as there were so many other good qualities that I loved about the album. It didn't take long to start understanding what he was trying to do with the dichord and from there it made sense and I could hear it in context and enjoy it.
On the other hand I could imagine cutting down Janelle Monae’s “Archandroid” cycle to a couple of hours of gloriously and uniquely American sci-fi flavored sung narrative. It’d need some reworking to come to a satisfying conclusion but there’s already several hours of songs and a lot of story to pare it down from.
On the gripping hand, I wonder how a Classic Opera would fare if you translated the lyrics and restaged it with a Touring Broadway Musical budget? It sounds like half of the problems of the opera companies discussed in this article come from having a stage that makes all but the most grandiose productions feel lost, and ticket prices that rule out all but a tiny percentage of humanity. That’s just not sustainable.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Fred Rogers was also the best marketing I've ever seen for ballet. He introduced ballet as something his friend Lynn Swann did for fun. It was impossible to learn any old stereotypes when the first person we see dancing is a football player.
I think I disagree with the article's implication that opera is a European art form, and Americans have rejected it in favor of native musical theatre. You're a bit closer with your observation that the marketing is terrible. There's also some truth in Gelb's observation that there's "a cultural and social rejection of opera as an art form", though I'd say most of the performing arts are suffering today in America, not just opera.
Most of all, I suspect there simply isn't any great American opera to be performed. I'm not even a big opera fan (I saw one dress rehearsal when I was a kid, and I own one opera on CD), yet I can name a dozen German and Italian operas off the top of my head. Outside of The Neighborhood of Make-Believe, and before reading this article, I'd have had difficulty naming even one. Where's the American Wagner, or Verdi? Probably smart enough not to call their work an "opera", I bet.
This is by design. Performance troupes rely on a very small number of extremely wealthy patrons and so, consequently, you cater to those tastes exclusively and you dare not risk upsetting them with something controversial.
It's one of the reasons why you so rarely hear things like the "Bernstein Mass", for example.
It also doesn't help that concert tickets for "classical" events like this are ferociously expensive. For a something that I may only marginally like--I'm coughing up almost $100+. I can see one of my absolute favorite artists for less than that. And a lot of music festivals have weekend tickets that are less than some classical thing that may only be marginally interesting.
> Probably smart enough not to call their work an "opera", I bet.
Pretty much exactly--for America it's a "musical" or "Broadway". "Hamilton" sure seems relevant and doing well, for example. "Rent" was supposed to be a modern "La Bohème". etc.
That's common knowledge, I admit, but I just checked and at least in Seattle today, it's actually backwards. Seattle Opera tickets for the upcoming "The Turn of The Screw" (in English and with subtitles, in case anyone is worried!) are $25 to $314. The Seattle Symphony this Thursday is $22 to $122. Those starting prices are only a couple bucks more than a movie (Cinerama: $18.50).
It's pop music that's crazy expensive: Childish Gambino tickets for next weekend are $114 to $589. Festivals aren't necessarily any better: Bumbershoot tickets last month were $130 (single day) to $775.
I would say it's definitely a marketing problem when even people who might consider going to a concert assume that tickets are several times more expensive than they really are. $25 tickets are not aimed at 'extremely wealthy patrons', yet SO and SS ads don't mention tickets or do anything to dispel the myth of high prices.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIjOifRG-u8
I would totes go to see that.
(The other 1/3 is probably "Vesti la Giubba" from Pagliacci which seems to be in EVERY single mobster movie ever made ...)
Carl Stalling, Warner Brothers' music director, was a genius.
[0]: https://www.santafeopera.org/opera-blog/post/2018/august/com...