On Jan 13, 2007, at 9:49 PM, Carl Dershem wrote:
In many minds (the general public - the people who watch TV and
occasionally go to movies, not the people who go to the opera),
"Opera" is something big and grand and expensive that the 'hoity-
toity' upper classes go to, or something the Marx Brothers might
spoof, but real knowledge of opera is very limited. Even fairly
well educated people can rarely name a half-dozen operas.
As is occasionally demonstrated on Jeopardy....
I think you're overstating when you exclude "people who go to opera"
from those who perceive it as an upper-class experience. Having
worked with several regional opera companies and having some idea of
their marketing experience, I would say that a significant fraction
of the operagoing audience does believe that opera is an upper-class
taste. That's why they go.
The size of that fraction depends on the community -- it's
particularly large in a company that serves a suburban area with a
lot of nouveau riche and sufficiently distant from the dominant city
of the area (eg, Walnut Creek vis-a-vis San Francisco); much less in
an older community with a strong arts tradition (eg, Berkeley).
This segment of the audience is the one that wants to see nothing but
Bohemes and Carmens and others from the limited core repertoire.
They're also the ones who are least resistant to higher ticket prices
(which, in a perverse way, they actually prefer, as it confirms their
sense of being upper class).
(The same segment seems to care as much about a singer's resume as
her demonstrated talent. They seem particularly impressed by a singer
who comes from out of town, which explains why so many singers have
to go somewhere else in order to get their careers kick-started. At
one time when I was in SF I knew a singer who went to New York to
sing a role at NYCO when in the very same season a singer of equal
talent came from New York to sing the exact same role in SFO. Go
figure.)
And opera "as it was" is little like what is played today. Advances/
changes in instruments, halls, and voice training (not to mention
amplification) have changed the art so much that Mozart and Verdi
and the like would be astonished by it.
True. And yet, I'm amazed how often opera fans -- and now I'm talking
even of reasonably well-informed ones -- object to deviations from
recent tradition by citing "authenticity".
mdl
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