Mark D. Lew wrote:
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....
DOn't even mention that show here. Passed the test 3 times, and got
through the audition trwice, and never got on. Grmph.
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.
Some, yeah. I've played opera a few times, but the circle of musicians
(locally) who play the symhony, opera, and ballet gets smaller and more
inbred every year. But the same people tend to show up every show, and
the proportion of season ticket holders and regular attendees is still
pretty small in contrast to the "once a year, don't really get it"
crowd, who go to be seen.
(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.)
An "expert" being defined as "Someone from out of town with a briefcase."
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".
"Authenticity" being defined as "What I'm used to". :)
mdl
The party of the first part...
cd
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