YCN - Research
I decided that since I am a member on Reddit that I decided to go onto a ‘subreddit’ of Opera and ask why people go and see an Opera.
I got a variety of results which are said below:
My Question:
Why do you go and see opera and what’s your age range? - If you don’t go and see opera, why don’t you? - Also, how would you modernise opera, ie by getting more 20-30yr olds to go and witness it?
Answers by Redditors:
Hi... opera doesn’t have to be modernised. It’s constantly reinventing itself and the way it tells stories!
It does this with new work like ‘Written on Skin’ or ‘Minotaur’ or ‘Biedermann and the arsonists’ (admittedly there could be more of this that doesn’t turn off people looking for a melody); it does this be periodically foregrounding older works that had been neglected (baroque opera, Janacek, Krol Roger etc), and most commonly, it does this by constantly freshly reinterpreting the traditional canon... too much for many people’s taste.
I get the impression some of this hold more true outside of the United States, but there are plenty of ways to see good work live and filmed if you're looking for it.
And in my experience, opera in the last fifty years has really pushed the boundaries of storytelling, and design, and even technical accomplishment in live performance. True, this may partly have been driven by some opera stories needing a bit of help, but not entirely - Jonathan Miller's Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne was a technical triumph (if a shithouse show), Richard Jones' Hoffmann in Munich and at ENO was dramaturgically very interesting indeed (Olivier Py's Hoffmann dramatically hollow but gorgeous) and good looking. Calixto Beito's Carmen is as truthful and gritty and in-yer-face as any story of sexual violence you can see on TV. (Hoffmanns are on youtube.)
The work is good - it's intelligent, probing, reflective and questioning of the world today, and asking questions about us, art, and opera in general.
You just need a little patience, that's all - and nowadays the world isn't set up to improve our attention spans. Sure, any poor sod attending their first opera might come out of Wagner's Siegfried wanting to slit their wrists or binge on Adele, but if that same person saw a great staging of Rigoletto, or Boheme, or even Dutchman, then they simply couldn't escape those moments where... holy shit... there is NOTHING ELSE that makes you feel this way.
The music, the power, the technical mastery, the scale of the stories - sure, you may be bored for some of it or half of it or three quarters of it, but that 25% of wonder will bring you back again, and next time, you'll be bored less. And next time, less again. Eventually, you may even find yourself crying out for Siegfried. (hasn't happened to me yet...)
So, patience: patience with the material, patience with yourself. You get out so much more than what you put in, but you've got to put a little in to start with.
Source: 33 years old, been at this game for 12 years. Background in punk, rock and hiphop.
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The Royal Opera is pretty great at educational and outreach stuff - (they recently supported a mini production of Carmen in a shop window) and they have loads of cheap tickets for young people. Loads.
Problem is, their unique selling point is the best voices and the biggest names... and those two things aren't always synonymous with the most progressive or exciting productions. They try to push the envelope, but you saw what happened when they 'raped' a naked dancer on stage - the whole opera world needing smelling salts and a hundred people wrote a million words in dozens of newspapers... half of whom hadn't even seen the show.
The way to get younger people into opera (and I think they know this) is to get even younger people into opera - school groups watching shows at ages 10, 14, 16 - these kids often don't even KNOW they aren't supposed to like it, and they love it. Then, when they are late twenties and have stopped identifying themselves primarily through activities that involve flirting, dancing, drinking or looking cool, they might pop in to see an opera, because it won't be an alien world to them.
If they never went as children, they may not chose that option.
Where are your studies?
EDIT: Some letters
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The scandal around the "rape scene" was ridiculous. It was around about 15 people in the audience that night at most who kicked up a stink. The loudest voices can often cause the biggest stir, but most of the audience didn't care one bit. There's much worse that happens on stage in other operas, it's just that some stupid people have a weird and blinkered, misguided view of what "being authentic to the composer" means etc etc.
Frankly, all these whingers should be forced to sit through a few operas produced EXACTLY as they would have been staged in the 17th/18th/19th centuries. They would be bored shitless, I have no doubt.
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I'm in my early 30s. I go see opera because the music is more thrilling to hear in person, and having my attention held to one thing for 2-4 hours to witness live theater is a satisfying experience.
But I'm pretty selective, so there are a lot of operas I won't bother to go out and see. Partly because I really hate feeling cheated out of a good production when I know the potential is there. I think a good example of that is a showing of a particular Mozart opera a few years ago at a prominent company in the Pacific Northwest--only one or two singers were any good, the costumes looked like they came from the singers' personal closets, and the sets had no props and very little design. It was so disappointing. So why am I being charged ~$40 for a ticket? If the money's not being spent on making the show look and sound nice, where's that money going???
It bothers me to see some opera companies run like a money-hungry business, with the bulk of the profits going into the CEO's personal salary, and whatever is left over isn't enough to actually make good art. Opera isn't just about the singing; if it were, it would be an oratorio. It's live theater, and I think it needs a lot more than just singers who can sing it halfway decent.
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Because I think young people are conditioned by movies and tv shows to expect the whole package. Well acted (and sung, in the case of opera), and equally as important, nice to look at. Sets and costumes that make sense. Sets and costumes that are consistent with whatever historical period the director has chosen to place it in. Sets and costumes that are consistent with each other. Sets and costumes that don't revolve around "men in tuxedos and women in as little clothing as possible because this is post-apocalypse ancient Rome". I think we have a little bit of a harder time using our imaginations to fill in the gaps if something's missing, since we've grown up having had that done for us. Maybe keeping this in mind might be enough to make opera more modern and appealing to younger viewers.
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I’m 41, I go to opera because I like it, and the best way to get 20-30yos to see opera is to lower the ticket price.
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It's just amazing. All of it. The orchestra, the singing. Sometimes I’m let down by the sets and costumes, and in some cases, a particularly poor set can be distracting. I’m 33. And if anything, it seems women in my age group are more willing to go than the men.
As far as barriers, for the friend I go with it's the price. With my husband, who will walk out of the room if I even suggest he go with me, it's the perception of snobbery. And I've gotten dirty looks for wearing jeans. Not that I normally wear jeans, but I wasn't feeling well that day and basically dragged myself there.
To modernize it, maybe offer a cocktail hour beforehand? Advertise cheaper tickets. Like, I don't think the solution is project images of the Holocaust during Nabucco. And, as far as I can tell, musicals are still going strong. My neighbor, who buys a subscription for musicals, is curious about the opera, and I'll be taking her to The Barber of Seville. There's a market, I just think people need to realize it's not some inexplicable thing sung in a foreign language. They project the lyrics on screen. Also, operas aren't serious business. Some of them are quite funny. I should note, I probably present the more hoi polloi opera fan. I'll go see anything.