Sunday, February 26, 2012

La gente paga: operas and their audiences

Parsifal and Gurnemanz (c) Pach Brothers, NYC, 1903
Whether through reports on peanut-eaters at an early twentieth-century Parsifal or on bean-counters at today's opera companies, debates on how opera is performed and perceived have been much with me of late, most recently via the stimulating community of fellow opera-lovers on Twitter. In a Munich symposium last week, general director of the Bayrische Staatsoper Nikolaus Bachler claimed that he (in implicit contrast to Peter Gelb, also present) showed the public "what they need to see, not what they want to see." That American opera companies are more dependent on private donors than their European counterparts, with often detrimental consequences for artistic boldness, is a much-lamented truism. But does Bachler's barbed comment not present a false dichotomy? The monolithic (wealthy, aged, arrogant) opera audience has never been more than a myth; and perhaps it has never been further from reality than today.

The priorities and expectations of audiences surely have changed in the century since that sensational Parsifal at the Met. No one attending next season's run of that work will expect to eat peanuts during the performance; but those who have failed to study their libretti will be able to switch on the titles displayed on individual screens in front of them, and many may expect to do so. Personally, I think this option provided by the Met is an admirable solution to the titles-vs-translation dilemma. The internationalization of opera which has taken place over the past half century or so has made original-language performance the norm, which is worth celebrating. But while the ideal audience may study its libretti, real opera audiences will contain many who do not. I've attended opera-in-translation both disastrous and decent, and a Peter Brook masterpiece which seamlessly integrated French dialogues into Mozart's Magic Flute. While minimal distraction may be the obvious goal I'm not sure there is a clearcut "best practice" answer to achieving it. Easy enough for me to say "the music will tell you what's going on," but what of those first-time opera-goers for whom the melodic lines of orchestra and singers are a language as unfamiliar as, say, Polish is to me?

And why do I think this matters? For one thing, declaring that opera should be performed at its highest level and those who don't care enough can just stay away doesn't really solve matters: what does "performed at its highest level" mean? For another: how do you get people to care in the first place? I learned to love opera via studio recordings; then I saw Ponnelle's Cenerentola production and realized that there were worlds even beyond the fabulous music. Inevitably, I've become a tireless evangelist for opera; most friends I've introduced by throwing them in at the deep end of live performance. I've seen people bored by Zeffirelli productions and bewitched by them; thrilled by Shostakovich; drawn into the pathos of an unfamiliar tragedy while I've been sighing over performance inadequacies in the next seat. What "works" may vary based on individual expectations, but I remain convinced that opera is simply too good--too exciting, challenging, immersive, magical--not to share. And the art form is, if anything, more diverse than its audiences; when told by someone that opera is "just not their thing," my invariable riposte is "What kind of opera?"

Parsifal and Gurnemanz in Herheim's Bayreuth production (via Wagneropera.net)
What kind of opera we're likely to see, and how we're likely to see it, has of course changed a great deal over time as well. The hoary cliché of stand-and-sing (or, less kindly, park-and-bark) delivery, supplemented by a limited vocabulary of stock gestures, is thankfully passing from the scene. This is not to claim, of course, that the opera world has suddenly discovered acting; to take but one example, this clip of a 1980 Manon Lescaut from the Met shows Domingo acting--and acting through the voice--and Scotto, at his side, is riveting without making a sound. At the Met, where hoary productions abound, I've seen (or rather, heard) bland choreography compensated for by excellent, expressive singing (most recently in Ernani.) I would love, though, to see more productions where passionate, intelligent, creative direction is visible: a stance that says "This is the story I want to tell in/about/through Opera X." Tragically, I think, the quest for theatrical vigor has sometimes been confused, at least by publicity departments, with a more homogenous (or HD-friendly) look for opera singers. But as Jonas Kaufmann once observed (snapped?) "This is opera, not reality television." As an admittedly romantic opera-lover, I like to think of opera as a haven where ageism, sizeism, racism, and other unpleasant -isms can be transcended. I do know that ideal is a long way from reality. But it will remain on my list of quixotic goals as I look forward to a lifetime of opera-going. As my desires, expectations, and priorities have changed over the first years of my membership in opera audiences, I expect that they will continue to do so. I also expect that I will continue to crave productions and performances that make me gasp, make me cry, make me think; that force me to take a stand; that help me see and hear new things, or see and hear in new ways. I look forward to being carried out of myself on waves of sound, and put back feeling the better for it. After all, that's why I loved this crazy art form in the first place.

13 comments:

  1. I remain puzzled by how little appears to be known about the "opera audience" or the potential "opera audience". Apart from a few rather useless statistics about age distribution the answer seems to be "not much". Certainly nobody seems to do serious market research of the kind almost any purveyor of a consumer product should. Maybe this is because the management doesn't care much. GDs are not accountable to the paying public in Munich or New York. In one case the GD is a branch of the Civil Service, in the other beholden to a small number of very rich people whose views can easily be ascertained. As always he who pays the piper calls the tune. Maybe it says something about rich New Yorkers that generally I prefer the taste of German civil servants.

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    1. You make a very interesting point. I've participated in a number of surveys for the Met and Lincoln Center, but I have no idea what the frequency/goals of such endeavors are. I'd be inclined to shy away from a description of opera as "consumer product," but more information about who is coming to opera and why (and if possible, about who is staying away, and why) could hardly fail to be stimulating.

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    2. I think there is another problem - there are doubtless many! - with these surveys. Not very long ago, I was talking to someone who works at a major opera house. Countering my wishes for what I considered to be a more musically interesting and, more to the point, varied diet, he told me that audience surveys informed the house that most of its custom came not from those who would otherwise be attending musical or indeed theatrical performances elsewhere in the city, but rather from people who saw a night at the opera as a luxury night out, a treat akin to a meal at an expensive restaurant, etc. The obvious retort, to which, astonishingly, the house seemed to have no answer, was that that was hardly surprising, given that it offered fare that was far more likely to attract such audiences, as opposed to those who might actually be interested in Gluck, Schoenberg, et al. I have certainly never encountered anyone, whether in person or online, who has expressed a wish that programming were less adventurous.

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    3. I have certainly never encountered anyone, whether in person or online, who has expressed a wish that programming were less adventurous.

      I have. It's not infrequent at Canadian Opera Company outreach events that somene gets up and describes a Tosca or similar that they saw 50 years ago and asks why we can't have more productions with nice scenery and costumes and hummable music. I've alo been told by box office staff that they see quite a few people who would happily see traviata or Boheme put on every night. I don't think such people are a majority and I certainly don't think opera companies should pander to them but they do exist and they probably make up a good chunk of the single ticket sales for many companies.

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    4. Thanks for your comment, Mark; you answer at least part of a question I have often asked myself when overhearing conversations revealing surprising lack of knowledge (not to suggest that those wishing to enter hallowed halls of opera houses should pass tests in fire and water; I'm sure I have shocked many more senior opera-goers, and may again!) But I am surprised by the (apparently fairly prevalent??) perception of opera as a "luxury night out" experience rather than a demanding, exalting, potentially life-altering sort of experience.

      @John Some of these people haunt the Met's Family Circle; I call them Imprecating Opera Specters. I'm sure they haunt other areas of the house as well, but my informal eavesdropping surveys are the best for the cheap seats.

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  2. I live in Vienna and productions here tend to be something half the way between a typically German regietheater and a traditional one, due to the (for me) excellent repertoire system. I saw last night Cosi' Fan Tutte in a old production by De Simone. Elegant, funny, intelligent....without tryintg to send me a political message of any kind. I enjoyed the beatiful music, the marvellous libretto sung perfectly and the, at last, correspondence between what was said/sung and what was shown on stage. It does not mean that my brain had gone to sleep, just that sometimes sheer entertainment can be very stimulating.

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    1. I agree that speaking of "entertainment" and intellectual stimulation as though they were mutually exclusive can be misleading. If Cosi is well-sung with intelligent attention to the text, I am sure that it could not fail to be stimulating, although I confess that I am not sure how you could have a Cosi that was not at all political! The situation in Vienna of having several opera houses with full seasons is certainly enviable.

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  3. My sense is that next season at the Met will be the most European in its history. We will get to see how we like it.

    One of the glories of opera is that it can be all things to all people. I think I want it all: great music, great beauty, great singing, great acting, moving, emotional theater in all its wonderful operatic glory. The search is part of the joy.

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    1. You interest me strangely, as Sherlock Holmes would say! The search--or quest, or impossible dream!--is indeed part of the joy... or one of the many joys opera has to offer.

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    1. (because the author decided to elaborate:)

      Quoth Lucy: "No one attending next season's run of [Parsifal] will expect to eat peanuts during the performance..."

      Possibly not even at the HD :-)

      The question I suppose I'm most interested in is how much technologically-based outreach methods -- Met/supertitles, HD casting, ubiquitous internet streaming -- have muddied the waters in terms of determining what actually makes up the opera audience demographic. And, of course, how much the success of that technology ends up changing opera itself. I also wonder if the Board-as-Conservative Cabal model is really all that operative anymore. Or ever was. For every Zeffirelli production Sybil Harrington ever underwrote at the Met, there was someone else footing the freight for Carmelites, Lulu, Wozzeck, Mahagonny, Parade -- all those John Dexter-driven critical triumphs of the same period. Who were those people?

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    2. A fascinating question: is the twentieth-century definition of proper conduct at the opera house destined to be a historical aberration? (I sincerely hope not, but it'd make a good question to lead a conference paper with. Anyway.) I have no ready answers--not even ready speculations--as to what the answers to your questions regarding technology might be.

      As to your question about the underwriting of the more adventurous programming you mention, I decided to see if the Met's online database could help me find an answer. I was surprised, and fascinated, to discover that the answer is the same in each case: benefit sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera Guild for the production funds.

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    3. That said, these productions are outliving Zeffirelli's. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

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