http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/glyndebourne/11437622/Michael-Fabiano-takes-Glyndebourne-to-Youtube.html
For all you opera fans in the class, I'm sure you've heard that opera is considered a "dying art," and if you've ever gone to one, it's mostly middle-aged and elderly people in the audience. Whenever I'd be at the opera house for a performance, people were always shocked to see a teenager in attendance. In this article, Michael Fabiano talks about how he thinks technology and social media will help keep opera alive. The music industry needs to begin "breeding" to a younger audience to keep people in attendance. I think this not only applies to opera, but all classical music as well. However, Fabiano does bring up some interesting points towards the end of the article about why (specifically) opera is so captivating.
As a fellow voice major, I have certainly heard that opera is a dying art, and yeah, it's scary! Knowing that this is what I love and this is what I want to do with my life, but it's in the process of dying, meaning there will be less and less opera jobs in the future is terrifying! And of course I love opera so much - I wish everyone else who says that they're not opera fans could see and hear the beauty in opera productions. I love what Fabiano is doing to try to get younger minds interested in opera, but he's right; it will take more than one person. Opera companies and performers really do need to start reaching out and getting more fans, or their jobs will disappear. If I ever do make it big time as an opera singer, I hope to do what Fabiano is doing. I just want to share the beauty of opera with the world!
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that Fabiano said that opera should be "not so out of whack that it turns people off." I think edgy, contemporary productions appeal to certain people and traditional period productions appeal to others; someone's always going to be turned on or off. I personally am not really sure how any of the expanding and sustaining an audience should actually work. A lot of it seems rather preachy-- imagine an astrophysicist coming up to you and saying, "HEY! YOU SHOULD TOTALLY READ MY PAPER ON X, Y, AND Z BECAUSE IT'S SO WONDERFUL!" Reaching out is important, but there comes a point where interest that comes from an potential audience member her/himself is even more important. So long as the resources are offered and there for those who are interested, the right people will come. The extremes (for me at least) are to be so over-enthusiastic that you scare potential people away and to be so elitist that you exclude anyone who expresses interested and prevent them from learning about the art.
ReplyDeleteI think there is credibility to observing why opera is considered a dying art to begin with. I was lucky enough to go to the Met Opera over the break (I saw Manon and Ernani), and although the experience was legit and impressive, it honestly felt more like an educational experience rather than an artistic, human experience. It was interesting brushing shoulders with the snobs of the 4th row, and although I imagine a majority of them do like the experience and the music, the many individuals dressed to the nines in their full length ball gown dresses notes an interesting isolating social affect opera can potentially have. More than anything it made me reflect on the snobbery I subconsciously emanate when listening to music.
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