THE FADING ECHOS OF OPERA

In recent years, the once vibrant concert halls and opera houses that echoed with the timeless beauty of classical music and dramatic operatic performances have begun to quieten. The question arises: why are fewer people attending live classical music and opera performances these days? As an example, back in the 80s, HOT used to do four performances of each work in its repertoire. In those early years, our audiences averaged about 850-900 people a performance. By the 90s, that attendance figure was down to about 700 per performance. By 2000, we were down to about 350. After the 9/11 attacks, that number dwindled to about 250. During this time we abandoned the idea of doing four performances of each work and reduced it to three. This helped a bit. But, after the economic downturn of 2008, we had to cut back to two performances with an average audience size of around 200. Sadly, since the Covid pandemic, the number has plunged even lower. Of course, we are not alone in this, it has been an ongoing struggle for many, if not all performing arts institutions. 

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     I can’t guess at all the reasons, but, from my years of observation, I can guess at a few. The obvious reasons range from fear and expense to the rise of streaming platforms and YouTube to differing cultural views. Why go out when there’s a chance of snow, and you can stay at home, save the cost of parking and a dinner out, and sit in your living room watching a live or recorded performance on your 85” TV with surround sound and a woofer that rumbles the house down to 16 hertz, all while eating real buttered popcorn and sipping your favorite merlot?

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    Firstly, let’s address the elephant in the room: fear. There are two distinct kinds of fear, and I will speak about them separately. For many people, classical music and opera are seen as ‘elite’ art forms, shrouded in a veil of sophistication and complexity. This perception can be intimidating, deterring potential attendees who fear they lack the necessary knowledge or cultural capital to appreciate the performance. “That's their music, not mine — and besides, I don’t understand it! First it's loud, then it’s soft, there’s no beat to speak of, and I can’t understand a word they are saying, even though they say they’re speaking English!”

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    Did you ever watch America’s Got Talent, or Britain’s Got Talent. Every time someone with a trained voice sings “O mio babbino caro” or “Un bel dì,” the audience goes crazy, swooning with tears in their eyes, and applauding wildly. I always want to cry out, “Go to the opera, you can hear that kind of singing all the time!” But does that performer ever win?  No. Usually, the pop singer or band wins — why? because they’re “safe” and the vast majority of the audience understands their genre. That, by the way, is the same audience that swooned at the performance of “O mio babbino,” but they don’t know why they swooned! Could it have been the sheer beauty of the voice, or the mystical beauty of the music? Or is it that they simply can’t understand how a human voice can produce such a pulchritudinous effect, and so they forget their initial reaction to it as being some kind of fluke?

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    On many occasions over the years, I’ve seen someone new at one of my performances. They go on about how beautiful and incredible it was, and how they didn’t know if they would like it, but found it wonderfully magical, etc., etc. But do they ever come back? Rarely. And I always ask myself why. And I’ve never really figured out the answer. Maybe a full-length opera requires an emotional (and perhaps an intellectual) commitment that is just too fatiguing for some people. As heart-wrenchingly beautiful as it may be, I find fewer and fewer people are willing to give it the time to envelop them in its magical world, being so trained for everything to be brief these days: “Give us ten minutes and we’ll give you the world.”

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    During my tenure as the artistic director of another opera company, not the Hudson Opera Theatre, the president of the board kept badgering me to choose shorter operas, or to severely cut them to make them no longer than two hours. I argued that cutting an opera down like that would be akin to lopping the legs off of Michelangelo’s David so that it would fit in his living room. But he persisted, and also kept insisting that all the operas be performed in English. So finally, one night, at a performance, I turned from the podium, before the last act, and asked the audience for a show of hands as to whether they would like to hear the operas in their original language or in English. All but one person preferred the original language. I then asked if they cared about the length of the opera. Again, only one dissenting hand was raised. It was the same hand — the hand of the president of the board...

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    The other fear factor I‘ve seen is a very real one. Classical music and opera performances, while not the sole demesne of the elderly, those of age are certainly disproportionately well represented in modern audiences. Subsequent to the attacks of 9/11, there was a very real diminution in attendance at performances, in major part because older folks, as well as others, became fearful of venturing out. We lost a good portion of our audience after that. Further, the economic setback of the early 2000s also took a toll from which we only started to recover when the pandemic struck. Audiences have not recovered their size, and many smaller opera companies and orchestras  have closed their doors as a result of it. Even many of the major orchestras and opera companies have cut back on presenting works requiring larger forces because of the diminution in audiences. That diminution in audiences takes its toll not only in attendance, but in donations as well, placing many of us on the brink of financial collapse.

     

    Which brings up the second factor in why attendance is diminishing: the expense associated with going to a live concert or opera can be prohibitive. Gone are the days when two could eat in a nice restaurant for under $50. If you have a glass of wine with dinner these days, your total, with a tip, could well exceed $200, and that's not for a fancy restaurant! Parking your car in any big city nowadays could set you back $50, not to mention the gas at $3.50/gal., and tolls which could add up to 25 bucks. Now New York City, for example, wants to add a $15 vehicular surcharge for going near the theatre district (where all the restaurants are, by the way)! Tickets, travel, and potential accommodation costs can quickly add up, making it a luxury that many cannot afford. This is especially true for younger audiences who may be more financially constrained.

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    When I was a kid, on Saturdays, I used to take the bus into the Port Authority building on 40th Street in NYC for $1.80 round-trip, I'd have a couple of hot dogs for lunch (25¢ each), get a hot meal for $2 at the automat or a deli at dinner time, and buy my standing room ticket for the opera which cost... are you ready?... 75¢!  Of course, in those days, orchestra tickets at the Met cost about $9. Today, they’re about $300. 

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    Even in Orange county, where Hudson Opera Theatre dwells, although parking is usually free, eating out is getting pricey where a nice dinner for two often exceeds $150, plus the cost of tickets, $50-80, and maybe a baby sitter at $10/hr., makes a sizeable hole in the budget. But really, what can we do to reduce the ticket price which are already ridiculously low considering the cost of production? We, at HOT, use a theater orchestra consisting of 25-30 players. A good theatre orchestra can play just about anything written before the 1920s at which point harmonies and orchestras became pretty massive. With a good reduction, a good theatre orchestra can even play those later works, and we have a great theater orchestra, which has even played pieces as massive as Prokoffiev’s Romeo and Juliet. We pay them of course, but these highly trained, excellent, experienced musicians work for us for about $20/hr. or just about twice as much as you might pay your 14-year-old baby sitter from down the street! And that still adds up to about $12,500. Divide that by the 200 people in the audience and the ticket price would need to be $62.50 just to cover the cost of the orchestra, not to mention the cost of the principal singers, sets, lighting, costumes, props, advertising and administration (usually waived)! 

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    The advent of streaming platforms has also played a significant role. Services like Spotify and Apple Music offer vast libraries of classical music and opera at the touch of a button. The convenience and accessibility of these platforms make it easy for individuals to enjoy classical music and opera in the comfort of their own homes, or in their cars, or on the bus, train, elevator, reducing the incentive to attend live performances. A far cry from a hundred or so years ago when the only music you could hear was when somebody live was actually making it!

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    Similarly, YouTube has become a treasure trove of classical music and opera performances. From historic recordings to amateur orchestras and opera productions, it offers a diverse range of content that caters to all tastes. The visual element can also enhance the listening experience, as viewers can observe the musicians’ techniques and expressions, as well as the dramatic staging and costumes in opera.

 

    Lastly, the rise of other entertainment forms, such as movies, video games, and popular music concerts, compete for the same leisure time, leading to a shift in cultural consumption patterns. And, while we’re speaking of culture, a century ago the vast majority of people in this country were of western European extraction. These were the folks under whose auspices the forms of music that we call “classical” grew up, and they were its principal audience. But over the last century, the demographics have changed, and the population now has a much higher concentration of people who did not have “classical music” as a tradition. They had rare opportunities to hear great orchestras, and did not have a tradition of going to see great opera. 

 

    We, as the “classical-music-loving-community” have done a really, really poor job of introducing the last two generations of potential new devotées to our beloved musical tradition! By and large, we have utterly failed. I don’t know how we expected them to come to know it and love it as we do without ever trying to make it not just accessible to them, but to invite them into this incredible world of theater and sound! To bring them along with us when we went to a concert or opera, to explain the forms and the things that make it a language of infinite expression wherein we can explore our own emotions and fantasies. All we did was let it sit there and play its heart out to empty houses, shaking our heads saying, “they don’t know what they are missing!” But they didn't know because we didn't tell them! One by one we should have told them — especially our own children!

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    Some few have found it on their own, and some more have parents who believe it was important, and I'm happy to say that in the last few years, I have seen a few more young people in the audiences, but it is not enough, the majority of the audiences still sport gray, white or no hair! But, I don’t think it’s too late! Okay, so maybe we failed with a generation or two. Maybe we failed with our own kids, but we have grandkids. We have great nieces and nephews. We have friends’ kids. We can still educate them. It’s never really too late. Take someone with you the next time you go to the opera or a concert, young or old, it really doesn't matter — even old dogs can learn new tricks! Tell them what you love about the music. Tell them what to listen for in that aria. Make them hear what you hear! Make them see what you see. Go out on a limb to invite the kid from down the block — you know the one — the one whose family has no tradition of “European” music, the one who’s never even heard of an opera, or the one who thinks that opera is a buxom lady with horns and a breastplate whooping at the top of her lungs.

 

    At the intermission of a performance of Norma that I conducted many years ago, an older man from the audience stopped me and said to me, “Is this an opera?” I answered that it was, and then he said something that boggled my mind. He said, “...but it’s got tunes and a story and everything!...” I could only guess at what he thought an opera was!

 

    So, we must remember that this music is for all of them, too. Remember all those people at America’s Got Talent who heard the young boy soprano and wept. We can never tell. Sometimes a spark lights a flame that becomes a blaze!