|
|
|
|
|
||
|
Articles
|
||
|
Articles |
New Life for Opera?Dateline: 18th April, 2004Last week the Royal Opera House and Travelex announced the new sponsorship deal that would make some ROH tickets available at £10, a massive saving of around £165. This week Raymond Gubbay launched London's new opera house, the Savoy Theatre, and its associated company, Savoy Opera, with a production of Rossini's The Barber of Seville. (By the way, our man Kevin Catchpole was there: take a look at his review.) So with the reopening, after refurbishment, of the Coliseum, London now has three dedicated opera houses with resident companies, as well as two theatres, the Almeida and BAC, which have opera seasons. And with some tickets at the ROH available at £10 and much lower prices at the Savoy than is normal for opera houses, opera in London seems to be set for a major expansion. But is it? Not according to "think tank" the Institute for Public Policy Research. This week they announced that their research showed that research says such schemes are more likely to encourage the middle class to go more often, rather than bringing in a wider audience. An Arts Council survey in 2001 showed that 39% of those who do not regularly attend arts events gave lack of interest as their reason, followed by lack of time (33%) and cost was only the third factor in importance (25%). A further interesting piece of information which emerged from that survey was that, while 4% of what is described as the "lower social classes" went to opera performances, the figure for "higher" classes was only 16%. In other words, opera is very much a minority interest even among those who do attend arts events on a regular basis. One wonders why. I suspect there is a wide range of reasons, rather than one simple answer. It surely isn't because there is resistance to a "sung" play - after all, sung through musicals attract massive audiences. Nor is it because musical tastes have changed. Certainly shows like Les Miserables attract their audiences because the music is in the modern idiom, but the popularity of radio stations like Classic FM and of concerts like the Three Tenors would suggest that it isn't necessarily the musical style which puts people off. The fact that many operas are sung in a language other than English may have something to do with it. Yes, they were written in Italian or German or French or even Russian, but if we go to see a production of a play by Pirandello or any other foreign writer, we expect that it will be in an English translation. We certainly would not expect to have to have a scene-by-scene synopsis of the plot in our programmes to enable us to understand it. And yet again, yes, something will always be lost in the translation, but I wonder how many people who insist that, for example, La Bohème should be sung in Italian actually know that language well enough to be able to understand (or even detect) the nuances? And there is the acting. For many reasons - not least among them the physical effort needed to sing above a full orchestra unamplified - acting on the opera stage tends to be very static, almost moving from pose to pose rather than what we would describe as acting in theatre. And too often, although not as often as previously, parts are cast on the basis of the singing rather than appearance, so that we have what I saw some years ago: a production of La Bohème in which the Mimi was twice the size of the Rudolfo. I doubt if he could lift her off her feet, let alone carry her up the stairs! Incidentally, the typical opera-style use of "the" before the character names reflects something of importance: in opera the dramatis personae are parts to be sung rather than characters to be portrayed. There are, of course, reasons for these things, but we are looking at why opera is not a popular art, and no matter what the reasons or how cogent they may be, they do put off the average punter who expects to see the dying, consumptive Mimi looking the part. I like opera, but to me it always sounds better than it looks! Then there is opera's image. It is perceived as being élitist: how could it be otherwise when a ticket for the Royal Opera House costs more than three times what one would expect to pay for the likes of The Lion King or We Will Rock You? But it's not just the cost of tickets. For the majority of people in the UK, opera is seen as the preserve of the aristocratic, rich - and snobby! In spite of the (to be applauded) efforts of Raymond Gubbay and of Travelex, in spite of ENO presenting work in English, in spite of the occasional attempts to popularise opera on TV, it just has too much against it for the majority of people to be tempted to part with their hard-earned cash and will remain a minority interest. Articles Indices:
|
|
|
|