Based on my experience as a General Director of a major opera company for thirty-one years and in the business of opera one way or another since 1965, I disagree. I have often said that the tradition of opera lovers looking backwards to seemingly rosier times caused our ancestors at the first performance of Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea, in 1642, to tell their friends that if they thought this was good, they should have been at Orfeo some thirty-five years before. They also probably complained about so many older people in the audience, reasoning that the new art form was headed for the dustbin. It certainly wasn’t true then, and it isn’t true now.
1 comment:
It is difficult to hear that an area of art is struggling. Opera, while not as popular, requires a level of talent that is not easy to find. It thrives off of live performance more so than any other area of theater. They do not use microphones to amplify their voices. Everything the audience hears is one hundred percent real. It truly is incredible. However, especially with the entire financial problem the country has recently faced, it is difficult for people to donate to something as financially dependent as opera. In addition, what opera may have going for it with talent, it lacks the technological spectacle. With rapidly growing technology, opera could easily develop in a different direction. But that raises the question, would it be opera anymore? Whatever those in the opera community choose to do, I personally hope it stays alive and well. People need to be educated on how limitless art truly is.
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