When I was a boy our school would ‘make’ us go to the opera – culture by force. I notice that 90% of the operagoers are older.
So what is it that makes someone turn say, 55, and they magically can appreciate a 4-hour (or more) Wagnerian marathon? It would seem that if people dont like it, they wouldn’t go at all, even when they get older.
I’m 26 and I love opera. I have been a big fan since I was about 20. Most of the people that I see at the opera are in their late 20’s, early 30’s and I go to the opera once a month, on average.
I think the reason many people would see mostly older people attending the opera is because of the cost of the tickets. I live in NYC and I have a discount hookup so I get opera tickets for $15 (the seats in the back of the house, but I have binoculars so that more than makes up for it) but elsewhere in the country it could easily cost $75-$100 or more to see a show, which is money most young people simply don’t have available for something like the opera.
I’m close to 55. I have never cared for opera. You couldn’t drag me anywhere near an opera. I’d enjoy an Eagles concert far more. As pbbth observed, there are many far younger opera-goers. Although it probably is true that older people may have more disposable income and can afford tickets more easily.
It’s not just old people. The reasons most Americans don’t like opera are
1- we’re never exposed to it in schools
2- most of the great operas are in languages we don’t speak (German and Italian)
3- it’s very expensive to attend
Porgy and Bess and some other English language operas would draw a more diverse crowd probably, and of course English language musical theater is far more liked.
I like opera. I’m 38. I admit I didn’t like it as a kid, though, didn’t really get into it until after I turned 30. For me, it was a combination of inaccessibility and a sort of reverse snobbery that discouraged me from being interested in anything too high-falutin’, the fields of the pretentious wanker fans: opera, ballet, classical music.
So, this isn’t another browser thread!
Opera singer chiming in here - you might be interested in the demographic report from Opera America. Among other things, it reports that people under the age of 35 made up 25.3% of the audience in 2002.
For people who have tried it and don’t like it, well, that’s what having personal tastes is all about. Me, I don’t get NASCAR, but that doesn’t make me a better or worse person than the people that do.
For people who haven’t tried it and say they don’t like it - that’s a little frustrating. There seems to be a persistent image in North American culture that opera is only for the rich and pretentious. All I can say is you can enjoy opera without turning into an asshole.
It’s interesting that videos are just another form of opera - you have a visual element to the musical storytelling, and the visual element can be anything the creative team decides on - simply filming the band playing, reinforcing the story by acting it out directly, showing a different story visually from the story of the song, contradicting the story entirely… I think this idea of the connection between video and opera is part of why opera has been more successful in its growth in recent years, whereas symphony orchestras are experiencing a real decline in attendance. Time article from 2001
The English National Opera puts on all its productions in English. Makes it very accessible. Does no one do that in the US?
MC Frontalot’s take on opera (lyrics, not sound, though there’s a link at the bottom of that page to the free MP3).
In my experience (as a 27-year-old opera fan), the usual practice here in the U.S. is to perform opera in the language it was written in.
There’s usually a screen of some type showing the translation.
I’ve enjoyed opera since elementary school.
That’s not how it happens. I’m 62, and when I was a kid we were exposed to a lot more culture than kids today are. Some of it stuck in some of us. It’s not that we reached some magic age and it all kicked in.
When I lived in NYC, I had season tickets to the Met and/or City Opera every year, starting when I moved there at 24. And other classical music as well. It was a younger crowd then; lots of people in all age groups, because we were brought up to appreciate the music. But over the years, due mostly to budget cuts, kids aren’t exposed to these things as much, so they ***never ***learn to appreciate it. I don’t think most people experience major changes in their musical taste over the years. Sure, the number of things they like expands somewhat, as they’re exposed to new music, but I think taste itself is established when someone’s relatively young.
When I was a child and television was new enough to our culture that we would watch anything that appeared on the one channel that we received, I watched a program sponsored by Firestone. The program featured mostly light opera and operettas. Some of the pieces were from grand opera.
I can remember the first time I saw and heard the most famous piece from Pagliacci. I don’t know that I’d ever seen a man cry before and to think of a clown crying was the saddest thing I could imagine. And his voice sounded so desperate. I was hooked.
This was in the rural South, but many of my friends and I took music lessons and were encouraged by our teachers and parents to acquaint ourselves with the “classics.” And it wasn’t just the girls either. I can remember hearing a couple of the basketball players acting out ‘The Riffs’ Song" from The Desert Song – and operetta. They had caught on to the fun of it.
As you get just a little older your tastes then begin to develop so that the operettas sound a little too sweet and the operas are more interesting. The music has become familiar. You like something in particular and so you buy an album. And that has something else on it that you learn to like and your taste grows.
I think that a lot of it is just a matter of exposure. You don’t have to be highbrow or old to enjoy it.
To see a good movie of ordinary people grooving on opera, see the movie Moonstruck with Cher and Nicholaus Cage. Cher won an Oscar. It’s a fun movie. Warning: Have plenty of Italian food on hand.
Sometimes you may not even notice opera in the movies. The background music in 'Raging Bull" is instrumental, but it is opera. The helicopters going in low with napalm in Apocalypse Now is done to Wagner, I believe (again, instrumental).
Yep, that’s Ride of the Valkyries from Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
I respectfully submit that NOBODY doesn’t like that particular little bit of opera …
This only works for me when the original is in an Eastern European language that isn’t so musical to my ears. I can’t imagine a translated Italian or French opera.
Well, I may be a demographic anomaly, in that I appreciate NASCAR and opera. I’ve had season tickets since I was in my mid-twenties to local opera – first Baltimore’s (less expensive) and then DC’s as my career path led me to more disposible income.
When my daughter was 20, we gave her season tickets to the Chicago Opera at her request, and a lot of people at school wanted to go with her. I like opera in high school, and listened quite a bit, but my tone deafness finally got me.
I suspect one reason older people go is the cost of tickets.
I never really went to operas because a) I grew up in small towns and b) it’s expensive as hell. But as soon as I got to college, and tickets became 10 bucks, I’ve been to every performance in Greensboro so far. Which is one, Rigoletto. So with expensive tickets, shoddy advertising, and a production only once every 6 months, it takes a lot of work to end up at a performance.
You know, a lot of kids simply don’t go to shows at all. Popular indie bands and all that. Here in Greensboro, Arcade Fire and Superchunk put on a free show, at midday, and there were only 100-200 in attendance. The radio station I work for, at most, has gotten 400 people to our largest of large shows. That’s about the size of a crowd I’ve seen at the largest of large indie shows elsewhere, especially with bands that draw a crowd from miles around like Bright Eyes. In almost every state, on almost every night of the week, there’s a fairly big name indie act playing for around 10 bucks. But if you asked the average person how many shows they’ve been to, in my experience, with non-indie kid types, they usually have only been to a handful, at most.
Compared to opera, in non-metropolis cities, like Greensboro, Raleigh, Asheville, Charlotte, etc, there are very few and far between opportunities to go see a performance, and even then kids aren’t likely to venture out of the house for it.
KIWW THE WABBIT! KIWW THE WABBIT! KIWW THE WABBIT!
When I was in high school, I had quite a few friends who also played music, and to even things out some non-musician ones as well. We’d try to avoid too much cliquey talk about endless musical topics when the non-musicians were around, but couldn’t always help it.
Only when into our 20s did I discover that one of the non-musicians had, at that time, become a huge Wagner fan, amassing a big library of recordings, being fascinated by the mythology which inspired the storied, etc. etc. Only he’d never heard us talk about Wagner, and so had assumed (wrongly) that we weren’t interested in that particular composer.
The moral of the story: you’ll never guess what teenagers might be doing behind closed doors 
It’s one of these Wagner excerpts which has vocal parts, but this can be omitted and the resulting piece is suitable for orchestral performance. However, IIRC, the film does have the voices - anyone got a copy, to check?