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When I first arrived in New York in 1982, there was a woman I knew very slightly who could be spotted at nearly any given Met performance of a Wagner opera. She always sat in the same place—the center of the front row, orchestra, right behind the conductor. She had been going to the Met for years and years, and when I was close enough to observe her, I would watch her, perched forward on her seat, her head weaving back and forth like a child at Sea World. Everything about her, in fact—the constant smile as she watched, the way she literally bounced up and down in her seat when she applauded a well-turned aria—seemed childlike.
As a novice operagoer, I remember wondering how she could have accumulated what was obviously a lengthy performance history and still have retained this sense of anticipation and delight. I couldn't imagine reading the same 10 books or watching the same 10 movies over and over, no matter how much I loved them. But then an acquaintance introduced me to the concept of "archival instinct." If you really loved opera, he explained, you had to experience it over and over and over to understand how one performance differed from the others, and what the common threads were from one night to the next.
Sitting in performances today, I often have the sense that the audience seems less engaged than it ever has been. Attendees shift constantly in their seats and discreetly check text messages.
Soon enough, I discovered what he meant, as I devoured every performance of Richard Cassilly and Eva Marton in Tännhaeuser; ditto Jon Vickers and Elisabeth Soederstroem in Peter Grimes; ditto Jessye Norman and Tatiana Troyanos in Les Troyens. There seemed no way I could get enough of that kind of magic, and so many people I encountered night after night at the Met and at New York City Opera seemed to feel the same way I did.
I realize now that those audiences must also have been filled with tired businessmen and people who had turned up because their next-door neighbors had given them their tickets. But over the years, I've learned that perhaps the most powerful truth is not necessarily the fact of any given situation but what that situation feels like. And it felt to me like the New York opera audience was composed almost entirely of diehards.
There were enormous crowds of autograph-seekers around the backstage dressing rooms night after night. There was an excitement about following the careers of Leonie Rysanek and Kiri Te Kanawa and Sherrill Milnes that was almost palpable: People were making plans to travel to hear them in their next engagements, whether they happened to be singing at Covent Garden or Vienna or San Francisco. They would steal away a few vacation days from their jobs, book a bargain flight on People Express, reserve a single room at a cut-rate European guest house, spend half the day on line for standing-room tickets and grab a cheap sandwich to eat on the street. (Good restaurants were not in the budget.) It seemed to me that that audience could never vanish. Its members might get older, but they would be replaced by younger versions of themselves, and they would be thrilled to witness the continuity of their own passionate intensity, on and on, into the future.
But that's not exactly what happened. Sitting in performances today, I often have the sense that the audience seems less engaged than it ever has been. Some awfully fine performances that once would have received a tumultuous response are now getting polite applause. Attendees shift constantly in their seats and discreetly check text messages. Many people desert the theater after the end of Act II—or even Act I.
Much of the life—much of the fun—has been drained out of the operagoing experience, and the audience has been gradually tamed and muted.
Over the past 20 years, much of the life—much of the fun—has been drained out of the operagoing experience, and the audience has been gradually tamed and muted. They're paying top dollar for their subscription tickets, and they honestly want to enjoy themselves. But if they are having a good time, why do so many reactions to performances seem so subdued? Where are the throat-ripping "bravos" routinely heard on so many old pirated recordings?
Speight Jenkins, general director of the Seattle Opera, like many other U.S. company directors, believes in promoting the work itself over any individual performer. This has worked very well from a business standpoint: It's helped eliminate the fear factor that many potential operagoers once felt. What has happened in the process is that the company itself has become the star—the comforting institution that will guide you to a deeper understanding of Dialogues of the Carmelites or Jenufa. What had, only a few years before, been a kind of audience blood sport is now presented as a life-improving educational experience: "Don't be afraid to try it. You'll be surprised by how much you'll like it." It's a far cry from the Met's old ad campaign, "Strike a blow for civilization."
"Selling" the experience of going to the opera, which has gained momentum across the country over the past two decades, often has the ring of disarmament. We're sorry if you got the idea that opera is stuffy or elitist, ad campaigns tell us. You don't have to be ashamed about coming to the box office to buy a ticket. Just look: Opera can make valid expressions about your everyday lives. This Traviata can show you that Verdi's opera isn't really about the idea of redemption at all—it can be experienced as a cautionary tale about the horrors of AIDS.
What had, only a few years before, been a kind of audience blood sport is now presented as a life-improving educational experience: "Don't be afraid to try it. You'll be surprised by how much you'll like it."
Tosca suffered the most. Directors became so intent on conveying a ripe atmosphere of political repression that they forgot about the most important ingredient—a compelling Tosca. Companies promoted "theatrical values," as well as the fact that they had projected titles. With this shift in emphasis, company directors seemed to feel that they didn't have to worry so much about individual casting. But casting isn't an incidental by-product of opera: It's critical to its success and survival.
Is it any wonder that so many in the audience have slowly lost their way? They may buy the argument that opera is good for them, they may want to have a thrilling experience, but too often, they aren't getting one. Some of them may even think it's their fault for not being smart enough. ("Well, the production wasn't my cup of tea," they'll say, uncertainly, "but I suppose it appeals to a lot of younger people.") The problem is that it usually doesn't.
So many of the high-profile "edgy" productions of recent years have been swiftly rejected by every young person I know who saw them. Many of the older, longtime operagoers, of course, know they're being taken for a ride. But to cancel their subscriptions seems too much like a betrayal of their favorite art form. So they keep on going. They learn to live with productions that talk down to them and performances that don't particularly excite them, and they hope that once in a while something better may come along.
The most exciting audience-development move in years has unquestionably been the Met's HD broadcasts. They're a terrific experiment that may well be worth all the press that's been showered on them. The argument that it's not the real thing because it's not live theater seems to me to be a bogus one. The sound may be a little flat, and the price of so many close-ups is that the complete stage picture may not always come through.
But still, audiences in hard-to-reach places around the country are getting a high-level opera experience—and the flaws of certain stagings are rendered less conspicuous. The audience is excited by the broadcasts—you can tell that the second you walk into the theater. And it's a marvelous way of preserving history. How many of us who love live theater would kill to have had HD transmissions of Katharine Cornell as Candida? The original Follies? Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie? Ralph Richardson in Waltz of the Toreadors?
I think what's happened to the opera audience is not unlike what happened to the serious moviegoing audience of the 1970s and early '80s. The rise of the blockbuster spelled finis to the period of tough, thrilling, challenging pictures of that era. And this, sadly, is what almost always happens when art falls into the hands of the marketing experts, who focus only on trying to figure out what they think audiences want, rather than on what might really engage them.
The most intense creative explosion in the entertainment world in recent years has occurred in television, where a smart new audience has been developed with series ranging from The Sopranos and Six Feet Under to Nurse Jackie and Mad Men. Perhaps those responsible for producing opera in this country might take a cue from television. Otherwise, I'm afraid that they're not going to be able to capture a vital new audience—they'll just keep on chasing it.
This article is excerpted from the October 2010 issue of Opera News with permission of its publisher, the Metropolitan Opera Guild. It was adapted for publication in The Voice, Spring 2011, a special issue devoted to "The Face of Today's Audience."
