Are the classical arts dying?

I hope so.

R1= stupid uncultured boob who loves Taylor Swift

Who needs high culture when you have THIS???

They didn’t keep up with the times. Opera just keeps performing the same classics over and over again — Aida, La Boheme, Carmen, Madame Butterfly, and La Traviata.

When is Opera going to produce a piece that everybody just HAS to see?

I was kidding R2. Geez, nobody can take a joke these days.

What Andrew Lloyd Webber did for Broadway with Phantom of the Opera is what Opera composers should have been doing for Opera.

The people who enjoy that type of art always come off as so arrogant and elitist. Not very welcoming to be so high-brow.

Scoop poop be-boop

They're already dead. Most people can't even appreciate half decent film or television so of course they're going to have ZERO interest in opera or ballet. People felt it was necessary to bring back Jersey Shore. Seriously. This is the world we live in.

Remember that classical music was the pop music of 200 years ago. In 2218 people will be sitting in symphony halls listening to the songs of Cardi B arranged for orchestra.

I'd like to see Cardi compose this, r10

Beyoncé sings opera in her shows.

There's no outlet for it on TV anymore. Networks used to show specials about composers. Ballet dancers used to be celebrities in their own rights as well as opera singers. They stopped doing that. Rosie O Donnell was really the last great patron of the arts on TV.

Who can be bothered to leave the house with Netflix and Hulu which overload us with entertainment from the comfort of our couches?

Yeah. Ballet and opera - even most symphonies- have been dying since the last gasp of the 80s. They are going bankrupt and won’t sustain themselves - except for a Koch or Geffen-like gift made to show how cult-ahd they are. Oh well - things change. I’m curious to see what art form results from the digital age.

As the older generation dies out. So will so many other things along with them sadly.

Did the AIDS crisis contribute to their demise? I remember one of the threads on the crisis here discussing that the epidemic not only killed a lot of artists--dancers, painters, designers, etc.--it also killed their patrons.

I think this is not really AIDS related. Even straights stopped going.

Classical music will live on because even in this Idiocracy there are a small percentage of intelligent people who realize the superiority of well-crafted, complex, interesting, intellectually stimulating, and beautifully presented music. Classical music can stand on its own merits, as it has for a very long time. And it will be there for future generations to discover.

Let's hope so R18.

I went to the Met to see Hockney and Michelangelo and it was wall-to-wall people.

Yes older adults tend to like the classic arts because they take a bit more sophistication and knowledge. Always been that way for a very long time. They are very much alive and well in NYC and around the world. Classical music and opera will never go away- they both contain some of the most gorgeous music of all time- some of you will discover and others will not- a loss for them. And the performances of the great ballet companies of the world are sublime. I wonder how many on this thread have been in the orchestra seats for a N.Y. City Ballet, ABT, Oaris Ballet or Bolshoi performance- art and music and beauty and eroticism athleticism all at telegraph same time.

R18 is probably correct, it will be the large venues for the arts that will disappear mostly.

What city is the OP in?

R18 said it very well. Classical music isn't going anywhere, because your finer sort of people will always continue to appreciate it. I'm really not terribly concerned if the hoi polloi are interested in it or not. They have their reality TV and pop music.

R11, that Liszt score made me dizzy, lol!

R16, there is some truth to that. A whole generation of gay audience members died. They were not their to pass on their love of opera and ballet to the younger generation. You would see an older gay man with a younger gay man at performances and know that a future patron was being groomed.

The highbrows didn't reach out beyond their rarefied circles to keep their culture alive.

C'mon people. The opera house system in Central Europe is in every smallish-medium to large size city in about 4 major countries with millions of people of population. Opera rules the roost, with an orchestra for accompaniment that has their own season, and with a "ballet" company for the opera that has (mostly) its own little season each year. What are you people thinking? And bye the bye, Cologne staged effin Oklahoma in German. For example.

I admire highbrow culture when it exists but most people who think they're highbrow are vapid snobs with absolutely nothing to contribute.

I don't like classical music because it's "highbrow." I like it because it's beautiful and musical. How could I not love Mahler, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and more recently Steve Reich and Mason Bates (though some of his percussive sounds can be annoying)? I go to dozens of concerts, mainly at a music school. I'm bummed that it's summer and the kids are gone until September.

[quote]The highbrows didn't reach out beyond their rarefied circles to keep their culture alive.

The highbrows are not responsible for those who are intimidated by arts. A lot of people cannot afford to go the opera, but everyone can listen to their local classical music station.

I like the Darmstadt School but not incessantly. The early electronic experimenters in America were interesting too.

[quote]everyone can listen to their local classical music station.

Mine is too baroque. Or else they play too many composers you've never heard of for good reason.

Now listening to David et Jonathas.

Bullshit OP. Go to younger places, like LoftOpera or Opera Parallele.

I’m not into that shit.

Appreciation of the fine arts is very much alive and well in many parts of the world -- Asia, Europe, South America. Unfortunately, the U.S. has chosen to defund the arts in our public schools in lieu of the standardized testing racket, so the younger generations have had little to no exposure to great music, art, etc. That combined with the expense of private lessons / training (and prohibitively expensive admission to the good symphonies) has in no small way contributed to a significant decline in interest among the public.

And it's a shame as the U.S. has some of the best orchestras and institutions in the world (e.g., the Cleveland Orchestra -- one of the world's best).

I love the classical arts and I abhor foul language R35, R34.

OP needs to forget about that boring fusty classical music and keep himself relevant, interesting, global and engaging.

It's too expensive for young people.

R37, jump into the toilet!

The Met has plenty of empty seats and City Opera is dead.

Not good.

The 80s was the last gasp of flourishing for the classical arts.

I live in a medium-sized city, and we have a Symphony, Ballet, Opera, several smaller symphony orchestras, dance companies and theaters, as well as a full-time classical music station that's mainly supported through listener donations (I'm a contributor). The concerts I attend are always well attended by a variety of people. I see plenty of younger people in the audience: many younger people are turned on to the performing arts through their own music or dance lessons.

Do u live in NY, OP? You're wrong.

If the classical music world is anything like the commercial fine art world it is full of dull rich kids looking for someone to sponsor their highly unoriginal careers, and no-one cares.

There are still some great classical pieces being created. I consider this the best piece of music produced in the 21st century thus far.

Thanks for that beautiful piece, R45.

R45 How cheesy.

I live in NY. The Met Opera which is humongous always has tons of empty seats. It’s the same with ballet and orchestra concerts.

The MET just shows the same classics over and over. There are no real legendary singers anymore that anyone outside the opera house can name.

It’s very sad. Even my gay friends don’t do classical

OP hardly is the voice of "classical arts." To get the minor issues out of the way first, if "it's strictly the blue-haired set the OP must be a blue hair, since "strictly" is strict about its meaning. Also, it is rude to refer to gay men by the ton-load, but if one sees 15 gay men in an audience one likely is well approaching the "tons" mark. A "popular lexicon" by historical definition would always exclude "classical music and dance," which were developed for the nobility and other people whose intentions were not to be part of the proletariat.

In fact, it is likely that the opera and ballet the OP is referring to is not "classical" at all, unless she is partaking of a steady diet of "Don Giovanni." Of course "classical" is a term popularly used to cover everything from Baroque to Glass, but since the OP seems to want to quibble about the meaning of "popular," we shall, too. Ballet and opera, after all, received their greatest popular attention after the classical period, and no one in his right mind would classify Puccini as a classical composer.

Now, for the OP, we must assume you are talking about fine arts, which extend well beyond opera and ballet for music, and into the visual and non-musical dramatic arts. While widespread interest in fine-arts music has grown and waned over time, the advent of cinema and recorded music helped promote divergences between the popular and the "refined" or "serious" forms. Even so, people such as Gershwin and Weill did their part to try to merge the two, and non-musical theatre has had somewhat greater success in some ways tipping towards the finer forms of drama.

Nevertheless, the heart of the matter is that the fine arts never were fully within the capacity or interest of most people. Pretending that everyone outside Vienna were humming Schubert (a romantic, not a classical composer) lieder once his popularity was established is silly. Italian opera and, to a lesser extent, German opera were more relevant to widespread audiences in the 19th century, but even there it was the growth of education and some improvements in the economies during parts of the 19th century that gave people time and know-how to appreciate opera. Without recorded music, people would listen to what they could, and that meant what orchestras were playing. For that matter, remember that the waltz was considered vulgar at first and not something that better people would admit enjoying.

Outside the development of operetta and related popular musical theatre forms, the fine arts always have relied on the wealthy for the economic basis of their existence. And that's the way it is now. The chumps who buy season tickets or "special offer" tickets for symphony companies' "accessible" evenings with John Williams movie themes aside, opera, ballet and serious instrumental music require monied support, and they get it, usually.

Major cities and many smaller cities maintain at least one ballet or modern dance corps, a symphony orchestra and numerous smaller music ensembles. Recorded music sales are not doing poorly. Empty seats always have been seen, as if "tons" of people would rush to listen to Natalie "Bullshit" Draper. They won't show up for Hindemith or Schoenberg either, OP. Do you?

Passion for the arts requires will, intelligence, patience and education. I love and live with all kinds of popular music, like musicals, like knowing current dances, and the rest. These things are necessary to live fully in one's time, so I don't put down popular tastes. But I do recognize that the fine arts simply aren't for everyone in the first place, not in the way that gets someone to the symphony for more than December's Handel. Music education has been in decline in many school districts for 20+ years. All arts organizations have education departments but that's not enough.

Finally, much of current "serious" music is as tediously academic, cynical, political and ironic as the visual arts are. The truth is that the arts are now often in the hands of the philistines. Look at the posts here, after all. Lazy sarcasm.

Of all of the insufferable snobs in the world, music snobs are the absolute worst.

R24, Do you think of yourself as one of the finer sort of people?

R30 it's not deplorables whining about the loss of their highbrow culture.

They’re still strong in parts of Europe.

"The highbrows are not responsible for those who are Intimidated by arts".

Gee, I wonder why your culture is dying. Who wouldn't want to seek it out and thus also be associated with the company of highbrows?

Highbrows are tiresome and insular. They are not admired. Why would anybody outside their circle be interested in their culture?

I would love a friend who would go with me to see a live performance of John Adams's Nixon in China or Monteverdi in general.

No, they will never die.

The movie “Idiocracy” was a comedy when it was released. Now, it is documentary.

Deplorables want sports, the bloodier the better. They don’t want no poofy opera! And no Oprah neither!

One for the deplorables, R59.

This is the result of the marketplace ruling the arts.

Period.

So taxpayer money should fund unseen opera?

i think what’s different now is the amount of “reverse snobism”, racing towards mediocrity, poo-poo-ing anything that doesn’t belong on the “People of Walmart” website. Art appreciation values critical thinking, effective art makes people think, and not necessarily agree. But that’s bad in some circiles, let’s keep people ignorant and lazy.

Realistically, why should "Walmart" people be interested in highbrow culture when they are not a part of that culture?

You can also watch opera performances online if there's a particular one you'd like to see.

People have just become awful in a ll areas.

Reverse snobism is old and has been around at least since it was decided Arnold Schoenberg was too inaccessible for the average concert goer. R63

R67 It would be more useful if you turned that sentence with a passive verb into an active one. Someone made the decision.

R68 "The opinion that Beethoven is comprehensible and Schoenberg incomprehensible is an objective deception. The general public, totally cut off from the production of new music, is alienated by the outward characteristics of such music. The deepest currents present in this music proceed, however, from exactly those sociological and anthropological foundations peculiar to that public. The dissonances which horrify them testify to their own conditions; for that reason alone do they find them unbearable." Adorno.

I stole that quote from a reddit thread.

"Snobbism" has two "b"s.

Can't help but believe that there must be millions of millennials who will eventually "discover" the arts and return them to popularity.

As others have said, the Met Opera is in a state of financial crisis. The older donors are dying off, the younger rich don't care about the opera and they can't sell tickets. None of the younger tech billionaires are giving their dough to places like the Met.

City Opera shutting down is the harbinger of things to come. Most major symphony orchestras are struggling financially as well, including the Boston Symphony.

When it is well established that all this supposedly current rap and punk and electroclash are 1970s genres, the baroque and romantic composers won't seem so weird to millennials.

Dead.

Not dead, won't completely die. But there's a looming crisis, and it's not due primarily to lack of interest by younger people, though that factors. It's the prices. Opera tickets are $100 for the nosebleed seats up in the rafters, and hundreds to sit closer. And symphony/ballet tickets are not cheap either. There will have to be a new wave of people putting on high-quality, innovative performances that cost less to mount.

In the old days people would poke each other with sticks. That died out. Useless things do. This is why we don't have bubblegum music, and disco and dance the Charleston.

This brings to mind Glenn Gould and his retirement from public performances. He believed in the integrity of studio recordings above live performance, and I'm beginning to see his point -- especially now that we have the means to freely consume media 24/7.

I started getting into classical music at 37 and now I can't get enough of it. I hardly go to the movies anymore, maybe once or twice a year and I used to go every week, sometimes more when I was 15-30. Tastes change. I guess it's an age thing. I don't play with marbles anymore, either.

I've been to 20+ "classical" concerts over the past two years, including opera, and most are sold out. Even those that aren't are still well-packed. And while opera can indeed be very expensive, lots of concerts aren't. Price ranges can very well be 20-40 euros, and that's a price many are willing to pay for a night out so I don't think any sort of "pricing" is keeping audiences out.

As for audiences, I've noticed they tend to be older + young hopefuls. Very few music lovers in-between.

r45 beautiful music .

I could never get into classical music. I understand is is technically of high standards, the singers, the musicians asf, but a lot of the music is repetitive and just themes for 20 minutes. I think the history of popular music, from Jazz to R&B to Soul to Rock and Pop, overall has brought on better song writers and composers.

R81 You can't compare 'classical' with 'popular'.

Classical aims to elucidate and inspire the listener to higher thoughts.

The bulk of 'popular' provides background music for mundane activities (like housework and sex) and shuns any kind of mental stimulation.

Half the posts here are the reason most younger people have no interest at all. High brow, low brow, refined, cultured, sophisticated, etc. Queens that sound more like they are trying to describing them self then the music. Young people under say 50! ... have no interest in pretentious queens that think going to the Opera makes them sophisticated or cultured. We all know you are shallow tacky bitches who judge a book by its cover and yours is quite empty.

Bottom line, entertainment is an art form, you should have an emotional reaction to it without having to be trained extensively to appreciate it. Real art will stand the test of time based on it's merits not by some group of pretentious queens who try to define their social stats by the plays they attend or music they play to appear refined.

Well maybe, R82, but literally everybody I knew who liked and primarily listened to classical music had a horrible taste in pop music. If classical music is so sophisticated and their listeners are so high brow wouldn't this carry over to other art forms as well?

R83 be like: Classical music would only appeal more to people aged under fifty if it described itself as straight acting, d.t.e., non-scene, masc.

I’m eldergay territory op - and not an opera fan! - but have plenty of friends who are. Opera queens were a dime a dozen when I was young - or so it seemed? But don’t know as many who are devotees nowadays...

However -

I’m on the other side of the planet (in Oz) and there are various arty movie theatres in the capitals here that seem to do really well showing streamed(?) recorded (?) big screen performances of various American and British operas and some theatre performances.

I assumed that this was to be the future of many of the classical opera, ballet and theatre companies. Why just sell seats to each performance? You can film a gig - and send it out to venues all over the world - to fans who can’t afford their lifetime dreams of actually regularly going to the Met or to the RSC or wherever - but will play many times a standard movie ticket fee to see it when shown in their home towns. Most of them are screened as one off big events - so people do pay the bigger bucks to see them. I gather that the technology has improved so much that the sound is good - and so is the camera work.

I know purists will hate it - and I know it’s not the same as being there - but surely it’s great to help fund it all, promote the brand and get new fans along the way? Think it’s a great idea!

And face it: it’s the only chance most people outside NYC and London etc will ever get to see the current roster of divas and superstars strut their stuff. Your thoughts?

Yes. DEAD. Very VERY boring. 💤💤💤💤

R84, why would anyone care about having horrible taste in pop music? To the extent that "good taste in pop music" isn't a contradiction in terms, it would hardly seem worth the striving for.

Were you trying to make a point R88, because if you did you have to make it a bit clearer exactly what your point is.

I’m not a snob: I truly believe that young people should enjoy new pop music. That is part of fun of being young. That said, as he gets older a gentleman cultivates a more refined taste in books, music and the arts. One shouldn’t apologize for this because others feel it constitutes “snobbism.”

Furthermore, fine music is more accessible now than it ever has been. Youtube, TuneIn Radio, etc all have countless choices for classical music. It's hardly difficult to find.

They have been saying this for at least fifty years. Classical arts are certainly changing and the big three, symphony orchestra, ballet and grand opera - with their galas and subscription series aren’t growing. Classical music is just as present in the form of computer game music, some of this is performed now by symphony orchestras.

The classical performing arts benefit from strong arts education in the schools. Even in the midwest in the 1960's, it was a constant and significant element of my public education. I benefited hugely from it. But the commitment to music, dance, and visual art, as part of the school curriculum is not so great these days. That adversely affects development of new audiences.

But the stars and musical styles of pop music are creatures of fashion. The pieces in the classical music library have already survived the vagaries of fashion. They will be with us forever. Taylor Swift could disappear next year.

Does anyone remember how popular Michael Nyman and Henryk Gorecki were in the 1990s? They were like pop stars.

I'm rediscovering Arvo Part now, what a blast from the past.

Art fart shit tit.

[quote]The people who enjoy that type of art always come off as so arrogant and elitist. Not very welcoming to be so high-brow.

Oh, poor baby. You don’t feel welcomed by elitists? I wonder why that is.

The Metropolitan Opera's 4000 seat auditorium is far too big for opera. It can't do an effective comic opera to save its life. All the tragic operas have to be so large in scale that the stories get lost. Most voices have to be megaphones or at least intensely focused to be effective in that barn.

The MET should have created a second auditorium to seat 2000 max long ago. THAT's where opera is headed.

Tosca is 2 hours long, but with the crazy intermissions, every opera house extends it to 3 hours.

No young person has an attention span that long any more.

I realized a while back how inane ballet was.

Then you realize nothing, R99. Ballet is the most universal and expressive of the performing arts.

It has to be performed extremely well, or it fails. I'll give you that. If you've only ever seen ballet on television or the Bugtussle Civic Ballet and its brethern, you could not be expected to understand. If you have seen the great companies of the world, "Inane" does not enter the discussion of someone with intelligence and education.

Tutus and point shoes are inane

That would be "pointe" shoes. Your ignorance is showing, R101.

Yes.

R102 so only those in the "know" should be allowed to enjoy ballet?

Three degrees in (classical) music composition, yet you can't spell 'pointe shoes.' What you might know about music is fine, but you have shown you don't know a great deal about ballet.

It's just assholery of the first order for someone claiming to be a serious student of art to dismiss an art form that has a 500 year history with a generalized broadside such as "inane." Ballet is too big and too varied for that. From Christopher Wheeldon and Alexei Ratmansky to Balanchine to Petipas and Bournonville and all the way back to the Medicis. All of that dismissed with one word? You are a dumb ass, but not much of a scholar.

After three degrees in (classical) music composition, it's time for you to broaden your horizons.

I'll admit ballet is gorgeous to watch, BUT we have conditioned ourselves to think women dancing on pointE shoes and men leaping elegantly is some high art that takes times to appreciate.

That's the inane part. Yes, ballet is nice but its rules are overwhelming.

I have no idea what you are ranting about, R105. I also don't quite understand how you can presume to know so much about my experiences or opinions when all I gave was a classically (ha) brief and snarky DL-style post.

As for "pointe shoes," I've played piano for ballet companies as a side job (also for opera and musical theater productions, so be careful before you accuse me of not knowing much about those sub-genres either). I've also written music for a short ballet--which has only ever been performed WITHOUT dancers (it seems they're hard to find). And finally, the only dance majors I know personally who have gone on to a career with any kind of sustainability are the ones who have also built careers as directors who can choreograph.

Finally, I challenge you to ask the next 100 people you run into in real life if they can tell you who Wheeldon, Ratmansky, Balanchine, Petipas, Bournonville, or the Medicis are. I guarantee you not a single person will recognize a single name you just listed.

At any rate, the "assholery" is mostly your own. And my horizons are probably more broad than yours, thank you very much.

Opera and musical theater are “sub-genres?” Sub-genres of what?

[quote]What Andrew Lloyd Webber did for Broadway with Phantom of the Opera is what Opera composers should have been doing for Opera.

You mean rip off Puccini so blatantly and shamelessly that Puccini's Estate sued and settle out of court?

[R30] it's not deplorables whining about the loss of their highbrow culture.

My signature was not a comment on OP's topic, but rather my own attitude towards the deplorables - they are responsible for themselves.

[quote]Gee, I wonder why your culture is dying. Who wouldn't want to seek it out and thus also be associated with the company of highbrows?

R54, what a silly attitude. There is a way to enjoy classical arts without spending a lot of money. There is no excuse for not knowing something about classical music or visual arts. I am not at all a highbrow, btw.

Yes R62. Anything to help people understand the beauty of Tosca, Boheme, Rosenkavalier, Trovatore, Samson/Dalila, Butterfly, Aida, Carmen, Götterdämmerung, Mastersinger, Tannhäuser, Ghosts of Versailles, Gatsby, Manon, both of 'em!

D'amato Opera died. And took a world with it.

I was one of the youngest people I knew who loved opera. I was first exposed to it in high school.

In college, I met a few others that enjoyed it, but the majority didn't care.

I'm 50 now. I'm the youngest one I know who goes regularly and that's not a good thing.

Sorry, heavy metal is far superior. And, I mean that.

Opera and musical theater, like ballet, are "sub-genres" of the classical arts, R108.

If you'd like to pick a different term, then go for it. But disagreeing on nomenclature doesn't invalidate my point.

"I also don't quite understand how you can presume to know so much about my experiences or opinions when all I gave was a classically (ha) brief and snarky DL-style post."

You don't understand many things. A person who understands the arts would show a great deal more consideration and respect for arts other than his own. They are all finally expressions of the creativity of your fellow man. Either you respect that, or you don't. You don't seem to.

It is clear that you are first a narcissist and second a musician. Good luck with three degrees in composition. You'll be a college teacher, if you're lucky. Enjoy Bloomington.

Yes, we know that ballet, opera, and symphonies can be wonderful experiences. The fact is they haven't at all caught the imaginations of people less than 50.

Sure young people may go to a summer concert of Carmen, but that's not driving them to rush to see LULU.

The classical arts are dying there is nothing new revitalizing the genre

In rural and flyover country where there may be no arts culture at all, if you're lucky, your cable system carries the MTV-like classical video clips of Classic Arts Showcase. This is a staple at my house on weekends. The clips are often ancient, but they include many 20th. century greats in historic performances.

Musicals are “classical arts?’

Dance and music is alive and well, just in different layers and combination of diversity more-so then ever before-Hamilton is a perfect example of that Dan and the art of dance repertoire is a performance group that brings a variety of dances. The only way art in this world would die is if the passion born to dance died at one's birth!

[quote]The pieces in the classical music library have already survived the vagaries of fashion. They will be with us forever.

There are plenty of classical composers nobody talks about anymore, likewise I am sure artists like Bowie, Queen or Aretha will stand the test of time beyond this century,

I wouldn't wish La Boheme on Hitler. God what a terrible opera.

R122 You need to listen to the opera a few times on CD at home before spending the big money seeing it live with surtitles.

The first act in 'Boheme' is the best. It trails off afterwards.

Have you seen silly Baz Luhrmann's silly modern version of it called 'Moulin Rouge'?

There was so much editing in MR I got a headache and had to turn it off.

R124 Yes, I'm R123, that's why I said it was silly.

Luhrmann is a confirmed drug-taker and he said he wanted to film 'Boheme' on heroin to catch the attention of the contemporary audiences who loathe the classical arts.

I have never met a Maria Callas fan.

John Adams - I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung

^ A wonderful modern opera!

Here in Las Vegas we have a pop Opera Company named Sin City Opera. It is opera without AL. The expensive things, like costumes a elaborate sets, but they concentrate on making opera assessable

Their current version of Paliacci is outrageous.

(forgive any dwelling am on eil phone)

R127 But you still need to listen to it a few times on CD at home to appreciate its wonderful rhythms.

I bought the LP box set of Nixon in China when I was a twenty something university student in the 1990s and I remember contemporary classical music being quite fashionable at the time. There was a lot of bad Twentieth Century art music I listened to before getting to Nixon in China. It was easy listening compared to Luigi Nono and Robert Ashley and much more interesting than most of the modernists I'd heard.

Yes r130, Nixon in China is a difficult listen at first.

I recommend Parsifal or Boris Godunov as an introduction to opera.

Thanks r132 I shall look them up.

Some gorgeous mid 1970s operatic gloom from Luciano Berio.

Dear god R133 I was joking!!!

Oh hahaha I'm listening to it now and I like it.

I just recently gotten into ballet and I’ve been obsessively watching the POB version of Sleeping Beauty with A. Dupont. Gorgeous and transporting!

I discovered the ballet back when I was in my early 20s, and have never lost my love for it. And I've taken some of my family and friends to the ballet with me as well, and everyone has loved the experience, although none of them would have gone in the first place if I hadn't asked them to join me.

with opera, there are still new, modern pieces being introduced. 'Fellow Travelers' has a plot regarding gay men during the McCarthy era. It was very well-reviewed, and did fine at the box office, and even had its world premier in my (conservative) Midwestern town (in 2016). 'Powder her Face' is a 1995 opera based on the life of the infamous 'Dirty Duchess' of Argyll. I see that it's had many performance in Europe, but not that many in the US. In much of the US, the nudity is problematic.

Sounds very interesting!

I love Opera but I rarely, if ever, pull out a Callas CD. I just don't like the sound (timbre) of her voice--too metallic.

That kind of voice sounds great when combined with excellent dramatic skllls, which Callas had. The problems is I never saw her on stage so I have trouble with just the voice alone. I don't have any problems with Scotto, who has a similar timbre because I've seen videos of her and she is a supreme dramatist as well.

For me, I go for the gorgeous timbred singers like Leontyne Price, Montserrat Caballe, Pavarotti. Even Pav doesn't sound as good on records as he did live in the opera house.

I hate watching opera or ballet on the TV or movie screen. They don't keep my interest in those formats, for some reason

The Opera House, a recent excellent documentary about the first season of the new Metropolitan Opera House (in the 1960's) will be shown on PBS this month (at least in NYC).

SEE IT!!

It has some great footage of that season. The real anchor of the documentary is the hilarious and insightful interview with Leontyne Price, now in her 90's. She starred as Cleopatra in Sam Barber's Antony and Cleopatra, which opened the new house. Price is just wonderful!

Opera and ballet. Snoozefest. 💤💤💤💤

[quote] There's no outlet for it on TV anymore. Networks used to show specials about composers. Ballet dancers used to be celebrities in their own rights as well as opera singers. They stopped doing that. Rosie O Donnell was really the last great patron of the arts on TV.

The contributions Rosie made to the worlds of opera and ballet are legendary.

“Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.”

― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

I for one will never forget when Rosie devoted an entire episode of her show to the Bolshoi Ballet's production of "Giselle," with Rosie herself dancing the title role. It was magical.

Me and my opera loving friends went through no effort to understand it. It was like listening to pop music where you are oh I like this.

But it was as I got older into my 20s whereas I know it happened for other people when they were much younger.

I heard a few arias that I liked so I started listening to more and then was astounded when I listened to entire works like Otello and Cosi.

I never got into being a balletomane but I did go to see Dances at a Gathering because it was so famous. I found it nice but dull. But the program ended with Stravinsky's Symphony in 3 Movements which I had never heard of. It simply was one of the most astounding things I had ever seen in my life. I was who the hell choreographed this?! It was a guy I had never heard of called Balanchine. I then became a City Ballet junkie going as many times a week as I could. But after he died and his dancers retired I stopped going.

I went a few times later to see his ballets but they were no longer there. Just his steps and they were boring. But when his own dancers were dancing it was like the summit of the arts. You can't have a Balanchine ballet without his dancers and they are all dead or retired. At least there are vintage videos on youtube but they only give you a glimpse of the impact these works. And to make his mark Martins(God he was the laziest dancer you ever saw) very quickly diluted the Balanchine style quicker than anybody thought possible. Bringing in lesser choreographers to do new works, his own ballets were lousy and estranging Balanchine's dancers who should have been teaching there. A wife beating, arrogant untalented at everything but flirting with powerful wealthy women individual.

[quote] I wonder how many on this thread have been in the orchestra seats for a N.Y. City Ballet, ABT, Paris Ballet or Bolshoi performance

I've been to the NYCB, Bolshoi, Mariinsky and London's Royal Opera House. And I haven't been back in years. Why? It's a universal problem. The tickets everywhere have become prohibitively expensive. Good stall seats at ROH used to be £50 - now they're over £100.

And there's no point getting ‘cheap’ (a.k.a. not outrageously expensive) nosebleed seats in the balcony. Because there’s no point watching a ballet through a pair of binoculars from outer space.

The stalls and grand tiers (the best seating for ballet) are dominated by grey-haired pensioners. Plus, some bankers with their trophy wives.

The repertoires have generally become very stale. It’s mostly the same thing over and over again. Yes, different dancers (nuances), but even that won’t make me go see “Mayerling” for a 15th time.

Some new ballets are good (though the majority of them are ‘meh’). But none are good enough to have the public feverishly talking about it (i.e. none are ‘must-see’ social-calendar events, even among the high society). Abstract ballets (Wheeldon) are interesting, but ballet needs new big narrative works that would grip the wider audience’s imagination (a.k.a. the 21st C “Swan Lake”). Neumeier tries, don’t know if he succeeds. The last modern works that were truly gripping were probably back in the 50s-60s-70s (Roland Petit’s ballets e.g. “Queen of Spades”, John Cranko’s “Onegin”, Yakobson’s “Spartacus” before that).

And ballet needs new (living, not dead) great composers to compose ballet scores for big-scale works. The last great one was probably Khachaturian (in the 50s). Without new iconic music, it’s hard to create new iconic ballets. They go hand-in-hand.

So, no, ballet is not dead – it just became more comatose / monotonous and not as creatively epic as it used to be. I can only imagine what it was like living at the time of Petipa (or even Balanchine), when they kept churning out masterpiece after masterpiece every few years.

I saw the Mark Morris Dance Troupe in a live performance and the seating was absolutely cramped and someone's head was blocking my view. (I'm 182 cms tall). Their skills were quite dazzling.

What about the legitimate theatre?!!! I'm concerned!

Is the term 'legitimate theatre' in any way relevant anymore?

I divide theatre in to 'popular theatre' and 'taxpayer-subsidised theatre'

i hate all things "art" and "classical". yuk. I like modern shit.

Yes, Stravinsky is very brave to revisit classical when the American negro "jazz" music is gaining popularity r152. We do live in an era of modern automotive velocity!

R151, "legitimate theater" is a reference to DL Goddess Arlene Francis and "What's My Line?," an American game show from the 1950's and 60's.

r154 typed r154 so I didn't have to.

To each their own, but it's pathetic that so many people who can't understand the appeal of art believe its primary draw must be snobbery and elitism... It's a facile way to dismiss what you don't understand.

Hyperallergic is pretty elitist.

What the fuck is wrong with being elitist? You want the person passed out in the gutter to lead the way? You would prefer millions of people glued to their televisions and stuck to their couches to lead the way?

Elite is something to which one can wisely aspire. May elitism always lead the way. And if everybody else left in its dust scratches their bellies and bitches about it, I'm fine with that.

I live in Vienna, Austria, one of the great meccas of classical music. There are several high-quality opera and concert venues here. I sometimes try to get tickets to something that strikes my fancy and it's not easy at all: low- and mid-priced tickets are often gone in a flash! Doesn't seem to me to be the sign of an art form nearing death.

Besides, as others have pointed out, patrons of classical have always tended to skew old. My parents too had only a very mild interest in it and only got really into it in their 60s.

R158 is right. It's not even elitism, it's general education. The old Eastern bloc had factory workers who went to ballets and concerts.

Opera might be a bit high-brow and inaccessible (because many operas are sung in Italian, French, Russian, German and the stories are convoluted, so people often don't follow what's happening). Subtitles in opera houses are just annoying: your eyes keep darting between the stage and the subtitle space, [italic]ad infinitum[/italic].

But ballet is (at least on the surface) a very basic art form. It's just pretty young people dancing. The stories are usually simplistic or very well-known (e.g. Romeo & Juliet). Even a blue-collar worker can appreciate that. And if he doesn't like the story & music, he can at least enjoy the half-naked eye candy prancing around.

The Soviets were quite clever in picking ballet as the main national art form. Because even a nation of peasants can 'get' ballet. And slowly but surely they brought everyone up to speed with the technique & French jargon. I was gobsmacked that even rough trucker-type guys there knew more or less what an [italic]arabesque / grand battement / plié / pas de deux [/italic] meant and that the Black Swan's famous [italic]fouettés[/italic] in Swan Lake consist of exactly 32 turns!

Classical music and ballet are only elitist in the US and England. In Italy, everyone and their son goes to see opera

The problem for audiences who only speak English is that there just aren't many legendary English operas, set to original English lyrics. There are some like Britten's "Billy Budd". But while I'm fond of Britten, he's probably not an easy, accessible composer for opera virgins.

One can appreciate opera without understanding a word, of course. But then you miss out on the urgency, emotions and wit contained in the lyrics. So you're prone to dose off, especially in-between arias, during the "recitative" (i.e. when the singers basically talk / chat with each other, and don't belt out songs).

The English Opera in London uses translated versions of all the classics. But some of the beauty of the arias is 'lost in translation'.

That's probably why the operetta (a.k.a. musical) became more popular in the US & England. They are original works, mostly in English - so they're easy for the audience to understand and follow.

Don't know about opera being that popular in Italy anymore. There aren't even any great Italian opera singers. It might have been true at one time but I don't believe young Italians have much interest in opera. Loud Euro pop is their thing. At one time you even had low class Italians and organ grinders playing popular opera tunes. This is no longer the case.

Remember even NY had City Ballet and City Opera had affordable seats for the middle and lower classes and that's been gone for quite awhile.

Ed Sullivan who had one of the most popular TV shows at one time regularly included classical performers.

One of the reasons there are so many bizarre disgusting regie theater productions of the classics in Europe is to gain attention because of producers feeling audiences might not go without controversy.

The classics have not become stale. The audience doesn't have the taste for them and the singers are simply not giving them the excitement and electricity they must have. That's why the standard rep had it's last flourishing in the 80s. These singers were still singing. They were able to drive people to delirium. And that's what opera used to do. It's supposed to create an altered state in the minds of the listener. That's what happened to me when I saw a Sutherland or Rysanek.

And there are never going to be great operas written again. The cultural and social conditions which allowed composers to write at this level of genius and brilliance no longer exist. Same with ballet. There will never be a choreographer again with simply the level of talent of a Petipa or Balanchine. Everything changes inevitably. Even the level of artistry.

The first opera I ever went to was La Traviata at the NYC Opera when I was in high school. I convinced my parents to buy me and my sister tickets--they were $15 and great seats.

It's a memory that will stick with me forever.

[quote] there are so many bizarre disgusting regie theater productions of the classics in Europe is to gain attention because of producers feeling audiences might not go without controversy.

This is so true. Some opera directors keep trying to shove weird scenes (blowjobs, etc) into old classics. For cheap publicity. One recent trend was to change an opera's stage setting literally to an insane asylum. So you'd have e.g. Violetta singing in a straight-jacket. It's funny, but it doesn't add anything to the existing work. Verdi et al must be turning in their graves.

If they want real scandal, they should look to creating smthg like "The Rite of Spring" (by Stravinsky / Nijinsky). The audience went berserk and walked out. The French theatre went bankrupt. It was in all the newspapers. But people caught up that it was a futuristic leap in classical music & ballet, they became enthralled. Despite its reputation, it's actually quite a melodic piece and very well-structured (i.e. it's not a complete jarring cacophony of sound, like some modern composers produce).

R165, We're all fucking sick seeing the same old classics the same old traditional way. Thankfully, the European directors have tried to shake things up. Admittedly, much of it is stupid but at least they try

If you are fucking sick of seeing classics in the traditional way as the composers and librettists intended and need the shock factor of nudity and violence in these works then you are bored and need to find another form of entertainment.

You need to hear these works with great singers. But there are none. Because there is no way they are going to be upstaged by gore and blow jobs.

R167 and another problem is we just don't have great singers. Sure, we have singers who sing the notes, but there's not passion, no danger. Everything is carefully and respectfully sung. BORING

R167, when the opera houses keep rotating the same 20 operas over and over, you get fucking sick of them no matter how they're staged.

It's better to keep the classics as they are, and compose smthg new. Verdi didn't tweak Mozart's "Requiem" - he took the same Latin text and composed his own "Requiem".

Even if the new work is bad, at least there's a chance one in a dozen might be good. Big opera houses simply became too financially risk-averse. They know that "The Sleeping Beauty" and "La Bohéme" generally sells. They take just a few minimal risks per one season or two (one big new work maybe, plus a few small one-act ballets), and that's about it. Very little PR or ads for new works.

If Hollywood had the same approach, we'd still all be watching "Gone with the Wind" and "Wizard of Oz", just with alternating actors in a revolving door. And just a few new films each year.

Ballet can be equally hilarious in how it approaches old works. I've been to some ballets which are smthg like "a new re-working!" of "Nureyev's re-working!" of Petipa's original work "Sleeping Beauty"! Basically, a version of a version of a version. Makes one's head spin. But essentially it's the same ballet, just with a few updates here and there in terms of choreography, lol.

Otto Schenk's productions were traditional but filled with imagination. I'll never forget the transition in Hoffman from the opening tavern scene to Hoffman's first story in Coppelius's workshop. Talk about a coup de theatre! And it was all staged to the polonaise which opens the scene. I was stunned. The Met's resident idiot Peter Gelb(who should be fired for the Levine scandal alone) got rid of it.

I also saw a traditional Faust at City Opera which was staged by Frank Corsaro which was set in medieval France but it was at times frightening and bizarre capturing its obsessive religiosity in an eerie way so that Marguerite's ascension walking up stairs to her death with the voices of the angels accepting her into heaven was so moving I was almost in tears. And I'm an atheist!

Of course now Faust is set in a nuclear power plant which is so evocative of the music and the story. . I listen at home now to great performances of traditional works. They do not bore me. Not when I'm listening to a Corelli, Callas, Tebaldi, Kraus, Bergonzi...

[quote]Ed Sullivan who had one of the most popular TV shows at one time regularly included classical performers.

It's hard to believe but there was a time when American prime time TV would make popular stars out of classical performers: Anna Moffo, Roberta Peters, Robert Merrill Beverly Sills, Patrice Munsell, Rise Stevens, Marilyn Horne, Edward Villella.... as a kid who watched "The Patty Duke Show" and "Gilligan's Island" I knew them all.

You'd even have comedians like Victor Borge playing a classical piece.

That shit is so boring. I don’t have time to waste on something so dull and unenjoyable.

Tell you what you listen to R174

Pity poor R174. Something is terribly wrong if the performance linked below is "so dull and unenjoyable."

yes, the Ed Sullivan Show had a season or so of presenting opera scenes. The viewership, however, was plummeting so Ed Sullivan wanted to stop. Rudolph Bing, the Director of the MET Opera, held Sullivan to the contract, which is why we have so many wonderful clips from that show.

Beverly Sills became a popular figure because she was so engaging on talk shows.

Ed also is the reason we can still see Vivien performing Wilkes Barre, PA.

Ed gave us Vivien dancing in Tovarich.

Bryn Terfel was pretty famous for an opera singer in the 1990s.

^ he is still singing.

^ He's no household name these days.

^ He's a household name in those households in which he was a household name in the 1990s.

Connoisseurs of singing don't forget.

None of your damned business.

I prefer symphonic and chamber music to opera. I probably go to fifteen or twenty concerts a year. Most are either free or very inexpensive, as I live near a music school.

Well my Russian friends seem to be doing just fine with ballet. So there's that.

The classical arts are no more expensive and often times less than (there are plenty of $20 tickets) a baseball or football game. Its just more people enjoy sports or find it more accessible.

The classical arts will not die; however, they may die in smaller cities. They are simply too expensive to produce. Symphony and opera artists, conductors, etc., get paid way too much. It's outrageous. A guest violinist at a symphony concert can get paid $50,000-$100,000 for a weekend. It's too much. No small city with a modest orchestra can sustain that. Symphony music directors get paid $300,000 and up. Again, too much for a medium size city to support with audiences not growing.

The classical performing arts need a number of exciting singers, orchestras, and conductors to elevate excitement for the art form.

Unfortunately there are too few today for it to make any difference.

Would anybody care to give examples of artists today who lead audiences into a frenzy?

A friend of mine tells me of nights where at the Met there'd be 45 minute ovations. These don't happen anymore. I went to a Horowitz recital where he got tired of coming out and kept telling us all to go home.

Nicely of course. Then he wouldn't come out anymore so we had to leave.

If there were more men dancing like the man starting at 5:55, attendance would go up.