Edutopia - October/November 2008 - (Page 20)

HeadofClassJCulture mendable, that approach wasn’t suf⇒cient to signi⇒cantly increase the young audience. And with the shrinking of school music budgets, opera houses could no longer depend on teachers to introduce classical music to the kids who would eventually become the paying public. When Peter Gelb took over the Met in 2006, he declared that if opera didn’t become more accessible, it was heading for extinction. Gelb quickly hired ⇒lm director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, Cold Mountain) to guide Puccini’s Madama Butter⇓y. New Tools for Old Tunes The very technology that was crowding out opera has been adopted to create buzz and new enthusiasts. Gelb borrowed techniques from Opera Hits a High Note A great musical form ⇒nds ways to create young fans. By Carol Pogash B y 2000, opera in America was a dying art. While thousands crowded into sports stadiums to hear rock and roll’s golden oldies, audiences for the greatest hits of Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini were a sea of gray hair. Though younger generations still produced ⇒ne singers and dedicated musicians, interest in such classics as La Bohème and Don Giovanni—and even modern works based on contemporary literature— seemed con⇒ned to the Social Security set. But then came the revolution: Opera saw the future, and realized drastic action was needed. Today, fans can catch high-de⇒nition simulcasts of productions by New York City’s Metropolitan Opera in nearly 800 movie theaters worldwide, including some in the Czech Republic, Puerto Rico, Sweden, even at a kabuki theater in Japan. If they want to attend opening night free, they can watch a live simulcast of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in Times Square. The chances for teachers and parents to make the opera-student connection affordably and in more familiar ways are on the increase. As Karen Karp, the Met’s marketing director, puts it, “We now deliver entertainment to you in ways you’re more accustomed to, in order to soften the barrier.” On the Really Big Screen Longtime fans and newbies alike can cheer great performances on the Jumbotron at the San Francisco Giants’ AT&T Park or revel in Rigoletto on a huge screen at the city’s Civic Center plaza. The Met and other American opera houses are expanding their bases and offering opera to the people with the hope that many of them will be younger than the typical audience and in time will rejuvenate opera’s fan base. “True demographic change takes a lot of time,” Karp says. “It’s not going to happen in two years; it’s a ⇒ve- to ten-year effort.” A century ago, opera was considered popular entertainment. In recent years, however, with ticket buying on the wane and competition from a vast variety of entertainment, the venerable form seemed as doomed as Madama Butter⇓y. A Metropolitan Opera House survey from 1999–2000 found the subscriber’s average age was sixty; ⇒ve years later, the ⇒gure had increased to sixty-⇒ve. For generations, opera houses reached out to schoolchildren, through music courses and seats at dress rehearsals, but, however com- television sports (for the running cameras) and rock and roll (for the simulcast technology that brought a 2003 David Bowie concert to three continents). Julie Borchard-Young, once head of international marketing for Sony and now director of worldwide high-de⇒nition distribution for the Met, says that this year, the New York company will simulcast to nearly thirty countries, including Estonia and Finland. If this approach can serve as a template for other opera companies, the results could be impressive. Last year, the Met sold 850,000 opera house tickets, but its simulcast sales totaled almost a million. The price of entry for the simulcast is reasonable, making student and teacher attendance far easier. In the United States, adult tickets for “Opera at the Movie Theater” sell for $22 ($15 for kids). During intermissions, both the San Francisco and New York operas pre– sent backstage interviews, talking not only with stars but also with unseen cast members, 20 EDUTOPIA OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2008

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Edutopia - October/November 2008 Contents UpFront Feedback Dispatches Sage Advice Ask Ellen Head of Class Cool Schools Design: Lessons from the Mall The Bucks Start Here Go Global: Virgil Rocks Big Ideas: Powerful Learning Mapping Their Futures Heart & Soul Pop Quiz: Suze Orman

Edutopia - October/November 2008

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