Thinking about the topic, I can think of at least a couple of cool resources that could be used to plug opera to wider audiences:
- 'The Doctor' from Star Trek Voyager
- Bohemian Rhapsody, of course
- Just about all of 'Bat Out of Hell'
Those 3 sell me on opera.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Fred Rogers was also the best marketing I've ever seen for ballet. He introduced ballet as something his friend Lynn Swann did for fun. It was impossible to learn any old stereotypes when the first person we see dancing is a football player.
I think I disagree with the article's implication that opera is a European art form, and Americans have rejected it in favor of native musical theatre. You're a bit closer with your observation that the marketing is terrible. There's also some truth in Gelb's observation that there's "a cultural and social rejection of opera as an art form", though I'd say most of the performing arts are suffering today in America, not just opera.
Most of all, I suspect there simply isn't any great American opera to be performed. I'm not even a big opera fan (I saw one dress rehearsal when I was a kid, and I own one opera on CD), yet I can name a dozen German and Italian operas off the top of my head. Outside of The Neighborhood of Make-Believe, and before reading this article, I'd have had difficulty naming even one. Where's the American Wagner, or Verdi? Probably smart enough not to call their work an "opera", I bet.
This is by design. Performance troupes rely on a very small number of extremely wealthy patrons and so, consequently, you cater to those tastes exclusively and you dare not risk upsetting them with something controversial.
It's one of the reasons why you so rarely hear things like the "Bernstein Mass", for example.
It also doesn't help that concert tickets for "classical" events like this are ferociously expensive. For a something that I may only marginally like--I'm coughing up almost $100+. I can see one of my absolute favorite artists for less than that. And a lot of music festivals have weekend tickets that are less than some classical thing that may only be marginally interesting.
> Probably smart enough not to call their work an "opera", I bet.
Pretty much exactly--for America it's a "musical" or "Broadway". "Hamilton" sure seems relevant and doing well, for example. "Rent" was supposed to be a modern "La Bohème". etc.
That's common knowledge, I admit, but I just checked and at least in Seattle today, it's actually backwards. Seattle Opera tickets for the upcoming "The Turn of The Screw" (in English and with subtitles, in case anyone is worried!) are $25 to $314. The Seattle Symphony this Thursday is $22 to $122. Those starting prices are only a couple bucks more than a movie (Cinerama: $18.50).
It's pop music that's crazy expensive: Childish Gambino tickets for next weekend are $114 to $589. Festivals aren't necessarily any better: Bumbershoot tickets last month were $130 (single day) to $775.
I would say it's definitely a marketing problem when even people who might consider going to a concert assume that tickets are several times more expensive than they really are. $25 tickets are not aimed at 'extremely wealthy patrons', yet SO and SS ads don't mention tickets or do anything to dispel the myth of high prices.
On the other hand I could imagine cutting down Janelle Monae’s “Archandroid” cycle to a couple of hours of gloriously and uniquely American sci-fi flavored sung narrative. It’d need some reworking to come to a satisfying conclusion but there’s already several hours of songs and a lot of story to pare it down from.
On the gripping hand, I wonder how a Classic Opera would fare if you translated the lyrics and restaged it with a Touring Broadway Musical budget? It sounds like half of the problems of the opera companies discussed in this article come from having a stage that makes all but the most grandiose productions feel lost, and ticket prices that rule out all but a tiny percentage of humanity. That’s just not sustainable.
(The other 1/3 is probably "Vesti la Giubba" from Pagliacci which seems to be in EVERY single mobster movie ever made ...)
Carl Stalling, Warner Brothers' music director, was a genius.
[0]: https://www.santafeopera.org/opera-blog/post/2018/august/com...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL2ODmcB5hE
Edit: more Jon Vickers:
It works for any new style of music.
On your original point, even discordant music can grow on you. Pino Forastiere uses a lot of dischord and I didn't like it at all at first. But I let it play out a bunch of times as there were so many other good qualities that I loved about the album. It didn't take long to start understanding what he was trying to do with the dichord and from there it made sense and I could hear it in context and enjoy it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIjOifRG-u8
I would totes go to see that.