My friends, Natalia and Akshat, and I went to the opera tonight.
Natalia goes to the opera pretty much every other week and this was Akshat’s first time. While I’m nowhere near Natalia’s extreme, I’ve seen quite a few operas. As we sat in at the Metropolitan, Akshat asked about the average age of operagoers.
In my experience, the average age of opera viewers is in the forties. We tried to delve into the reasons of the lack of interest in younger people and we came up with some theories. The first issue that sprang to my mind is the cost. Good seats at the Met can go upwards of 150dollars. Natalia, rightfully, noted that our seats were a mere 25 dollars. Which might not sound high compared to the 150dollar Orchestra tickets, but 25 bucks is still quite a lot of money for some people.
Even if the opera were free, I still don’t think it would be popular among teenagers. I’m not exactly sure why. I can think of a few possibilities, but nothing that I can put eloquently enough to say (as opposed to my regular level of eloquence here). If we were to start stereotyping enough to say teenagers don’t like opera, we could also say the same thing about men. Most shots of men at the opera imagine the wife crying and the husband trying not to snore too loudly.
Obviously those are just stereotypes. But even stereotypes exist for a reason.
Almost every single opera has a ridiculously tragic and predictable plot. Here’s a run down of tonight’s plot: Gypsy puts a spell on man who has her killed because of it. Gypsy’s daughter wants revenge and grabs one of the sons of the man to burn him at the fire the gypsy was burned at. The daughter makes a mistake and burns her own son and so she keeps the other one and brings him up as if he were her own. The man has another son who grows up thinking his brother is dead. The other son is in love with this woman who, of course, falls in love with the brother. The man finds out about the woman loving the brother and after a lot of hoopla, the woman they were in love with drinks poison to sacrifice herself. So the son kills the brother and then the gypsy’s daughter tells him that the man he just killed was his brother. Tragedies galore. (the met’s synopsis in case mine left you extremely confused.)
So I can’t imagine anyone watches an opera for the enticing story, and from the seats we had the set is almost invisible. People look no bigger than ants. The only thing left is the music.
I’m not sure why others love or hate the opera, all I know is that I love it. I always have. The music pierces through my soul. I apologize if it sounds cheesy, but it really does. I feel totally engulfed and overwhelmed by it.
To me, opera is magic.
Previously? Motivations.
Leave a Reply