Thread: "Opera audiences are notoriously conservative"

Richard Gill talks about modern Australian operas.

The challenge with opera today is, significantly an economic one, as well as one of musical aesthetics. Literally there are tens of thousands of operas ever composed from Monterverdi to today. Mounting an opera production is, as it always was in the past, notoriously expensive. Would it not make economic sense to mount an opera that would have highler likelihood of making at least some financial sense, and bearing in mind that the funding of opera would partially come from donations/subsidies? Unfortunately, based on this reality financial sense check, the core opera repertoire gets a far bigger frequency count that lesser known and never before mounted productions, from the Baroque to new operas composed today. This in itself leads to so-called "conservatism"; as audiences, which are a limited bunch to begin with, almost certainly expect a Mozart-Da-Ponte opera every year, almost conditioned to this expectation, whereas even a Handel opera (from over fourty to choose from), or one that was written within less than three years ago, would hardly face a probable chance. Note that I am not suggesting Mozart-Da-Ponte operas do not deserve the frequent mounting that they do; I love every minute of these works. Rather, it is the financial decision making basis on which these operas are done, that gives an imbalanced repertoire, which in turn makes it harder for lesser known works be mounted, even earlier ones by Mozart. Unless we don't care about the finance, in which case the opera company will eventually be financially ruined, and there were numerous examples of such in operatic history.

Even Mozart operas do not break even - so what chance for operas out the repertory? For some companies - their idea of something new is Lucio Silla or Cenerentola.

Yes, I think my local company think they are breaking the mold with Xerxes last year and The Bartered Bride this year.

There remains a massive interest in the old favourites

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/vide...debourne-video