The Met Opera Is Struggling

[lennygoran]

Zachary Woolfe, Anthony Tommasini, Michael Cooper, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim and David Allen say the Met is still struggling and suggest various cures. Regards, Len


The Met Opera Is Struggling. How Can It Fill Those Empty Seats?

MAY 4, 2016


While there was plenty to celebrate artistically this season at the Metropolitan Opera — with several acclaimed new productions and memorable star turns — the company’s worrying box-office slump continued.

The Met was on track to take in only 66 percent of its potential box-office revenue through the end of the season on Saturday, company officials said, down slightly from the previous season. (Since some seats are discounted, attendance is projected to be 72 percent.)

Some weakness stemmed from factors beyond the Met’s control: Jonas Kaufmann, one of the last bankable stars in opera, withdrew from all his appearances this season, citing illness, and other opera companies are facing struggles of their own. But it is becoming a pattern.

It is a daunting house to fill. With 3,800 seats and 200 standing-room places, the Met is far bigger than most European houses, and it gave 225 opera performances this season, more than almost all of its peers. It sold an average of 2,869 seats per performance — more than enough to fill the 2,256 seats of the Royal Opera House in London or the Vienna State Opera, which can hold 2,284.

What to do? Channeling their inner impresarios, critics and reporters for The New York Times engaged in a little operatic spitballing, throwing out ideas — including some that the Met is experimenting with and others it might find off the wall — that could help fill the house again. MICHAEL COOPER
Treat the Young Like Royalty

Court the young, even more. Give operagoers in their teens and twenties not just the best seats at cheap prices but also steep discounts at the intermission bar. Create a club that offers exclusive access to rehearsals, meetings with directors and singers, and trips to performances elsewhere. Give them perks you don’t give your biggest donors. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM
Broaden the Repertory

Granted, this Met season has been unusually narrow: In 2015-16, 71 percent of performances have been of operas by Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti or Rossini. Heavier doses of Gounod, Massenet, Wagner and Strauss make 2016-17 appear somewhat better balanced, but not enough. While unusual repertory can be a tough sell, well-rounded offerings are essential to a sustainable future. The Met should start by edging more often into Eastern Europe: Janacek should appear every year, and Mussorgsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich deserve more than occasional outings. Then there’s the matter of time. The cavernous theater is a hindrance, admittedly, but Gluck and Handel ought to be mainstays, not rarities. And occasional forays into John Adams, alongside some Muhly and Adès commissions, aren’t nearly enough contemporary work. DAVID ALLEN
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Encourage Clubs

A few years ago, the president of an opera club at Columbia Law School asked if I would join members for one of their regular lunchtime meetings. When I showed up, to my amazement, there were some 150 students in attendance and an enormous stack of pizzas. The Met should actively assist and encourage clubs for opera lovers with shared interests. The Met could arrange discounted tickets for designated performances and even host receptions for the clubs with special guests, like singers from the young artists program who might perform a couple of arias. ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Sunday Performances

One seemingly simple way to draw bigger crowds: perform when it’s convenient for audiences. While other major opera houses, ballet companies and Broadway shows find that Sunday performances are among their most popular, the Met retains a longstanding never-on-Sundays schedule that dates back to the days of strict blue laws.

Many operagoers find weeknight performances difficult, especially for operas that last three hours or longer. An 8 p.m. start can be too late for older patrons and suburbanites who face long commutes after the final curtain. But earlier starts are tough for the many people who typically work much later than 5 p.m. — especially if they want to be able to eat dinner.

Sunday matinees would be simpler for people in both groups and could appeal to operagoers from further afield. Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, has suggested adding some Sunday performances, but he will need to win the agreement of the Met’s unions, whose workers often have punishing schedules and who agreed to concessions in their last contracts. And going dark on a weekday would cut into the Met’s already-cramped rehearsal schedules. MICHAEL COOPER
Artists in Residence

Every orchestra, it seems, has an artist in residence: In fact, the New York Philharmonic’s this season has been the bass-baritone Eric Owens. Why not the Met? Planning is tough, of course, but with enough lead time, why couldn’t a singer participate in three (or four, or five) productions over a season, as well as concerts, recitals, lectures? The more audiences know (and love) a performer, the more eager they’ll be to buy tickets to see her. ZACHARY WOOLFE
A Stagione System

There’s much to be said for the stagione system in use in many European opera houses, in which only one production runs at a time. This makes it easier to instill a sense of urgency in the public: Your chance to see a show is now or never. As a magnet for cultural tourists, some of whom travel to New York to see multiple operas over a few days, the Met is understandably reluctant to do this, and the house is set up to run several productions at once. But it would still make sense to link thematically related works into mini-festivals that encourage binge-watching, like a “Lulu”-versus-“Lucia” showdown of madwomen. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM
Further Festivals

One “festival” is already offered by the Met, although it’s a summer of HD screenings on Lincoln Center Plaza. And, admittedly, festivals can be used as tools for both progress and reaction: The New York Philharmonic has its new-music biennial, but also its Dvorak and Rachmaninoff celebrations. Even so, a festival during the main season — done properly — would let the Met draw attention to new productions while trotting out old ones, help it build excitement for unusual repertoire and give it an opportunity for collaboration with other, non-operatic institutions. Imagine a series looking at the Orpheus myth over time, from Monteverdi to Birtwistle. Or treatments of Shakespeare, balancing Verdi with Barber, Reimann and Adès. Think what could be done for the forgotten Romantics, like Korngold and Schreker. One could even contemplate a pageant of American operas. DAVID ALLEN
Be More Inclusive (More Often) ...

The holiday presentations of family-friendly operas — shorter, and in English — should be expanded across the season. Consider marketing the occasional matinee of a full-length opera to families, too, with clap-all-you-like rules and affordable snacks at intermission. While you’re at it, take a hint from the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, which has players hang out at the front of the stage during intermission to take questions from audience members. Send choristers in costume out to the lobbies to pose for selfies. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM
... And More Exclusive (Sometimes)

New Yorkers like to dress up: Get in on the game. The Met should mark the dates of Fashion Week and throw open its doors with gala performances that enforce a strict dress code. Invite a runway star to dress the entire cast of one production, with apologies to the regular costume designer, then auction off the clothes. Don’t let the other Met and its Costume Institute steal all the paparazzi attention. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM
Gut the Restaurant

Why is it that audiences linger after performances at, say, the Park Avenue Armory, while they rush out of the Met? It’s because there’s no comfortable, exciting space at the opera house to sit down, chat, have unexpected run-ins. My idea? Throw out the overpriced, mediocre Grand Tier Restaurant and replace it with something like the Smith, across Broadway: Moderately priced, a little rambunctious and open (including after the opera) for food (that includes both filet mignon and burgers), drinks (that includes both Champagne and beer) and good coffee. ZACHARY WOOLFE
Citywide Collaborations

The company might select a couple of offerings each season and turn them into citywide cultural collaborations. It’s moving a bit in this direction next season for the company premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s “L’Amour de Loin.” The Philharmonic will tie performances of Saariaho works at the Park Avenue Armory to the Met run. But couldn’t the two Mets (opera and museum) have worked on an exhibition on Christian troubadours from Aquitaine and religious art from Tripoli, the two locales this 12th-century story shifts between? How about asking early music ensembles to perform troubadour songs?
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How about Verdi’s “Otello,” which returned this spring in time for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death? Imagine high school English teachers in the city, with the support of the Met, using this run as a chance to compare Shakespeare’s tragedy with Verdi’s opera and then taking students to the free dress rehearsal. ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Make It Affordable

Even in the higher altitudes of the opera house, tickets are still quite expensive — especially when it comes to enticing new generations who may be iffy on the whole idea of giving opera a try. On many nights this season, the house seemed to sell out from the top down, with the least expensive tickets disappearing first. Prices currently range from $25 to $480, but the average is $158.50.

The company does have more discounted options than ever — there are $25 rush tickets, student ticket offers, “Fridays Under 40” discounts — but many of them place the onus on operagoers to figure them out, and some, like rush tickets, require a degree of last-minute flexibility that is hard for people who need to, say, engage babysitters or plan ahead. And costly tickets make it harder for opera fanatics — people who not only want to see many different operas each year but also often want to see the same opera more than once, to revel in a favorite singer or compare alternate casts.

What to do? Ticket revenues account for an increasingly small percentage of the cost of actually mounting operas. In a perfect world, perhaps a very deep-pocketed donor could be enticed to make a transformational gift that would allow the Met to cut its prices across the board. That would allow fanatics to go more often. More realistically, the Met could use the information available in most ticket purchases — perhaps the credit card numbers and email addresses people use when they buy tickets online — to offer first-time operagoers the chance to purchase, say, half-price tickets anywhere in the house. That could help groom future fanatics. MICHAEL COOPER
There Should Be an App for That

Create a loyalty app that allows users to check in every time they visit. Add in a morning-after quiz element that rewards close attention — to a detail of a character’s costume, a witty translation in the Met titles or a line in the program notes. Award bonus points for arcane trivia, frequent visits and thorny or new works. Make participation the entry requirement for lotteries that offer lavish prizes, like a parterre box for a night, a private dress fitting in the costume department or a chance to shadow a director for a day. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM
Watch the Clock

One option that would offend many die-hard opera fans but might entice more newcomers: a little judicious cutting of operas, to make things flow a bit faster onstage and make it easier for audiences with too few hours in the day to find time for opera.

Shakespeare’s plays are rarely performed uncut. But in opera, the trend in recent decades has been toward fewer cuts and treating scores as sacrosanct. To get people out at a reasonable hour, many opera companies, including the Met, now have fewer intermissions. Another option would be to cut the operas. The Met sometimes does this for its shortened, English-language holiday presentations aimed at families, which whittle down works like Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” and Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” to two hours or less. While some gorgeous music gets left on the cutting-room floor, the shortened operas are often among the most popular offerings of the year — and draw quite a few adults who are unaccompanied by children. MICHAEL COOPER
A New Musical Leader

After years of illness and cancellations, James Levine, the Met’s longtime music director, has finally retired. Now, the company has a chance to nab a vibrant replacement who has technical chops, intriguing ideas about repertory, a taste for the new and a connection to the city and its cultural life. I’m thinking of the kind of leader you might see on a night off at National Sawdust or even Terminal 5. ZACHARY WOOLFE

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/arts/ ... ctionfront

[maestrob]

$158.00 average ticket price? No wonder attendance is down!

Sunday performances are a good idea: the MET could go dark on Mondays instead.

The MET, like Carnegie Hall, is locked into inflationary expenses while the rest of the world is suffering layoffs and salary cuts. It's no wonder attendance is down. Offering student performances of smaller-scale operas outside the MET house would give singers in the Young Artists' program experience and draw in new audiences the way NYCO used to do, while offering those same students discount packages arranged through music departments (or even free tickets) would help fill the back orchestra seats in the main house.

In my book, it's all about outreach........

[lennygoran]

Sunday performances are a good idea: the MET could go dark on Mondays instead..

Brian this would be fine by me-one thing that would really hurt Sue and myself would be this:

"A Stagione System

There’s much to be said for the stagione system in use in many European opera houses, in which only one production runs at a time. This makes it easier to instill a sense of urgency in the public: Your chance to see a show is now or never. As a magnet for cultural tourists, some of whom travel to New York to see multiple operas over a few days, the Met is understandably reluctant to do this, and the house is set up to run several productions at once." We love to come into for 3 or 4 days and see at least a few operas on the same trip.

Just my luck they might institute this and NYC would put in a residency requirement for parking--I haven't paid for parking in NYC for many years now! Regards, Len [proud New Jerseyite]

[John F]

I don't see the point of such an article just two weeks after the same newspaper published a report that the Met finished 2015 in the black to the tune of $1 million, and "Standard & Poor’s affirmed the company’s “A” credit rating and revised its outlook to stable from negative."

The Met and all nonprofit musical organizations have struggled since the financial meltdown about a decade ago, and Peter Gelb's initiatives - doubling the number of new productions per season, the worldwide HD transmissions - did not come cheap. But the HD transmissions are now profitable in $$$ and every other way, and most of the new productions (the Lepage Ring is the obvious exceptions), like them or not, are cheaper to run and maintain than the behemoths they replaced.

As for the various writers' suggestions, I don't see any that amount to much. Seems to me they reflect each writer's personal tastes and preferences rather than a coherent vision of the company's mission and a plan for achieving it that's likely to succeed. Some - those involving cheaper tickets - would put the Met back in the red with little prospect of a positive result. Others, such as cutting some operas so people can get to bed earlier, are disrespectful of opera as an art form and not merely an entertainment. To me, it all reflects the sadly shallow state of the Times's classical music staff, if this is the best they collectively can offer.

What is needed, and it will require an extensive and in-depth formal survey, is find out why the Met's average attendance has fallen to 66%. Allowing for inflation, the $158 average ticket price is the equivalent of $16 in 1950; is that really more than 1950's actual average price? For two decades, the Met has made a point of giving its first performances of lesser known operas both old and new; is the repertory off-putting? Very few singers today can sell out the house as Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti used to; is it that today's talent, however excellent in its own way, lacks star power? What other factors are either less attractive or more off-putting since the days when the Met's attendance was in the 90%s? And what, if anything, can be done about it?

[lennygoran]

I don't see the point of such an article just two weeks after the same newspaper published a report that the Met finished 2015 in the black to the tune of $1 million, and "Standard & Poor’s affirmed the company’s “A” credit rating and revised its outlook to stable from negative...To me, it all reflects the sadly shallow state of the Times's classical music staff, if this is the best they collectively can offer.... What other factors are either less attractive or more off-putting since the days when the Met's attendance was in the 90%s? And what, if anything, can be done about it?

Yeah as I read the article it seemed to me they were talking off the top of their head and maybe having a fun time-the only solution I can think of is more Donizetti and Rossini and breaking the deal to bring calixto bieito's la forza del destino here in 2017/18! Regards, Len

[THEHORN]

I don't think "narrowness " of repertoire is a problem at the Met . In fact, they've been doing a more diverse and interesting mix of operas than they have in ages , despite the current season, which has been rather conservative but not without interesting works by any means .
In the course of any given season, the Met does operas ranging from Handel and Mozart to John Adams, Nico Muhly , Philip Glass , and Thomas Ades , with everything in between .
The repertoire staples by Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Donizetti and Bizet etc are still a major part of the repertoire , but they have also done quite a few operas you would not have expected them to do in the past ;
Moses& Aron, War & Peace, The Gambler, The Nose, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk , Hamlet by Thomas, From the House of the Dead , Prince Igor, Attila, Rossini's La Donna Del Lago, Le Comte Ory,
Armida, and Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa and Iolanta, Sly by Wolf-Ferrari, La Juive, Cyrano de Bergerac by Franco Alfano and now the three Donizetti operas abut Queen Elisabeth etc .
Next season will feature the first performances of Guillaume Tell at the Met in over 80 years , L'Amour de Loin by Kaaia Saariaho , the first opera buy a man composer at the Met in over a century among other things . And they are doing their SECOND production of Dvorak's Rusalka .

[Len_Z]

I agree that the main reason for the declining attendance is the lack of true stars. For instance, Netrebko and Kaufmann usually sell out the house, but without them it's practically half empty.

I'm not sure it's fixable, though, but the Met just needs more good singers. Where to find them? - that is the question.

[John F]

One of the Met's artistic advisors is Ioan Holender, whom some may recognize as the former director of the Vienna State Opera for 18 years, and before that the head of a major European artists' management company for more than 20. I assume he's their man in Europe, as Roberto Bauer was for Rudolf Bing. The Met couldn't have a more experienced and better connected talent scout, so I assume that we aren't missing out on any worthwhile singers, let alone stars, who are suitable for the Met's repertoire and willing to come to New York. (Quite a few singers are not one or the other.)

[lennygoran]

The repertoire staples by Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Donizetti and Bizet etc are still a major part of the repertoire , but they have also done quite a few operas you would not have expected them to do in the past

I always enjoy it when they bring in operas they haven't done in years or even never-still why so long for Roberto Devereux -it's hard to believe! Regards, Len

[John F]

The Met waited even longer for Mozart's "Idomeneo," an incomparably greater opera than that Donizetti thing.

If you look at the Met's history, it has gone through phases of catching up with important repertoire. During the '50s and '60s, Rudolf Bing filled in some gaping holes in the Met's Verdi and Richard Strauss; beginning in the '70s and '80s, it finally brought Berlioz's operas to its stage. Joan Sutherland's stardom brought Donizetti's "La Fille du Régiment" badk into its active bel canto repertory, but she didn't sing any of Donizetti's Tudor trilogy, so they had to wait until another star, Anna Netrebko, wanted to take them on. Without powerful advocates in the house, singers and/or conductors (i.e. James Levine), you're just a voice in the wilderness.

By the way, did you see the Donizetti Tudor operas when City Opera presented them in exemplary stagings with Beverly Sills leading the cast, and in later revivals with other singers? You have to be ready when opportunity strikes.

[lennygoran]

>The Met waited even longer for Mozart's "Idomeneo," an incomparably greater opera than that Donizetti thing. <

I regard Idomeneo as a masterpiece but it just can't top Donizetti's work!


>By the way, did you see the Donizetti Tudor operas when City Opera presented them in exemplary stagings with Beverly Sills leading the cast, and in later revivals with other singers? You have to be ready when opportunity strikes.<

No I wasn't into opera then-ironically Sue may have seen some of those-she had a subscription then with a friend-I started dating her in the early 1970's and would meet her after the NYCO operas ended and then we'd start our date-she suggested I give opera a try-my first opera was La Boheme which we enjoyed together-the rest is history! Regards, Len

[arepo]

Len..

you said, "I'm not sure it's fixable, though, but the Met just needs more good singers. Where to find them? - that is the question."

Here are some current artists at the Met, beyond Kaufmann and Netrebko who I would respectfully suggest are far more skilled than "good singers".

Tenors.. Fabiano, Calleja, Beczala, Polanzani, Hymel, Cammerana, Flores, Brownlee, Alvarez, Vargas, Villazon

Sopranos..Gheorghiu, Fleming, Radvanovky, Yoncheva, Opolais, Meade, DiDonato, Georke, Barton, Blythe, Garanca, Graham, Meier, Zajick

I'd stack this group against any in the recent past for the ability to sing roles at the highest level.

Solving the Met's problems has nothing to do with the lack of superb singers able to perform the operatic repertoire.

Best regards,

cliftwood

[John F]

It's not about skilled singers, important though they are. It's about star singers who can fill the house night after night, season after season, many of them famous beyond the operatic faithful. Your list of singers does include a few stars, such as Renée Fleming (who is about to sing her last opera performances), but not many.

[lennygoran]

Len..

you said, "I'm not sure it's fixable, though, but the Met just needs more good singers. Where to find them? - that is the question."

Cliftwood there must be a misunderstanding somewhere-I never said that about the singers-I like most of the singers we hear at the Met. Regards, Len

PS-I do hate alot of these updated productions though.

[John F]

That's the other Len, Len_Z.

[Len_Z]

Len..

you said, "I'm not sure it's fixable, though, but the Met just needs more good singers. Where to find them? - that is the question."

Here are some current artists at the Met, beyond Kaufmann and Netrebko who I would respectfully suggest are far more skilled than "good singers".

Tenors.. Fabiano, Calleja, Beczala, Polanzani, Hymel, Cammerana, Flores, Brownlee, Alvarez, Vargas, Villazon

Sopranos..Gheorghiu, Fleming, Radvanovky, Yoncheva, Opolais, Meade, DiDonato, Georke, Barton, Blythe, Garanca, Graham, Meier, Zajick

I'd stack this group against any in the recent past for the ability to sing roles at the highest level.

Solving the Met's problems has nothing to do with the lack of superb singers able to perform the operatic repertoire.

Best regards,

cliftwood

I respectfully disagree. Out of all the tenors that you mentioned there's not a single star comparable to, let's say, Pavarotti, let alone Bergonzi or Corelli. Villazon's career is over (he's now directing opera); Alvarez and Vargas do not impress me at all.

As for the women (some of whom are btw mezzos, not sopranos), I have given up on most of them ages ago - they are just too old and their better days are long gone.

I love Radvanovsky & Goerke and like Barton & Yoncheva quite a lot, but their ability to fill the seats is at best questionable. Netrebko and Kaufmann remain the only two singers on the Met roster that can do that consistently. Who knows, maybe if Stoyanova, Harteros, Persson, Volle and some other European opera stars were performing here more often, the Met would have been a tad better off financially. Who knows?:)

[John F]

I think it's important to keep in mind that the American opera audience is not the same as the opera audience in Italy or Germany or even the United Kingdom. So it may be that here, star power in opera is less, well, powerful as a box office draw than elsewhere, and than it used to be here. This is one of many things the Met - or, more broadly, OperaAmerica, which represents opera companies all over the country - needs to find out, not merely to guess at.

The Met's audience isn't all the same thing either. Tourists from Europe and Asia have long been a significant presence; is that changing? When Russian operas are being performed, or certain Russian singers are performing, I hear a lot of Russian being spoken in the audience, doubtless reflecting the wave of Russian immigration in the last generation or two. Demographic information like this is available to the Met in its database of ticket sales - not cash sales, of course, but subscriptions, credit card sales, and mailing lists. How to exploit it calls for imaginative approaches; whatever one may think of Peter Gelb, imagination is one thing he's certainly not short of.

[lennygoran]

That's the other Len, Len_Z.

John thanks for clearing that up--I'm relieved-as my memory gets worse I sometimes can't even remember if I said something or not. Regards, Len

[maestrob]

Sad to say, even though great singers still exist, they are not feted the way opera stars were even 30 years ago (see Pavarotti/Domingo, Horne, Sutherland, Freni,etc.). Opera stars are no longer part of our cultural center, the way they were at that time. THAT's why attendance is down: it's simply a lack of interest. Don't blame the singers, many of whom are still great: blame the dumbing-down of our society and the lack of music appreciation courses.

When I was a lad in HIgh School, we had free balcony seats to the Philadelphia Orchestra (then led by Ormandy) and my French teacher was a bass-baritone who organized opera concerts at the school featuring himself as well as annual trips to NY to the then brand-spanking new MET (I saw Faust & Carmen on those trips). Does anything like that exist any more here in NY?

Opera and classical music in general in America will only prosper again when interest at the grass-roots level returns.

[John F]

I know what a strong advocate you are for today's singers, and that's fine. But the lack of star singers today is not merely about Americans' ignorance, or their perception or lack of it. It's about the singers themselves as well. If they don't have It - whatever It may be - they aren't really stars.

Pavarotti had It in superabundance, not just in his voice but in his personality. Many of his fans had little or no interest in opera; one of them was my sister-in-law's mother. It was Pavarotti who made "Nessun dorma" a hit among the musically illiterate; when Andrea Bocelli sang at the soccer champions Leicester's stadium, that's what he sang. Pavarotti was the one of the Three Tenors who made their concerts and recordings such an amazing popular phenomenon. This had nothing to do with schooling in music appreciation; nobody had to be taught to appreciate him.

Stars of that magnitude have always been scarce; Caruso was certainly one of them. But there have always been singers who were stars to those who care about opera - who, I believe, are mostly self-taught, as I was, rather than products of music education. When I was growing up the undoubted star sopranos included Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi, and a little later Birgit Nilsson and Joan Sutherland. Such singers were a reminder that "fan" is short for "fanatic." Who are today's singers that inspire such fanaticism?

[Chalkperson]

Sad to say, even though great singers still exist, they are not feted the way opera stars were even 30 years ago (see Pavarotti/Domingo, Horne, Sutherland, Freni,etc.). Opera stars are no longer part of our cultural center, the way they were at that time. THAT's why attendance is down: it's simply a lack of interest. Don't blame the singers, many of whom are still great: blame the dumbing-down of our society and the lack of music appreciation courses.

When I was a lad in HIgh School, we had free balcony seats to the Philadelphia Orchestra (then led by Ormandy) and my French teacher was a bass-baritone who organized opera concerts at the school featuring himself as well as annual trips to NY to the then brand-spanking new MET (I saw Faust & Carmen on those trips). Does anything like that exist any more here in NY?

Opera and classical music in general in America will only prosper again when interest at the grass-roots level returns.

I agree completely, there are 'famous' opera stars, but they are not Superstars like the ones John Mentions.

Times have changed, you and I move onwards, John remains stuck in the past.

Opera will never regain popularity at it's previous level, Opera is spectacle, the kids of today pay far less and go to Taylor Swift concerts instead.

[lennygoran]

the kids of today pay far less and go to Taylor Swift concerts instead.

Chalkie I'm not disagreeing but inquiring since I know nothing about these concerts-are the tickets for the rock concerts cheap-it seems the stars make a fortune but maybe it's not from the concerts-certain seats at the Met seem pretty cheap but there are expensive ones too-I think a lot of Broadway tickets are pretty pricey? Regards, Len