Opera and (semi-)classical are doing damned well right now, but -- like I said -- basically in a tarted-up archivist's sense, pretty much just finding as many large-breasted blonde soloists as possible and soaring on guys like Boccelli, who just about no one with any knowledge of the art form thinks is particularly talented in the least. It's doing decently well as a kind of lifestyle music right now, which, yes, probably makes it more alive than usual. (Although maybe not -- surely this stuff is on a continuum with people buying millions of Mantovani records in the 50s and 60s, or endless film soundtracks during the 80s.) But for the most part I don't see people engaging with it in any kind of committed or analytical way, which is the whole teaching opportunity we're talking about -- it seems to me that the bulk of sales of this kind of stuff are going to people who were not previously interested in classical music, and then hit a certain age and found the top-40 stations were all hip-hop these days, and were suddenly taken with either throwing on some Norah Jones or dabbling in showy, easily digestable, stagily old-Europe classical.
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 1 December 2006 22:54 (seventeen years ago) link
Anyway, we really don't need to argue about exactly how popular and/or archaic opera is: my fairly minor point was that the formats we point schoolkids to in order to teach them about high art are ones that have significantly fallen off as the dominant or most current forms of the present. The top-level popular conception of high art consists mostly of stuff that's centuries old, to the point where for the average person, the concept of "artistically sophisticated" is more or less not distinguished from the concept of "very old and European and with fancy dresses."
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 1 December 2006 23:01 (seventeen years ago) link
the number of US adults who attended at least one opera performance in 2002 exceeded the number who attended at least one nickelback performance in 2006 many times over, and was twice the number of adults+kids who bought 2006's biggest selling album. the number of adults who experienced opera in some form during that year exceeded the number of adults+kids who have ever purchased an album by willie nelson, bob dylan, def leppard or the backstreet boys.
― nuneb (nuneb), Friday, 1 December 2006 23:02 (seventeen years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 1 December 2006 23:08 (seventeen years ago) link
more than half the operas in the standard repertoire are less than 150 years old, and about 30% are from the 20th century
― nuneb (nuneb), Friday, 1 December 2006 23:10 (seventeen years ago) link
that's attendance in one year compared to sales over as much as 40 years
― nuneb (nuneb), Friday, 1 December 2006 23:11 (seventeen years ago) link
well no, the whole point of high culture is that it isn't pop
― nuneb (nuneb), Friday, 1 December 2006 23:14 (seventeen years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 1 December 2006 23:18 (seventeen years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 1 December 2006 23:24 (seventeen years ago) link
more than triple, actually, but CFL attendance was more than three times that of Canadian opera attendance
― nuneb (nuneb), Friday, 1 December 2006 23:29 (seventeen years ago) link
'experience', actually, not attendance
― nuneb (nuneb), Friday, 1 December 2006 23:32 (seventeen years ago) link
― Ms Misery (MsMisery), Saturday, 2 December 2006 04:44 (seventeen years ago) link
― nuneb (nuneb), Saturday, 2 December 2006 05:31 (seventeen years ago) link
YES, WE KNOW SHAKESPEARE MADE A FEW KNOB JOKES. GET OVER IT.
― [electric sound of] esteban buttez (Estie Buttez), Saturday, 2 December 2006 05:34 (seventeen years ago) link
― nuneb (nuneb), Saturday, 2 December 2006 05:39 (seventeen years ago) link
― nuneb (nuneb), Saturday, 2 December 2006 05:42 (seventeen years ago) link
I WANT CHEAP SERIOUS ELITIST THEATRE!!
― [electric sound of] esteban buttez (Estie Buttez), Saturday, 2 December 2006 05:44 (seventeen years ago) link
er, nothing else to add, really. other than "nabisco OTM", but i feel such truisms should be banned from the sandbox and indeed from nuILX :)
― grimly fiendish (simon), Saturday, 2 December 2006 17:35 (seventeen years ago) link
― ian (orion), Saturday, 2 December 2006 23:08 (seventeen years ago) link
― remy bean (bean), Saturday, 2 December 2006 23:15 (seventeen years ago) link
― ian (orion), Saturday, 2 December 2006 23:16 (seventeen years ago) link
― remy bean (bean), Saturday, 2 December 2006 23:19 (seventeen years ago) link