School leavers should know how to cook a meal, handle domestic finances, take part in a debate, enjoy the theatre and use the internet.

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."

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.

more than half the operas in the standard repertoire are less than 150 years old, and about 30% are from the 20th century

that's attendance in one year compared to sales over as much as 40 years

well no, the whole point of high culture is that it isn't pop

more than triple, actually, but CFL attendance was more than three times that of Canadian opera attendance

'experience', actually, not attendance

YES, WE KNOW SHAKESPEARE MADE A FEW KNOB JOKES. GET OVER IT.

I WANT CHEAP SERIOUS ELITIST THEATRE!!

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 :)