Wednesday, January 25, 2006


Opera shoots itself in the foot - Tristan und Isolde in New York City only for the wealthy.

Opera don't let me down.
So says the New York City Opera fanatic, and rightly so!

Link to his article here:

Shame on Lincoln Center is reverberating throughout the operatic community...$500 for a ticket? $275 for the "cheap" seats?

(quote)
Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" is heading to an unusual venue — Manhattan's Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue.

Lincoln Center is presenting Peter Sellars' production at the unusual location in April and May 2007, and the cheapest ticket to view the entire opera will be $275.
(endquote)

Like my title says, opera shoots itself in the foot. And hey, how about that forced "donation"? Just because New York thinks of itself as the center of the opera world doesn't make it so. An art form developed by the Italians, and still popular in most European countries, only in the US can we manage to screw it up so phenomenally.

Where is Dennis Miller for a rant when we need him? If someone can explain to me how pricing tickets beyond the affordability of 90% of Americans is a smart marketing practice, especially if the ultimate goal is to ensure longevity of the art form, then WOD will happily step down form this soapbox.

Link to the original Armory press release/article on Yahoo.

Just kill me now, people, because this has wrong written all over it.

1 Comments:

Blogger KULA said...

The same people responsible for making going to sporting events a major financial decision. Not to say that I am equating sports and the art, but this is one of the draw backs of capitalism. It's not about the arts and the people, it's about maximizing profit. If you can sell out an event, you look at the maximum profit you can make and still sell out. In this case, the 10% are willing to pay that much for an opera, and have enough pretention to get it sold out. It's sad, but true. I know many people who have a true appreciation for the arts, and have never been able to afford going to an opera. It's very sad!

4:12 PM  

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