Let the Thesis writing begin!

I can hardly believe I am at that point where I have to ACTUALLY begin my thesis!  Wow, this really snuck up on me fast. So much has changed in a year and half about how I view the arts world.  My interests, though varied, have collected around the topic of opera and classical music.  More specifically, how they will survive and adapt to 21st century culture and technology.  Thus, the topic of my thesis…

My proposal is this:

Ever since Baumol and Bowen wrote in the 1960s about the inherent “cost disease” facing every non-profit arts organization, there has been a lot of focus on how performing arts organizations can increase their revenue, both earned and contributed, to offset this inherent flaw in their business model.  However, there is only so much donor money to go around and only so much ticket prices can go up before you completely isolate a majority of your audience.  With earned revenue still only accounting for approximately 50-60% of income (sometimes even less), and with reports of governments slashing and/or eliminating arts budgets, endowments losing their overall value, and foundations and corporations more heavily scrutinizing their giving, what creative ways are opera companies using to maintain artistic quality while also cutting costs?  Also, what efforts are there to better educate the average opera patron of the inherent flaw in the earned income/cost ratio, and the need for individual giving to sustain the art form?

It’s a daunting subject, but “doable” according to my thesis advisor.  (I have at least one cheerleader!)

I think this topic is valuable to the field of opera.  I have seen a lot recent writing around creative cost-saving measures.  A few examples that come immediately to mind are the use of projections in place of scenery, using the same core set structure for multiple operas in repertoire, the utilization of various social media techniques to take the place of more expensive traditional and expensive marketing campaigns, and the utilization of “demand pricing” – the same way airlines determine ticket prices.

This certainly will be the most daunting writing assignment of my life, but one that I am certain will discover numerous other creative cost saving measures, educate the public, and act as a conversation starter amongst my colleagues in the opera field.

Happy writing!

 

Rural Opera in Upstate NY

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am spending the summer as the artistic intern at Glimmerglass Opera.  To recap, Glimmerglass is a summer-only opera company.  Nestled in the remote wildnerness just outside Cooperstown, New York, the company annually presents innovative and new stagings, as well as rarely performed operas.  A significant aspect of their artistic talent is comprised from members of the their Young American Artist Program (YAAP).  This program annually brings in the best of new U.S. talent.

This season’s Young Artists, or “YAAPs” as they are lovingly referred to within the company, arrived just this week.  This year there is a larger than usual number; 36 singers and 2 coaches/accompanists.  They come from all different parts of the country, with varying educational and experiential backgrounds.  The one thing that unifies them all is that they are the few chosen from an applicant pool of over 800.  In other words, their damn good at what they do.

So what of the title of this post?  What is “Opera- a rural setting” referring to?  Well, for anyone who knows the geographical area Glimmerglass is situated, they will know what I’m talking about.  To put it into perspective, the closest Walmart is 45 minutes away. There are little to no streetlights on any of the streets.  Most of the buildings one sees while driving are barns.  Even the Alice Busch Opera Theater of Glimmerglass resembles a barn.

Alice Busch Opera Theater

One could count enough wildlife on a daily basis to start their own petting zoo…. You get the picture.  So this ultimately begs the question – “Why start an opera company out in the middle of nowhere?” And furthermore, “Who is going to come to the middle of nowhere to see opera?”

I ask myself this question everyday. These questions especially come to mind when I drive the 16 miles from my residence to the opera offices, and pass road signs indicating “Cow Crossing”, “Tractor Crossing” and the rarely seen horse and cart sign indicating “Amish Horse & Cart”.  With all these speciality signs one is accustomed to seeing on country roads, it only seems fitting for the opera to have their very own “Opera Crossing” sign.  It sits about 100 yards before the entrance to Glimmerglass Opera facilities.

Opera Crossing

At first mention, it seems like creating an opera company in the middle of nowhere would be a colossal waste of time, energy and money.  However, Glimmerglass must obviously be doing something right.  As a company, they have been in existence since 1975, and their Young American Artist Program since 1988.  They have continued to garner support over the years from some of the most well respected names in opera direction, conducting, and singing.  Most recently, it was announced that come September 2010, Glimmerglass will come under the general and artistic leadership of renowned opera director Francesca Zambello.

In my short time here, I have noticed one thing in particular that Glimmerglass does differently than most other opera companies. The difference rests in the way the company utilizes and incorporates the resources of its community.  Virtually all of the rehearsal and coaching spaces are venues within the local community that have either been rented or donated to the opera.  Many of the opera choruses are comprised of local singers.  Teachers are invited to bring their classes to tour the facilities and incorporate learning about opera into their lesson plans.  The examples could go on and on, but in the interest of time and your patience, I won’t.

One last item.  I think localizing art, engaging communities, and utilizing local facilities is one of the tenets to a a successful future for opera, and classical art forms alike.  As they say, “all politics are local”.  Well, in a culture where seeing is believing, maybe having people SEE art and artists engaging their community and its resources is part of the answer to the question of how we build support, respect and value for the arts within out communities and our country as a whole.  I hope to touch on this notion of greater localization of opera companies in a future post.  Happily, seeing what I’ve seen so far, I think Glimmerglass Opera is a prime example of an organization that presents world-class talent in an accessible and intimate setting fit for its community.

Modern Music: intellectual challenge or intellectual bore? – depends on the ear

Last night saw the end of John Adams’ first week as guest conductor for the National Symphony Orchestra. It was the start of his two week guest conducting run with the NSO, and it has been “highly anticipated” by many in the community. Maybe this is why I received an offer for $29 premium orchestra seats. Highly anticipated, or highly undersold?
All cheap shots aside, I do like Adams’ work for the most part, especially his opera Nixon in China, so I for one was looking forward to the experience. The program consisted of works by Copland, Adams, Elgar and Barber.

The first half started with Copland’s “Billy the Kid Suite”, followed by a piece by Adams based on a poem by Walt Whitman called “The Wound Dresser” featuring baritone, Eric Owens, who Adams also cast in his most recent opera, Dr. Atomic. The second half began with the highly recognizable and hauntingly emotive “Adagio for Strings”, by Samuel Barber. This was followed by Elgar’s “Enigma Variations”. The “Adagio” and parts of the “Enigma Variations” notwithstanding, I was not highly impressed.

I listen to this kind of music all the time. By “this kind of music” I mean orchestral, classical, symphonic.. whatever you want to call it, music. All eras;  all composers. I don’t discriminate. So, I always think, if my highly committed musical ear is struggling to hear harmonies and find context and meaning, I can only imagine what the average listener must be thinking.  This was the case for Adams’ piece, “The Wound Dresser”.

The piece was set around a poem Walt Whitman wrote towards the end of his life.  It reflects on his time during the Civil War when he helped care the thousands of wounded Union soldiers on what is now the National Mall.  This large piece of land in Washington, D.C. was used at the time as a makeshift medical station, and the sanitary conditions were so awful many of the soldiers died not from their wounds but from infection.  Whitman was so touched by his experience, and so loved these men he cared for, that he wrote “The Wound Dresser”.

Clearly, the emotional story is there within Whitman’s poetry, and could lend perfectly to a musical setting.  However, I am not entirely pleased with how Adams’ constructed the music around the words.  The music is definitely Adams’.  One can hear that immediately.  And there were moments where I felt, “Yes, that harmonic structure matches that emotion in the text.”, but the majority of the time, I felt the text’s meaning was lost in the tonal clusters and complex textures of a highly talented composer.  The words spoke of guttural, raw emotions and ugly situations, yet I did not feel those emotions from the music most of the time.

Most interesting for me was what my friend who accompanied me said afterwards.  When I asked him what he thought of the Adams’ piece, he simply said, “I didn’t get it.”.  I think that sentiment speaks to what most average or occasional classical music listeners think when they hear many works by modern composers.  The composer’s intent is lost in the over complexity of his/her work.  Is tonal complexity necessary nowadays in order to be respected as a musician?  Maybe I should rephrase that… is tonal complexity necessary in order to be respected BY musicians???  Are composers trying to create pieces that they find intellectually challenging or that appeal to average auditory experience?

UPDATE: Average age of French classical music attendee not as young as previously reported.

In a post I made a number of months ago, I wrote with great excitement about the average age of the French classical music patron being 32.  I had gleaned this information from a post made by Norman Lebrecht on his blog “Slipped Disc”.  I was cautioned by fellow blogger and respected Julliard professor, Greg Sandow, that this number may be suspect and unreliable.  Whether it was my hope that this number was true, or something else, I took it for face value and moved on to other topics.  Well, this subject came up again, most recently on Sandow’s blog.

In a series of two posts, which can be read here and here, Sandow discusses a report by the French Cultural Ministry presenting a different story all together.  According to this report, the average age of persons attending classical music concerts is nowhere near 32, the number I reported on, and not even close to the age of 38 that Sandow reports.  To summarize the French Ministry numbers, the average age comes out to around 55.  So, this begs the question, where do we get 38 or 32?

Apparently, there is a flyer being passed around at classical music concerts claiming these numbers.  Either someone is terribly bad at interpreting data, or they have some far-out idea for a public relations tactic that misinformation about the subject will somehow encourage younger audiences to develop.  Perhaps there is some odd belief by the disseminator of this false information that convincing people the average age is younger than it is will somehow have a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts and actually inspire younger people to want to attend.

I know it seems far fetched, but it’s the only reason I can come up with for why someone would make up such numbers.  I am interested in any other theories readers might have as to why these numbers would be falsified and distributed as truth.