"We make sure there's a real variety of socio-economic backgrounds and ethnicities, and an even gender split,” says Tom Floyd, ROH senior opera manger, talking about its open recruitment system. Also, its Youth Opera talent development programme gives children aged seven to 13 the chance to try its "rigorous music and drama training". Pappano is also invested in bringing new blood to opera, via schemes like the ROH's schools matinees, which offer young people low-cost tickets to opera productions. Discussing recent cuts to opera funding, she wrote: "If you starve something, run it down constantly, gradually reduce the provision of it so that few can afford it, it becomes 'elitist'… And if opera in the form that its creators imagine it becomes for toffs, that is nothing to do with opera itself… precisely the result of neglect and underfunding". All the more reason, argued The Guardian's Charlotte Higgins in February, for adequate government funding. In opera's defence, ticket prices are generally high because it is notoriously costly to produce. "Like everything else in the world, the opera is a lot of fun if you have gobs of money," she observes, but she concedes anyone could get in with the $25 rush tickets, student tickets or commercial offers – which make it "affordable, if you just dig a little". It's too expensive, too arcane, too massive… The onus is on the opera houses to do a better job of catering to the young."īondy has only managed to attend so often by being treated by a "ridiculously generous friend" or chasing discounted tickets. And although she loves opera – "from the hyper-real grandness to the unbelievable talent, to the septuagenarian, fur-hatted audience" – she finds it "easy to see why places like The Met are ailing in sales young people just don't go. It's true that the price of opera tickets can seem too high to be anything but a rare luxury for most, especially young people. Halley Bondy, writing on the arts website Paste Magazine, describes herself as someone who has been to the opera many times "for a millennial". "It must be open to the interests of many different people." While he asserts that the ROH, like every big opera house, wants to entice young audiences, he does concede: "I think you have to be honest and say, yes, but younger people can't afford very expensive tickets, can they?" "Opera shouldn't cater just to one audience, or be focused on just one corner of the repertoire," he says. The main focus of the film, though, is Pappano's mission to open up opera to everyone. When Pappano became music director at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (ROH) in 2002, he spoke of his love for popular music by stars such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Oscar Peterson, Joni Mitchell, and for musicals. This allusion to the beautiful game is not a frivolous one. Gen Z and millennials' surprising obsession Eight of the most stunning opera houses "The fact of the matter is, it's harder to get into a football game in London than it is to get into the Opera House." This is "a misconception that totally distorts the image of opera," he adds. "I get very offended by people who say we're elitist," he says passionately in a new documentary. But there's one thing that makes his blood run cold: when he hears opera being accused of being an art form that's only for a wealthy elite. Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano is renowned for being a warm-hearted "people person".
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