Today’s Yin & Yang
This post in Anne Midgette’s Classical Beat blog (on the topic of this NY Times review) has stayed with me for several days, but I’ve had a difficult time deciding why. It is not my intention to take on the writer, for I have no definitive answers of my own. Yet there’s something here that won’t leave me alone.
I can be pretty clinical on the topic of “classical music,” and any arts professional who can’t summon up objectivity when it’s required is nothing but a dilettante. But statements like this send me reeling: ”Classical music has a reputation of being something smart – indeed, its fans are often stereotyped as nerds and eggheads – but the way that people engage with it often seems to me anything but, as if it renders otherwise smart thinkers uncritical.”
“Smart” thinking about music should not be confined to the left brain. Perhaps that’s the proper birthplace for traditional criticism, but the history and the future of great art doesn’t depend exclusively – or even primarily – on linear, deductive and quantifiable factors. What sticks with me is that this kind of approach elevates the value of left-brain critical thinking and diminishes the response of our hearts.
But just when I think I’ve sorted out my reaction, something happens to prove the opposite point. In the last couple of months, I’ve had two concert experiences that make me want to rail right along with Ms. Midgette.
In one, an astonishingly brilliant group of musicians played difficult material in a way that defied description – brilliant on all levels, technical, expressive, artistic and intuitive. I was taken aback when the audience responded positively but not effusively.
In the other, a talented but still green group of musicians played more “accessible” (gah… hate that word…) material with raw energy and great potential. The audience went wild, with an immediate standing ovation.
What’s the disconnect? Is it that we are wont to measure an experience’s potency first by our immediate gut/emotional reaction, and in our society, that is increasingly the only measurement that’s valuable? Perhaps the general enthusiasm of applause, the number of views or shares on the internet, the buzz in the media – perhaps these things play so overwhelmingly to our right brains that critical discourse has to veer so far to the clinical in order to right the balance.
As I said, I simply don’t know. There may not be an answer here; perhaps it’s another exercise in learning to love the questions.
Enough philosophy for today; it’s time to work on the Don Giovanni cut list :)
The Vibe in the House
On Sunday afternoon, we turned the theatre over to our studio singers, fellows and interns. 75 minutes of scenes from 7 operas in 4 languages were sung, played, supertitled, and stage-managed by folks whose average age couldn’t have topped 23. The rest of us cheered, enjoyed, and did the best we could at house management. Even a 3:10pm severe thunderstorm that wreaked havoc with the light board and supertitle projectors didn’t faze these folks.
It’s the first time we held this event (which itself is a mere 3 years old) at The Barns, our small-but-mighty mainstage. It was an experiment that paid great dividends, and we will be seeking to replicate it and improve on it in future seasons. I came away with lots of food for thought, some of which I didn’t bargain on.
I’ve been puzzling out the dramatically different vibe that was present in the house that afternoon. On one hand, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. The audience comprised mostly friends/family of the performers and a wide range of Wolf Trap donors. They were predisposed to wish us well. Admission was free, which also doesn’t hurt the frame of mind. I knew all of this, but the overwhelmingly relaxed, open, dare-I-say-happy groove that pervaded the afternoon was somehow shocking.
There are folks who do enjoy their time at the opera, no doubt, but at a typical show in a typical house, we don’t usually hear from them. We are more aware of their discontent fellow patrons, with an inner monologue of…. this-better-be-worth-the-money… I-went-through-rush-hour-hell-to-get-here… I-don’t-like-my-seats… I-hate-this-director/conductor/singer. You get the idea, and I’m sure you can fill in some of your own.
So why, for a program of scenes with no orchestra, no sets and no costumes, were people seemingly more willing to relax and try to have a good time? Is it all about the free ticket? Is it about low expectations being exceeded? Is it bundled up with a personal connection to the artists and/or the organization? Is it that the ticketed performance is a business transaction with a complicated return-on-investment mindset?
I’ll never know, but it is my mission to bottle some of it and figure out how to embed it in every show we do.
The Polls Have Closed
Each of our four Zaide audiences chose their own ending to Mozart’s unfinished opera.
By the Numbers
For the statisticians out there, overall voter turnout was 90%. And of the three available endings, audiences chose:
- ENLIGHTENMENT (simple, happy ending) won twice and received 35% of the total vote over all performances.
- FINALITY (tragic ending) won once and received 34% of the total vote over all performances.
- DISCOVERY (“complicated” ending) won once and received 31% of the total vote over all performances.
Audience Psychology?
It seems that the weekend audiences preferred happy endings with their opera. The opening night crowd was more adventurous than the others. And the Tuesday night audience (who fought their way here through a nasty rush hour and sold-out traffic for the Harry Connick show down the road) -well, let’s just say they were a little more bloodthirsty.
The Takeaway
There are many real things here to be learned about audience engagement, but I don’t really know what they all are. Suffice to say that this little experiment bore far more fruit than we ever expected when we backed into it.
Thanks to all who came along for the ride. with a special shout-out to Club 66 at Wolf Trap, members of which attended the closing night show with young professionals from Washington National Opera’s Generation O.
“Happy ending or sad? Status quo or unexpected plot twist?”
Anne Midgette previews Zaide in today’s Washington Post: Wolf Trap Lets Audience Choose the Ending to Mozart’s Unfinished Opera Zaide. Completely with amazing photo by WTOC conductor and Wolf Trap Opera Studio Manager Eric Melear!
4 shows, starting tomorrow night. Sunday 6/13 is sold out, but some tickets are available for tomorrow’s opening night, and for Tuesday 6/15 and Saturday 6/19.
Gallery of dress rehearsal photos coming shortly.
Wolf Trap Lets Audience Choose the Ending to Mozart’s Unfinished Opera
June 9, 2010
Wolf Trap Lets Audience Choose Ending to Mozart’s Unfinished Opera
The Washington Post previews our new production of Zaide, which opens our 2010 summer season this weekend! Click Here.
Where to Begin?
If you aren’t already following Adaptistration‘s annual Take a Friend to the Orchestra blog series, you should check it out. I contributed a few years ago, and every year Drew taps a terrific range of writers to talk about their experiences with and advice on introducing people to our world.
If you have just a minute, start with Scott Spielberg’s recent post on taking a friend to The Marriage of Figaro – twice in one weekend! Here’s the summary,
There is value in repetition. The context has changed, because we are different people when we cross that stream the second time. There is too much pressure put on inexperienced listeners to understand everything in a musical work in the first hearing. Mostly this pressure is self-inflicted, but we aficionados can also cause damage by smirking at ignorant questions or showing off with a bunch of technical jargon. What we need to communicate is that the best classical music has such a wealth of information that it requires and rewards repeated hearings and study. The more we emphasize that to new listeners, the more they will get out of their classical music experiences. There is value in repetition.
Amen, brother.
Are we just too impatient to buy into this? The faster our world gets (and from where I sit, we’re hitting warp speed pretty soon…), are most of us unwilling to do anything for which the rewards aren’t immediately noticeable? (I’m not lecturing. Really. I include myself in this incrimination.)
Taking a Friend to the WTOC
I’ve answered this question a lot in recent weeks: “Which one of your performances this summer would be the best one for a new operagoer?” I haven’t answered it very cleanly, but perhaps that’s for the best. Just as I wouldn’t recommend any particular restaurant for all palates or any fashion for all bodies, it seems foolhardily (is that a word?) simple to dispense a one-size-fits-all recommendation.
Here are my answers. Know your new operagoer and choose the best fit!
- Recommended for brevity (2 hours), sheer beauty of Mozart’s musical style, intriguing production that will let the audience choose the ending each night.
- Caution: It’s a dark, serious story.
- Recommended for its broad comedy, light-hearted and colorful set/costumes, sheer entertainment value in Rossini’s adrenaline-drenched musical style.
- Caution: Plot involves disguises and mistaken identities; could be a little confusing.
- Recommended for the basic familiarity of the Shakespeare play (and its various movie incarnations), the wealth of different and colorful characters, the modern sonic textures in Britten’s score.
- Caution: Would seem to be a contradiction, but rabid, die-hard fans of the play often don’t like the opera; it’s as if Britten makes too many choices for them.
Got that? Can’t choose? Come to one of each – they’re conveniently spread out in June, July and August! :)
“Special”
Special (Merriam-Webster): distinguished by some unusual quality.
Life’s a Pitch just finished a week hosting a virtual panel on when and how artists, managers, journalists, presenters and publicists single out musicians for being “special” in their promotion and career-building efforts. Amanda’s summary of the posts by her 4 guest bloggers is here.
I hesitate to spend most of an entire blog post regurgitating other writers’ material, but this is worth it. Great food for thought for musicians, presenters, and music lovers of all stripes. If you need more motivation to click through, some highlights:
Jonathan Biss (our Wolf Trap Debut Artist from 1997!) writes that “Traditionalism is big in classical music, of course, meaning that there’s a lot of knee-jerk “this is the way to do it because this is the way it’s always been done.” (“It” could be any number of things – from questions of musical style, to programming, to concert attire, and on and on.) But recently I’ve heard a lot of the marketing-driven opposite, which seems equally knee-jerk to me: “this has never been done before, and therefore it is relevant and interesting.”"
Michael Kondziolka at University Musical Society in Ann Arbor, Michigan says that “yes, hooks are fine and human interest angles (sometimes) riveting…but, never a substitute for convincing music making that reveals some truth or provocation embedded within, some kind of technical accomplishment, or, maybe, some hint at a shared humanity… Actually, the more I think about it, if one can be certain that the players will hit the accomplishment quotient, then human interest hooks are actually welcome in my book. And we shouldn’t be afraid of them or feel that they somehow cheapen the artist’s integrity. (Please.) Any information sharing or story telling that aids, abets, or heightens a sense of empathy between performer and listener – whether artistic, human, spiritual – has to be a good thing. Right? Live concert performances must, after all, traffic in empathy.”
Matthew Guerrieri of Soho the Dog weighs in: “On the other hand, I personally find assertions of specialness within the concert presentation itself–spoken explanations, multimedia elements, &c.–to be often more annoying and distracting than anything. I’ve seen it done well, but only rarely; it’s harder than it looks, and it takes just as much (if not more) preparation as the music. If there’s absolute commitment on the part of the performer(s), if they really believe in whatever high concept they’ve come up with, I can happily go along for the ride, even if, in the end, I don’t quite buy it.”
We can all tell the difference between an artist who makes connections to his audience (verbal and otherwise) because he is compelled to communicate with every fiber of his being and an artist who does so because a manager or a presenter dictates that it’s now part of the required dog-and-pony show.
On the topic of “special” added-value elements, well, how about this comment at the bottom of Mr. Biss’s post?
Comment:
Let’s make this really, brutally simple.
The only things we need today to have a “life-altering” musical experience is a good surround sound system, a CD/mp3 player and a Blue Ray DVD system.
Constant concerts by 100s of symphony orchestras or other groups, 90% of which are repeats of trite, old repertoire or newly composed self-indulgent idiocy are economically and artistically unnecessary in a digital recording era. The average US concert hall monstrosity doesn’t produce the sound quality in most seats that a car stereo would.
Innovation? Find an equivalent for classical music of what Cirque de soleil has been for the three-ring circus. Until that happens, good luck getting audiences into concert halls.
Chew on that a while. (And let’s assume that the comment is legit, rather than satirical. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear this from The Man on the Street, but I guess the fact that it appears as a comment on a blog that would appear to be primarily read by “believers” is a little stunning.)
Will we find the equivalent of which the writer speaks? Should we try? For if we succeed, the goal is going to shift significantly while we’re at it.
Back to the definition at the top of this post (special: distinguished by some unusual quality): as we compete for our part of the pie, we are struggling with what “unusual” means. Clearly, we (opera, symphony, ballet, even jazz now…) are unusual. Always have been. Always will be. We want to be special, but now we desire that our “unusual” qualities are more and more palatable to the mainstream. I’m back to my take on Seth Godin’s passion-pop gulf, hoping that our ministrations don’t take us to the trough of the graph.
[P.S. The fact that I spent the weekend reading The Black Swan has set me up for a rocky Monday at the office. Sorry to bring you along for the ride!]
January: When the Music Goes into Hiding
I wear my Marketing and Box Office hats a lot in January. (Good thing, too, for it’s bloody freezing around here. I need all the clothing I can find.) All of the music that surrounded us during the audition and casting process has temporarily disappeared to make way for writing copy and selling tickets.
So, in thinking of ways to describe, promote and create enthusiasm about our upcoming season, I found this. And I’m of a million different minds about it.
And, as we address the thorny topic of ticket prices, it’s serendipitous to find one of my favorite podcasts discussing the Psychology of Pricing. Unfortunately, our thinking has to go far beyond this discussion. We have obligations not only to our bottom line, but to our donors, our current and potential patrons, and to our art form. Raise prices to attempt to keep pace with expenses? Hold the line in sympathy with the economic challenges of patrons? Cut deep and low to eliminate obstacles in expanding the audience base? Yes, yes, and yes? Hmmm.
January is WTOC Alumni Month!
I was doing some surfing to see what our summer festival colleagues are offering for 2010, and I came across a performance of the suite from Candide with WTOC alums Anna Christy and Nick Phan. Ravinia also features former Trappers Nathan Gunn and Lauren McNeese in Figaro, and Tanglewood’s roster includes Stephanie Blythe (Mahler #2), Dawn Upshaw, and Morris Robinson (Mozart’s Abduction).
It Just Feels Like a New Decade
The happiest of new years to one and all! Strictly speaking, I know it’s not a new decade, but it feels like it is. And that’s good.
I’m back at my desk after a miraculously restful 11 days away from work. (Thank, you Wolf Trap Foundation, for the immensely sane and merciful act of shutting down between Christmas and New Year’s!) By last night, I was calm, centered, and full of hope and energy for a fresh start. This morning, just a few hours chipping away at the mountain of pre-season tasks has rendered me slightly panicked. (I completely forget to breathe when I’m at my desk. Does that happen to anyone else? What’s that about?!?)
It didn’t help that I spent my lunch break digging through the NEA’s 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. (Go ahead, click through, but not on an empty stomach.) I don’t believe that the sky is falling, but this news is complicated. We’re embarking on a new business plan for 2011-2015, and I’m trying to spend more time than usual wrestling with these facts and figures.
As we move out of the audition season, I welcome back my casual readers whose eyes glazed over while reading endless aria lists and other technical jargon. Over these next few months, the focus will be slightly broader and more varied. There will be another Met audition trip (North Carolina) and a trip to LA (for the GRAMMYs!), and I keep posts short to give you more time to keep those New Year’s resolutions. :)
January is WTOC Alumni Month!
A shout-out to WTOC alum Michael Maniaci and his new recording of Mozart Arias – releasing in a few weeks and available now for pre-order. (Do it – you won’t be sorry!) Michael sang Nero in Poppea and the title role in Xerxes at Wolf Trap, and he is a truly amazing artist.
Operascape, and Over & Out
The perfect positive storm for the end of our season – Puccini’s Boheme, Operascape production, NSO, Wolf Trap Opera, and some of the best weather of the summer. Resulted in standing ovation from just under 6,000 folks – a huge number of them new opera-goers (just under 4,000 in the house, and almost 2,000 on the lawn).
I’m hoping to dig myself out of a personal and professional backlog for the next week or two, without the adrenaline that has shepherded me through the last weeks. Wish me luck. I plan to be back by the end of August with a clear mind, posting some wrap-up thoughts on the season and the upcoming fall auditions. (Audition applications and web pages should be ready within a week.)
In the meantime, enjoy these Boheme performance photos by Carol Pratt.
Stephen Lord, conductor
Kevin Newbury, director
S. Katy Tucker, video projection design
Cameron Anderson, scenic design
Jessica Jahn, costume design
Mark Stanley, lighting design
Elsen Associates, hair/makeup design
Diego Torre, Rodolfo
Hana Park, Mimi
Ava Pine, Musetta
Daniel Billings, Marcello
Matthew Hanscom, Schaunard
Carlos Monzón, Colline
Nicholas Masters, Benoit/Alcindoro
