Will opera sing like it’s 2012 or 1812?

As posted recently in KadmusArts’ daily Culture News, the leader of the English National Opera is on edge about streaming live events. In fact, he might be leading his art form off a cliff.

John Berry, artistic director of the ENO, appears to be allergic to live broadcasts and streaming. As he told The Stage, “It is of no interest to me….It is not a priority. It doesn’t create new audiences either.”

Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. If Berry wants to fortify the preciousness and exclusivity of the ENO that is his right, even if it’s a bit awkward for a government funded, public organization to be so cavalier in adopting such a high handed (and high priced) approach to national culture.

More significantly, Berry is an example of an arts leader who ignores the present reality and future opportunity. Across the ocean, in the land of new start-ups and social networks, the Metropolitan Opera provides a counter-example.

The Met’s live broadcasts to movie theaters (that’s what we call cinemas, Mr. Berry) create around $10 to $12 million a year from new ticket sales. The Met’s broadcasts now reach 1,700 theaters in 54 countries.

This past season, the seventeen performances of the Met’s “Don Giovanni” sold out for each performance at the 4,000 seat opera house. That’s 68,000 total in attendance. The HD broadcast of the performance reached 216,000, with approximately 50,000 more in delayed showings in southeast Asia. There will also be more paying audiences for “encore” showings.

Of course, Mr. Berry is right in arguing that seeing opera in HD in a movie theatre is not the same experience as seeing it live. You don’t get a sense of the proportions: the voices, the orchestra, the visuals, the movement. However, what you do get is a taste, an introduction, a seductive flirtation to the immense power and beauty of operatic art. What better way to introduce, excite, and turn on new audiences?

Berry is worried that the ease and access of seeing opera in local cinemas will take away from paying customers at the ENO. And, Berry notes that creating good streamed events takes care and focus. However, the live broadcasts have not decreased the Met’s audiences. Clearly, anything that can help broaden and deepen the reach of classical art forms should be in the public‘s and art’s interest.

In fact, other British classical organizations are also taking a different route, including Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera House. As Tony Hall, chief of ROH told The Telegraph, live broadcasting is “an enormous opportunity to open the work up to new people” and “positions arts in this country on a global stage”.

Oh, you see: It’s about being relevant.

As Michael Tilson Thomas recently told the Wall Street Journal, “We cannot rely on audiences simply appearing… We need to have a role in creating new audiences.”

Creating new audiences: How radical!

Stay classy, opera.

- Bill Reichblum

Original Photo by wfuv — Some Rights Reserved

Who would have thought that one artist’s musical curiosity could help change our musical taste and experience?

Making the current rounds of film festivals is a new work that reminds us of one of the great leaps of creativity in music and in politics. This leap, which became a movement, was led by Paul Simon.

Under African Skies, directed by Joe Berlinger, tracks Simon’s return to South Africa twenty-five years after his first journey there to make one of the best albums of all time, Graceland.

At the time, Simon’s visit was extremely controversial. The United Nations had sanctioned a cultural boycott of South Africa as a way to help end the brutality and inhumane South African government rule of apartheid. Many performers refused to go South Africa where they would have to perform for government sanctioned segregated audiences.

Simon, though, chose a different track and a different tactic. By focusing on the artist to artist exchange, Simon not only brought significant attention to the South African music and musicians, he also created a new spark for genuine international art — world music. In fact, it’s fair to ask where the current acceptance and popularity of world music would be without Simon’s original determination and creativity.

In addition to Simon’s reuniting with Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Ray Phiri, among others, the film also features Simon sitting down with Dali Tambo, the founder of Artists Against Apartheid, who still believes Simon was wrong to ignore the boycott.

Simon’s point of view, which seems so clear today, was that the cultural boycott was about performing for segregated audiences; not about recording the very artists who were being silenced by a government.

Every now and again, artists lead not just with their art but with their ideas of how to make art.

The new edition of the album comes out on June 5. Thankfully, there are times when art overcomes and overwhelms politics.

Go ahead, politicians, listen and learn.

- Bill Reichblum