4 posts tagged “opera”

I always think attending opera production is not easy.

Price. The image you think of a ticket price of an opera production is absolutely correct: it is really expensive. What if you could not enjoy the production when you watch it? You must feel like you did not get a return on your investment.

Preknowledge. Many operas are sung in Italian, German, or French. Without prep, you will never catch on a story very well although you might enjoy its elaboration and beauty. But do you really want to bother 'studying' to go to a theater?

This is a souvenir booklet of Scottish Opera telling about its synopsis and composer of Erwartung. (I know this production is not popular at all. I don't even know how to pronounce the title correctly.) Usually, you can get this kind of booklet at the opera house or concert hall when you go to the production, but I don't think you have enough time to read the booklet to ready to appreciate when you are totally new to the production.
I love some opera productions like Carmen, Madam Butterfly, La Boheme,,,,,but most of them are blockbuster.

What would be the good starters for taking an interest in opera? I wonder if there are any good ways to make people turn their head to face opera.

Visual attraction is one of the most important factors for advertisement of classical music since nobody can experience the 'product' until the performance is staged. How could customers be willing to buy a ticket without any guarantees the quality of the concert? If you are familiar with classical music, you could easily pick up a concert out of enormous numbers by counting on the name of a performer. But, if you are a beginner?

These are free booklets of season programs showing what Royal Opera House is playing at the season. The texture of papers is smooth and strong enough, and all pages are color printed. Yes, the first stage is passed: good quality gets you trapped. Look at the picture of front covers. A person and nature back. I don't pick up the real meaning of the design, but it is certain people might want to reach the eye-catching booklets.

'mmm, what is this for? looks beautiful, it might be interesting. I will take a look at it,,,,,'

Gotcha!

How about its inside? This is a back cover of the Spring Season 2007. I can tell this is taken at the back door of the building of Royal Opera House. A man on leather wear for a motorbike rider is sitting on the black box with wheels. This idea is not traditional and conservative for advertisement of classical music, but I love it!
Main contents showing each production are arranged in the same way: two-page spread for one production, a picture on the left and synopsis on the right. I bet creating those booklets are pretty costly, yet Royal Opera House concludes it is worth spending a lot of money for it. Its effect?

Royal Opera House made me spend 250 pounds for an opera and two ballet productions in 2007.

Bruxelles is a tiny but beautiful city with atmosphere.

At De Munt La Monnaie in Bruxells on Feb 30th, 2007, I attended The Fiery Angel by Prokofiev directed by a Japanese conductor Kazushi Ono. The production, having too avant-garde sound of music with sensual and demonic contents, had been banned from performing at opera houses in Russia. Even now, the number of the performance of The Fiery Angel is much fewer than that of other blockbuster productions like Carmen or Aida.

Ono said at the interview with me after the production the reason why he chose such an esoteric production which was even sung in Russian language on regular basis during the season 2007 in Belgium. "Music works with valuable quality to appreciate should be performed even though they were not popular yet and people weren’t interested in them, but spreading unknown great music works is totally my job”.

I might want to add something to his comment: Ono could choose The Fiery Angel because it was in Bruxelles. There is an interesting history: music works that could not be performed because of political reason (banned by a government) or artistic reasons (too avant-garde,etc) had been freely staged in Belgium. Also, De Munt La Monnaie has put an effort into “audience development” to make people take more interests in music. Yes, people in Bruxelles have been ready to accept and even absorb something new.

 

“putting the right production among the right people”

 

The marketing of classical music is the same as other business.

I just started this blog on May 5th, a national holiday called 'Children's Day' in Japan. A blog is like a diary to keep what you do or what you think that day, but I had a lot of musical experiences before the national holiday, so I would for a while like to post some of events I attended.

It was Feb 23rd in 2007 that I attended a highly succeeded opera production, Madam Butterfly, at Royal Albert Hall in London. I still remember much of the feeling I had - it was such a surprise.

Royal Albert Hall has unique structure of audience seats - which is set in a horseshoe shape, so the production was staged in the middle of the Hall. It might be easy to imagine how the shape of hall inside is when you recall Colosseum in Rome. (Albert Hall has the roof though. LOL)

I looked forward to the production as musical entertainment, yet, at the production, Madam Butterfly, I was impressed by the scenery. I swear I had never had such a great experience of enjoying scenery at my opera attending. The designer of the production was David Roger, and I am very proud of him. On the stage in the middle of the hall, a square-shape beautiful room was set floating on the real(!) water supported by corridors with short wooden columns creating a Japanese atmosphere fascinatingly. It was obvious that the production was aimed to realize the genuine Japanese culture. I was delighted that someone who is not Japanese tried to understand our culture and succeeded in creating the traditional Japanese world as an entertainment.
 

This is just a scenery, but how do you see this beauty? What a spectacular!

You could also take a look at a review of the production by another theater goer at woyano.