Will Millennials Kill Opera, Too?
Sitting in the audience at La Scala, Milan’s historic opera house, built 241 years ago, listening to some of the world’s biggest stars sing “Brindisi,” the beloved drinking song from Verdi’s La Traviata, for a sixth encore performance, you would have no doubt that opera is alive and well in 2019. It feels especially so here, where the theater is open nearly year-round, and opera is still a way of life with the most ardent fans standing in its highest seats to get a view of the stage, from which they can be heard lovingly cheering, and even booing. La Scala has been updated since its earliest days (it can be open in the Italian summer heat because of air conditioning), but there are still a few of its boxes outfitted like they used to be, when the opera house was where, in addition to catching a show, one could gamble, conduct business dealings, and eat risotto.
I was raised by opera fans, so I’m used to people who react to the likes of Plácido Domingo and Gustavo Dudamel with the zeal of teenagers at an Ariana Grande concert. My parents met as two self-starting young professionals in Los Angeles in the ’90s; both had been going to the opera as a way to meet people, despite not growing up attending themselves. As a couple, they accrued hundreds of records and bought season tickets—my sister and I accompanied them sparingly as children (we didn’t do so well reading subtitles for three hours), but I still can hum lines from The Magic Flute and The Barber of Seville.
My opera education was less about splashy opening nights and expensive orchestra seats than it was about obsession, the sheer nerdiness required of the true opera fan, who is reading, listening, and viewing as well as understanding the composer and the piece in their historical contexts, and knowing the performers and conductors—all at the same time for hours on end. Music fanatics of all disciplines have their own compulsions, but opera truly demands a heavy lift from its devotees.
It follows, then, that millennials might kill it. We’re not known for our attention spans, our patience, or our respect for tradition, and we have been subsequently accused of killing avocado, cheese, homeownership, marriage, and the retail industry. Behind these allegations is, of course, the world’s deeply troubled economy, which has effectively made it unlikely that most of us will be able to afford what our parents could. For opera, which has an elitist reputation—though, as with my own experience, it’s not always the case, and opera was historically a populist art form, too. If we kill it, it will likely be because we simply don’t have the means to go.
The world’s opera community is reckoning with this future. I was in Milan for a gala concert event to benefit one of La Scala’s many educational and outreach programs, the Teatro alla Scala Academy, with a set of luminaries. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra was playing; Gustavo Dudamel and Plàcido Domingo, one of the most famous living opera singers, were conducting; pianist Yuja Wang was performing; and Sonya Yoncheva, Juan Diego Flórez, and Jonas Kaufmann were singing. All are Rolex Testimonees, what the company calls the artists that it patronizes—at La Scala and elsewhere in opera houses around the world, the Rolex logo can be seen as a major sponsor. The program was a mix of beloved favorites, including selections from Tosca and Romeo and Juliet.
La Scala faces a piazza in central Milan, not far from the Duomo. When it was nearly time to open the theater doors for the concert, the late June sun had gone down enough that the men in their suit jackets and women in sleeved dresses waiting to enter were comfortable, if eager to get in. The La Scala ushers wear heavy pendants on chains over their uniforms that make them easy to spot; they are known for firmly directing underdressed tourists to a nearby H&M for more appropriate opera attire, though I was disappointed not to witness this. The attendees who were not connected to Rolex or to the Vienna Orchestra were a mostly older, chic Italian crowd, though some were accompanied by young people.
Domingo, who along with the other performers spoke to journalists ahead of the program, doesn’t worry about getting us in the doors. He believes music education is the key to making new opera fans. “You can teach music without telling them this is ‘classic music,’” he said. He has been the Los Angeles Opera’s General Director since 2003; in the heart of the city’s now yuppie-oriented downtown, it has several initiatives that have attempted to make audiences younger and more diverse, including avant-garde performances and reduced ticket prices. “Los Angeles is one of the best cities with musical education, so we are very happy,” Domingo said. At the gala, Domingo was conducting, though he is known as one of the infamous Three Tenors—my mom had a Three Tenors T-shirt.
Dudamel, the Venezuelan conductor who also directs the Los Angeles Philharmonic, came up in El Sistema, the famed publicly funded music education program founded by José Antonio Abreu. Dudamel is a kind of rock star of the classical world, known also for performing with pop stars (including at the 2016 Super Bowl) and conducting film soundtracks. “Art has to be embraced with all kinds of art,” in his words.
Flórez was also a product of a strong national commitment to music education; in Lima, Peru, he attended the National Conservatory before receiving a scholarship to a program in the United States. His non-profit, Sinfonía por el Peru, provides arts training for the country’s most at-risk youth. He says they have seen how participation in the program has reduced rates of teen pregnancy. Flórez argued that, though opera can endure as a niche art, it has to bring more people in in order to survive. “The music is timeless,” he reasoned in conversation with press, “but don’t forget that this is not an art that is hugely popular, so you have to cultivate the public, you have to bring young people to the theater, maybe some of them will follow, some of them won’t. But the only way to bring young people to the theater is to bring young people to the theater. There is no shortcut.”
The two female performers present were also the youngest. Soprano Yoncheva, 37, is Bulgarian and was pregnant with her second child at the time of the gala. Gender parity is another way that opera must get with the times, so to speak. The Metropolitan Opera, in New York, staged the first opera written by a women since 1903 in 2016. Yoncheva said that male directors learning how to adapt to pregnant singers is “a problem in our job, of course....Physically, the body of a woman changes, so all of a sudden it’s very problematic for certain people, certain stage directors, to adapt to this.” Yoncheva was supposed to star as Medea in Salzburg this summer, but strict Austrian maternity laws would not allow her to participate in rehearsals or performances. She said that, in addition, “the stage director couldn’t accept visually that I was a pregnant Medea,” playing a character who murders her own children. “If you do this with someone who is open-minded, who says it’s exciting, it’s very different.” She says fans have written her saying her bump is not beautiful, though many have applauded her for performing while pregnant: “There is a lot to be done.”
Wang entered the classical music scene with a considerable splash a decade ago, as a then-21-year-old Chinese virtuoso who notoriously performs in minidresses. A review of a 2011 Hollywood Bowl performance written by a male critic, which said her garment was “so short and tight that had there been any less of it, the Bowl might have been forced to restrict admission to any music lover under 18 not accompanied by an adult,” was widely panned for being sexist. Wang plays electrifyingly, with her entire body, stomping on the pedals in high heels and bringing an aggression more common in male conductors. “It did bother me,” she said of recalling critics’ focus on her clothes. “People thought it was like media...like there was a whole press behind it, but it was a hot summer night. I never had some guidance, I thought music itself is so naked. I was 21, I was like, ‘I really like this dress, it makes me look good, it gives me confidence.” But she is much less concerned with what she looks like than others.
By the time each singer had performed an encore at La Scala, and Dudamel reappeared on stage to relieve Domingo of his conducting duties so that he could partake in a rousing rendition of “Brindisi,” which the crowd joined. Attendees were so fiercely delighted that I reasoned to myself that if each major opera house in the world has its own fandom, that might be all it takes to keep the lights on. In New York, a group of cool women journalists I know attends the Met regularly as a group (under a not-safe-for-work moniker); the youth chapter of the La Scala foundation has seen a 60% rise in membership; Paris hosted an escape room game based on Phantom of the Opera—in the opera house. A new online service for classical music, Idagio, hopes to attract new listeners—and bring its older listeners, finally, to streaming. There is hope for us yet.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
