Chuck(G) wrote:The local opera company just tried to do something outside of the usual Verdi/Puccini/Rossini/Donizetti/Mozart stuff; "Hansel and Gretel" by Humperdinck. Have a look at what happened:
A similar thing, albeit not with as dramatic consequences, happened here. The opera company's autumn piece was The turn of the screw, a really great production, both according to critics and viewers. The opening night was sold out, mainly to patrons and elite, but all the other nights the hall was half-empty.
This spring, the produced La Cenerentola, which was sold out every night.
finnbogi wrote:A similar thing, albeit not with as dramatic consequences, happened here. The opera company's autumn piece was The turn of the screw, a really great production, both according to critics and viewers. The opening night was sold out, mainly to patrons and elite, but all the other nights the hall was half-empty.
This spring, the produced La Cenerentola, which was sold out every night.
This is life in the business world. When you're flush, you have plenty of padding for the times when you make a strategic misstep. But if you're in the position that many opera, ballet and symphony groups are in these days, there's no margin for error. A flop could mean bankruptcy.
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
- Charles Dickens
A few years ago the London Symphony made some recordings of classic rock songs that were surprisingly wonderful. They did everything from Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" to "A Whiter Shade of Pale." As it was previously stated, music is a business. We don't play for ourselves. We play because we do. What we play isn't up to us as musicians. We aren't critics. We should do the best we can. When we go to a concert, we should try to see the pops concerts and give them support.
When I was growing up, AM radio stations were very specific about the popular music they played. Today, we have a few stations that specialize in country and western and the urban stuff on FM radio, but on AM radio, music is music. In one hour you might hear a Beatles song, a Glenn Miller song, a Willie Nelson song, and George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." Everything old is the same!
Not all Americans have such refined musical tastes and we have to live with that idea as musicians. And if you are playing a concert, you aren't playing for yourself, you're playing for the people who are paying money to see you. If you don't play what they want, you won't be playing anymore.
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You only have one chance to make a first impression. Don't blow it.
