Dead Art

Classical ‘high’ arts organizations like to complain about their problem in expanding their viewership. That certainly is true. Many of my over-educated friends have not gone to a recital (no their children) much less an opera for years. This is even more the case of the normal educated. This should not have been the case. Consider opera for example; where, other than professional wrestling, can one find such sex, violence and melodrama on stage? There is nothing deep or hard to understand in opera. It is not Sartre or Pinter. When it does Shakespeare, it does the lite version. The language is certainly a barrier, but there are many ways to overcome that. I went to see Mozart’s Mask Ball with a friend who had never seen an opera before. It was not a big production and the singing is rather average. My friend was disappointed and commented that it is sort of like a musical in Italian. To most opera lovers this is unforgivable heresy. When one think about it though, my friend was right. In its heydays, opera houses were not unlike music halls where there were as much going on in the box seats as on stage. The problem occurs when these arts become high. It serves the egos of performers and, more importantly, the patrons of these arts. Now the stars are no long sexy or flamboyant and the halls more classrooms than fun houses. The result is that the performances are boring and the environment restrictive. And, since it is supposed to be ‘high’ arts, people go looking for something otherworldly, something sublime, something powerful, instead they get boring melodrama. Women used to swoon over Liszt and Chopin. Princes used to fall hard for opera singers. The death of an art form is marked by losing its art and being mesmerized by its own importance. For a lover of these arts, it is sad and infuriating to watch it kills itself.