Considerable amounts of money, effort, resources and curriculum time are expended on the opera education mission, but to what end, asks Rupert Christiansen.
What role opera should play in our educational system is a problem that has baffled and exercised me for my 25 years as a critic – and lover – of this great if beleaguered art form.
My feelings are complicated by the fact that my own path to opera was entirely self-motivated. Nobody in my family was interested in music unless it was Frank Sinatra, and my prep school offered only some class singing and piano lessons. But I listened with instinctive pleasure to the wonderful popular music of the early Sixties – from the shows of Rodgers and Hammerstein to the Beach Boys and the Beatles – and from there graduated to Gilbert & Sullivan. All this was simply available via public libraries and the media: nobody pushed anything at me or proselytized.
From G&S, it seemed natural to give opera a whirl: I just wanted to know what it sounded like. I started with Donizetti (Joan Sutherland singing Lucia on record) and then graduated to Mozart. With a similarly curious friend, I went to the Upper Slips at Covent Garden and then to a Prom of Don Giovanni – prices in those days unprohibitively about five bob. After that, I joined the Young Friends of Covent Garden and there was no stopping me... Keep reading on Telegraph
What role opera should play in our educational system is a problem that has baffled and exercised me for my 25 years as a critic – and lover – of this great if beleaguered art form.
My feelings are complicated by the fact that my own path to opera was entirely self-motivated. Nobody in my family was interested in music unless it was Frank Sinatra, and my prep school offered only some class singing and piano lessons. But I listened with instinctive pleasure to the wonderful popular music of the early Sixties – from the shows of Rodgers and Hammerstein to the Beach Boys and the Beatles – and from there graduated to Gilbert & Sullivan. All this was simply available via public libraries and the media: nobody pushed anything at me or proselytized.
From G&S, it seemed natural to give opera a whirl: I just wanted to know what it sounded like. I started with Donizetti (Joan Sutherland singing Lucia on record) and then graduated to Mozart. With a similarly curious friend, I went to the Upper Slips at Covent Garden and then to a Prom of Don Giovanni – prices in those days unprohibitively about five bob. After that, I joined the Young Friends of Covent Garden and there was no stopping me... Keep reading on Telegraph