opera goers & pop
Sunday, May 6th, 2007why do most opera goers look down on pop music? i think i’ve found an answer…
no, it’s not sheer snobbery, although on the surface it might seem to be that (especially if you’ve been to their discussion boards - i guarantee that you should see the remarks there).
the thing is that this audience consists mostly of musically literate people. some can tell if a whole aria (i’ve learned that you should NEVER call an aria a song) has been sung two tones under the music sheet. some truly discriminating ones even know if a word has been sung half a tone off. (i’m still learning how to do that. maybe i should borrow my dog’s ears.)
these people take time to debate over whether a soprano may take breaths during alternating rests… it seems that she may, but the breaths have to be inaudible. yes - it looks like they have a copy of the whole scores. they go to the same operas over and over again and compare soprano after soprano against each other.
what a demanding audience!
but since good sopranos and tenors are so hard to come by they still go to the opera anyway (they like live performances); and bear with the living divas of our time, or else watch dead divas in black and white…
i gathered with little surprise that none of the dead divas ever got full acclaim during their lifetimes. some are still being criticized after they’re dead. poor things (i mean not POOR, there’s one still living who makes about $60,000/night. if there’s any consolation, this audience can at least pay up…)
and no, they’re not all of them nasty. when they ladle compliments they do it generously and very warmly. they obviously know a good performance when they see one and when they mete out praises they don’t stint on them.
so what is it about pop music that they scoff that?
this is the closest guess i can make: pop music is easy to sing. if written in F and sung in A, the audience wouldn’t care because they wouldn’t know that in the first place. it’s the mediocrity, honey. pop is for the musically illiterate… and for those who revere music as a form of art, the element of perfection simply misses. snob or not, i think no artist or any lover of art can live with that.
