I’m not exactly sure why the percentage of young people in a classical music or opera performance is supposed to be an index to the health of performance forms. The important thing is that seats are filled. Yes, youth add prettiness, vitality, freshness to the audience mix; it seems more appropriate that as many of the seven ages as possible be represented in the auditorium.
But could it be, I’ve often asked myself, that these genres are something that you have to age into? That a certain degree of life experience, cultural exposure, and financial security make you more receptive to opera, let us say?
A contra view would have it that no, by the time you in middle age, it’s too late; the conventions of opera will seem foreign and stilted to anyone not vested in them at a young age. But several of the most devoted opera goers I know started in middle age.
Certainly, the defunding of public education in the U.S. is going to do nothing to precipitate a greening of classical music audiences. When I was a student, art and music education were by contrast required curriculum in our public schools.
All this as something of a prelude to saying that, contrary to what seems to be a generational generalization, at the Met last Tuesday, when Die Frau ohne Schatten was performed for the last time this season, there did seem to be a lot of young people in the audience.
Why was that? I’ll speculate t’row. (For one thing it was an outstanding performance!)