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Right this way.

Speculating on what seemed to be more young people at last week’s Die Frau —

Could it be that conductor Vladimir Jurowski (still relatively young by conductorial standards, 14 years after making his Met debut when he was really young) attracts a young following wherever he goes?

Could another reason be that the opera is  so rarely performed in New York?

And what about the fact that the production is visually spectacular, using walls that are made up of mirrored panels, as well as costumes paved in glitter?  Just as flashy as anything in the movies. I’ve seen the production a number of times since it premiered in 2001 and am only now getting used to the flash, but that’s just me.

And that there is an hydraulic set that actually rises and lowered to denote passages from a spirit world to the land of mortals?

Could it be the late stage director Herbert Wernicke’s renown?  This would appeal perhaps to the in-the-know music students and European tourists with an aesthetic bent who tend to represent youth at a Met Opera show.

Could it be that those youth who know the opera appreciate the way that filial rebellion is one of its themes?

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!)

While you’re splurging on dance publications, sweep up the just-published fall 2013 Ballet Review.

You might want to frequent a ravishingly well-stocked news store, like the one at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 12th Street, or the one just across Broadway from Lincoln Center.

What’s that?  You’re a subscriber? Ah, then you’ve got your BR already.

In it you’ll find my 1983 interview with Betty Nichols, who claimed she was–and very likely indeed was–the first black student at the School of American Ballet.

And there’ so much else, in an issue I can only call–well, ravishingly well stocked.

The new, December issue of Dance Magazine features biographies of the DM Award winners, who will be honored Dec. 9. And that means it includes my profile of Patriica Wilde.  Not available on line yet, so pony up and purchase! I have.

Next year, Video Artists International is releasing on DVD those remaining unreleased kinescopes of broadcasts New York City Ballet made for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Montreal beginning in 1954.  We’re talking legendary, reference performances of Balanchine masterpieces. In some cases you’ll be able to contrast and compare different casts in the same masterpiece, such as Concerto Barocco, performed successively by Tanaquil Le Clercq and Diana Adams in 1956 and again by Suzanne Farrell and Marnee Morris in 1969.

Over the years, I’ve watched many but not all of the performances to be released at the Library of Performing Arts.  Looking forward to home viewing!

at that message guru thing  I called his office today and told the staffer that the President and his party had better be yanked out of  their defensive crouch–the reactive, capitulatory panic mode that is their standard operating procedure.

What would be so difficult, so counter-intuitive for the President to get up, explain the momentousness of the ACA’s launch,  and remind the commonweal that birth pangs in a policy this important are inevitable?

Why is a modicum of messaging common sense so lacking in the post-Reagan Democrats?

Culture’s accelerating decline in this country advances a step with the announcement that the Brooklyn Philharmonic is seeking to avoid bankruptcy. Robin Pogrebin reports in the Times.

And of course, not a peep from our government, which long ago made the decision that it is OK that billions of taxpayer money are funneled to subsidize, and sometimes hand a  lifeline to malfeasant financial institutions. And no harm done if the result is exorbitant profit by a few at the expense of many.

And our government is equally adamant that important performing arts institutions–which, by their very nature, cannot be made profitable–should be allowed to twist in the breeze.

The apathy that has greeted the New York City Opera’s demise is deafening.

Nearly fifteen years ago, the late R.W. Apple described in the Times the cultural illiteracy and negligence among our political elite:

“Elected Bodies With Hardly a Cultured Bone,” published July 26, 1998.

And what we’re seeing today is the inevitable culmination of years of regressive political priorities.

In the Times, he explicates the ideological backstory behind S& P’s downgrading of France’s bond rating.

“France has committed the unforgivable sin of being fiscally responsible without inflicting pain on the poor and unlucky. And it must be punished.”

I was at the Met Opera Halloween Eve for a lovely performance of Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream—fittingly programmed for that night of traditionally blurred and heightened identities. And any number of people in the audience had gotten into the act. Rather than content themselves with thematic congruity, they instead constructed a contiguous venue for transformative magic in the auditorium.

They paraded through the lobby at intermission decked out in costume and make-up.  It was all festive, all instructively mutable.  When theatrical garb and daily-life attire are blurred, we realize that all identities are constructs and anything we put on our backs a masquerade of sorts.