{"id":14,"date":"2025-04-29T17:13:56","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T17:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/?p=14"},"modified":"2025-04-29T17:13:56","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T17:13:56","slug":"antonio-pappano-how-opera-can-be-open-to-everyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/2025\/04\/29\/antonio-pappano-how-opera-can-be-open-to-everyone\/","title":{"rendered":"Antonio Pappano: How opera can be ‘open to everyone’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Is the world of opera becoming more inclusive? A new documentary, featuring conductor Antonio Pappano, explores the mission to open up the art form to everyone.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano is renowned for being a warm-hearted “people person”. But there’s one thing that makes his blood run cold: when he hears opera being accused of being an art form that’s only for a wealthy elite. “I get very offended by people who say we’re elitist,” he says passionately in a new documentary. This is “a misconception that totally distorts the image of opera,” he adds. “The fact of the matter is, it’s harder to get into a football game in London than it is to get into the [Royal] Opera House.”<\/p>\n

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This allusion to the beautiful game is not a frivolous one. When Pappano \u00a0became music director at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (ROH) in 2002, he spoke of his love for popular music by stars such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Oscar Peterson, Joni Mitchell, and for musicals. “I like football too,” he added. “Does that mean you can’t like opera?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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La Boh\u00e8me at the ROH is among the productions that have recently been screened in cinemas across the UK (Credit: Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Back then Pappano was 42, and the youngest conductor to lead ROH’s orchestra. Some 700 operas later \u2013 \u00a0with many productions of the French and Italian repertoires; a good part of the Russian; Wagner, Strauss and contemporary works \u2013 and he is the subject of A Time of Change, presented by Zeinab Badawi, and part of the BBC documentary series\u00a0Take Me to the Opera<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The documentary follows him from his modest roots, as the son of Italian immigrant parents who came from southern Italy to the UK, who worked hard to make ends meet. \u00a0They passed on their strong work ethic to him, and he learnt how to work with singers from his vocal coach father, flourishing as a musical talent in the “the family business”. A Time of Change goes on to trace a career that includes assisting classical pianist Daniel Barenboim, through to a recent high, conducting the King’s coronation service in May, featuring solos by\u00a0Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel<\/a>\u00a0and South African soprano Pretty Yende.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Opera shouldn’t cater just to one audience \u2013 it must be open to the interests of many different people \u2013 Antonio Pappano<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The main focus of the film, though, is Pappano’s mission to open up opera to everyone. “Opera shouldn’t cater just to one audience, or be focused on just one corner of the repertoire,” he says. “It must be open to the interests of many different people.” While he asserts that the ROH, like every big opera house, wants to entice young audiences, he does concede: “I think you have to be honest and say, yes, but younger people can’t afford very expensive tickets, can they?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It’s true that the price of opera tickets can seem too high to be anything but a rare luxury for most, especially young people.\u00a0Halley Bondy, writing on the arts website\u00a0Paste Magazine<\/a>,\u00a0describes herself as someone who has been to the opera many times “for a millennial”. And although she loves opera \u2013 “from the hyper-real grandness to the unbelievable talent, to the\u00a0septuagenarian, fur-hatted audience” \u2013 she\u00a0finds it “easy to see why places like The Met [Metropolitan Opera\u00a0House\u00a0in NYC] are ailing in sales; young\u00a0people\u00a0just\u00a0don’t go. It’s too expensive, too arcane, too massive\u2026 The onus is on the opera houses to do a\u00a0better job of catering to the young.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bondy has only managed to attend so often by being treated by a\u00a0“ridiculously generous friend” or chasing discounted tickets. “Like everything else in the world, the opera is a lot of fun if you have gobs of money,” she observes, but she concedes anyone could get in with the $25 [\u00a319.40] rush tickets, student tickets or\u00a0commercial\u00a0offers \u2013 which make it “affordable,\u00a0if you just dig a little”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In opera’s defence,\u00a0ticket prices are generally high because it is notoriously costly to produce. All the more reason, argued The Guardian’s Charlotte Higgins in February, for adequate government funding. Discussing\u00a0recent\u00a0cuts to\u00a0opera funding<\/a>, she wrote:\u00a0“If you starve something, run it down constantly, gradually\u00a0reduce the provision of it so that few can\u00a0afford it, it\u00a0becomes ‘elitist’\u2026 And if opera in the form that its creators imagine it becomes for toffs, that is nothing to do with opera itself\u2026 [it is] precisely\u00a0the result of neglect and\u00a0underfunding”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"RoyalRoyal Opera House<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Youth Opera talent development programme at the ROH gives children and young people opportunities for training (Credit: Royal Opera House)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Pappano is also invested in bringing new blood to opera, via schemes like the ROH’s \u00a0schools matinees, which offer young people low-cost tickets to opera productions. Also, its Youth Opera talent development programme gives children aged seven to 13 the chance to try its “rigorous music and drama training”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is the world of opera becoming more inclusive? A new documentary, featuring conductor Antonio Pappano, explores the mission to open up the art form to everyone. Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano is renowned for being a warm-hearted “people person”. But there’s one thing that makes his blood run cold: when he hears opera being accused of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15,"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}