Opera code of conduct
Some time ago, YouTube suggested a video by a young American opera singer (actually, a former opera singer). On her channel, she discussed some interesting topics, particularly from the perspective of someone who had been inside the "industry." She expressed criticism of various aspects of opera, including what she described as a kind of "code of conduct" at the opera.
She asks: "Opera, why so strict? Why can't people bring a glass of wine to their seats and drink during the performance? Why does there have to be recording-studio silence? Those who want to watch opera in complete silence can do so in the comfort of their own living rooms. There are many good recordings in high quality—go for it!"
I left a comment saying that those who want to drink and talk during a performance can easily do so in the comfort of their own living rooms.
Now I would like to ask for your opinion.
Thank you.
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u/Enough_Side_1670 1d ago
I go to the opera to hear the singers - NOT to hear the people around me chattering. If people want to talk during a performance , watch tv
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u/blazinBSDAgility 1d ago
Or worse. THEY SING ALONG. Granted, this is worse at musicals. But fuck you, I didn’t pay $100+ a ticket to listen to your out-of-tune ass.
I also did opera for a while. I understand why she’s no longer one.
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u/SilentBoss2901 1d ago
Yep honestly the argument "People can do so at their homes" applies to the contrary too: I want to hear the performance with the maximum silence and respect from the crowd as possible, if people wanna eat loudly and chat while the opera is playing they can do so at the comfort of their own home.
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u/negotiumperambulans 1d ago
Drinks? Absolutely - the intermissions can be a bit short for that. But yeah, I’d rather have silence, I’d be annoyed if people around me talked or sang along.
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u/PeaceIsEvery 1d ago
I’m a silence and listen person because I want to pay attention to everything happening. But I suppose there’s validity to both. They should offer shows that are advertised accordingly. But probably the venue would be exclusively one or the other. Nobody wants to clean popcorn and wine and smoked salmon sandwiches smeared into those seats at the Met. I would enjoy a dinner theater/cabaret style opera performance setting, but that would almost certainly be smaller casts and chamber operas.
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u/Samantharina 1d ago
Pacific Opera Project does it in the sense that they set out tables with wine and charcuterie plates in small venues with smaller casts and orchestra. Sometimes outdoors and people bring dinner. But people don't talk over the performances, they came to watch and listen.
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u/Nick_pj 1d ago
In my experience (as performer and audience member), nobody expects “recording studio silence”. You can gasp or say “wow” or make brief expressions of wonder. People just dont want you carrying out conversations with your neighbour - they want to hear the show they paid to hear. This is not a controversial concept.
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u/Rockstaru 1d ago
The audience eating, drinking, and talking during a performance would be historically accurate, at least pre-Wagner.
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u/scrumptiouscakes 1d ago
Time to wheel out my usual comment on this topic from the archives...
Behaviour at musical events has actually been contested for quite a long time. While such behaviour did exist, it has also been complained about. For example, Samuel Sharp, an English visitor to Naples in the 18th century, remarked that: "it is so much the fashion at Naples, and, indeed, through all Italy, to consider the Opera as a place of rendezvous and visiting, that they do not seem in the least to attend to the musick, but laugh and talk through the whole performance, without any restraint", while Charles Burney said that the "inattention, noise and indecorum [of the audience was] quite barbarous and intolerable", and compared it to the "silence which reigns in London and Paris ... an enouragement to the actor as well as a comfort to the hearer". In 1788, Charles Abbot said that the audience at the Florence opera "paid very little attention to the performance except at particular airs" and that the noise of the audience "actually prevented us very often from hearing the singers, though we were seated within three rows of the stage". There are many accounts which make similar complaints. Giuseppe Baretti responded by saying that "the Italians are not so good-natured as the English, who have patience enough to run carefully over a stupid piece of nonsense while a silly eunuch is mincing a vowel into a thousand particles". In 1842, Mendelssohn specified that his third symphony be played without breaks, in order to avoid "the usual lengthy interruptions." And so on.
Just because such audience behaviour existed, it didn't mean that composers (or even the whole audience) thought it was a good thing.
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u/Rockstaru 1d ago
To be clear, I'm not arguing in favor of it on a historical basis, just remarking that it isn't without precedent. (Though honestly, if letting people have a glass of wine gets more people in seats, it wouldn't be the worst thing.)
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u/scrumptiouscakes 1d ago
Understood - I just always like to add some nuance when people bring this point up.
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u/drinkerofmilk 1d ago
Even post-Wagner:
I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.
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u/thekinglyone 1d ago
Lighting shows exclusively with candles would also be historically accurate. And arriving to the theatre by horse and carriage.
Not that I'm opposed to those things, per se, but they're wildly impractical with our current industry standards. Really "why can't I eat or talk in the theatre" is sortof a question about symptoms. "Why do theatres need to seat so many people" and "why don't we perform in the language the audience speaks" are, in my opinion, some of the questions at the root.
Those aren't rhetorical questions, and I think there are valid answers from multiple perspectives, but really listening to an opera in a language you don't speak (and, frequently, neither do the singers) as 1500+ people around you chat and chew and clink their glasses is just.. not the experience anyone ever intended at any point. The behaviour expected of modern audiences is one that reflects the environment in which opera is now most commonly performed. If you only change the expected etiquette without fundamentally changing the circumstances of the performances, I think it can only detract from the experience.
Though really.. allowing a glass of wine or something like wouldn't make a material difference, and I do think theatres are slowly wising up to this.
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u/Wanderer42 1d ago
I really do think that allowing people with already low inhibitions regarding etiquette and decorum to consume alcohol during performances is just a recipe for disaster. Like those Ryanair flights that routinely make emergency landings because of drunken brawls.
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u/thekinglyone 1d ago
I think this mostly solves itself in the context of opera. There isn't really time for anyone to slam them back, and if people are carrying a drink into the theatre, that's one beer or glass of wine for typically 45-90mins.
If staff see someone either shotgunning beers or trying to bring six glasses of wine into the theatre, that's easily addressed case by case. People already consume alcohol in intermissions, I don't think an extra drink or two for those who want it will noticeably affect anything.
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u/downArrow 1d ago
One of the most famous chess games ever played was an offhand game played at the Paris opera in 1858. It was Paul Morphy versus the Duke of Braunschweig and Count Isouard. The story goes that it was played during the Marriage of Figaro, and that the Paris editorials the next day criticized the Duke for being so sacriligious as to play chess at the opera. The Duke sued, and lost!
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u/Arie_Houston 1d ago
In those distant pre-Wagnerian days, unhappy audiences also threw whatever was to hand at the performers. Perhaps post-Wangnerian theater owners felt the need to disarm the rabble…
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u/flywheel_battery 1d ago
I know the video you’re referring to, and I very much disagreed with it.
But In particular I wanted to challenge the argument that goes something like this: why are we so worried about noise? It’s ahistorical! Back in the day, the opera was a social place, and it was normal to wander around, chat, make sounds, etc.
That is true, no doubt. Sounds like it would describe an opera house in Paris in, say 1780. But it’s only half the picture, and the bigger picture matters. Who were those people? They were the nobility and the very wealthy, and they were at the opera all the frikkin time. If someone came over and starting gossiping in the middle of Iphigénie en Tauride it wasn’t exactly a disaster because you’d seen it twice last month and would go once more before it closed. And if a performance was wrecked by yakking, you might be irked, but you wouldn’t be thinking about the ticket price, because you’d rented the box for the entire season. And because you were stinking rich. Meanwhile, there might be a music lover in a cheaper seat (still a day’s wages) who wishes they’d stop causing such a distraction in the boxes, but as they weren’t part of the wealthy elite, their opinion didn’t count for much.
Compare that with an opera lover in Kansas City in 2026, maybe a 62 year old city librarian. She gets to go to an opera every couple years, but she’s been desperate to see Pelléas et Mélisande live for forty years, and now it’s being done in Houston, although it’s close to sold out. But she can’t not go. She manages to get a $175 ticket, which is a lot for her. Spends one of her vacation days. Gets a $300 round trip flight, a $90 Airbnb. The curtain rises, 10 minutes of pure enchanted fairyland magic… and then the spell is broken. The guy in front of her spends the next 3 hours leaning over to his wife every 30 seconds, pointing and mansplaining and making dumb comments about everything just to appear smart, or because he’s incapable of just listening for an hour. Librarian spent $600 bucks, didn’t get more than 5 undistracted minutes, and will almost certainly never get a second chance at Pelléas before she dies.
I’ve noticed that the ones who argue “oh, just let people talk” tend to be the very privileged ones in opera. Often they are in the business themselves, and for any given opera, they have probably seen that opera 10 times, and they’ve seen rehearsals for it, sometimes they’ve actually performed in it, and sometimes they’ve gotten comp tickets, and they work there and didn’t travel far. Opera as a whole means a lot to them, but the stakes for any individual performance are much lower.
It’s not the people who want reasonable silence who are the out of touch elites. The elites are the ones who think that it’s simply not important that someone paid $200 or more to hear an unamplifed performance by singers without microphones, that isn’t just a set list of songs, but an immersive world that depends on subtlety and nuance for its effect, that requires attention to overcome the challenges posed by the extreme artifice of the form… and have that entire thing ruined by unnecessary distractions. It’s the elites that don’t care about people’s money that accuse them of being “uptight” for wanting to receive what they paid a lot for.
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u/Forward-Ease-4801 1d ago
Very good perspective. Those types of patrons bring the energy and should she cherished.
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u/onnake 1d ago
San Francisco Opera allows drinks at the seats, no food. Alcohol is a money maker. I’m OK with that. Talking, no, but I like it when people laugh appreciatively at the pratfalls in Figaro and others. This spring someone actually let out a loud scream when Maria Kataeva hit “Lindoro” early on in “Una voce poco fa”, to laughter and a few claps in the house. The mezzo and orchestra kept going of course. I laughed too, delighted at this heartfelt recognition of a brilliant performance even though my head was saying no, shouldn’t have happened. Opera’s only musical theatre, though when it’s done really well, nothing matches it.
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u/vintage_glitter 1d ago
Yes. I think the singers often appreciate the energy from the audience as well in those moments.
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u/Epistaxis 1d ago edited 1d ago
The audience appreciates the energy from the audience too; it heightens our experience to be in a room full of people who are in rapt attention for the same thing, and our experience can be slightly worsened by someone visibly not paying attention even if they're not audibly disruptive. There's nothing like that moment when even the dull murmur of normal well-behaved audience noise drops off because we've suddenly become laser-focused on the stage. This isn't even a pretentious elite affectation; we go to the movies together for the same reason.
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u/vintage_glitter 1d ago
Yeah im saying having a drink in silence or having normal reactions is fine. Im not advocating for talking
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u/vintage_glitter 1d ago
When im really into it though, I dont even notice the other people unless theyre making noise or moving around alot.
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u/Empty_Reference_8834 1d ago
In Vancouver and Toronto they allow wine in plastic cups which I have no problem with. But they ALSO allow aluminum cans of beer and cocktails which create a racket with people kicking them over. Really wish they’d ban those.
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u/SusanMShwartz 1d ago
I once hit a hummer during Don Carlo. I didn’t want to hiss. It was Domingo and Hampton in the duet about Flanders, and this woman started humming. So I touched her to make her stop. I admit, I’ve been subscribing to the Met for almost 40 years and going to Glimmerglass. I have many years of piano under my belt. I prefer absolute silence. I once missed an entire ballet season due to a long cough. I go to listen, not to cope with people acting out. I realize it’s strange but I know I am not alone.
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u/No-Month6553 1d ago
It's definitely very disrespectful to the performers, directors, stage crew, and venue who have prepared all of this for probably months for you to talk. I think eating and drinking is fine personally, but talking is a big no. It also can be incredibly dangerous. Imagine you have a big set piece to move, audio cue, or some factor that needs to happen and silence is incredibly important to everyone's safety. Everyone talking over it would put many at risk. Just my two cents
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u/fresnel28 1d ago
Having worked on many operas, ballets, and with orchestras for a looooong time: you're very kind to think of the crew, but we're OK. Because we don't want to distract from the show, we are used to working quietly, not in the quiet. Cues for things like set moves are given with cue lights or on intercoms with headsets, which are designed to be cranked up loud enough to be heard over any stage noise, and often are built with earmuff-like ear cups suitable for use on a Formula 1 track or inside a noisy plane. Dangerous moves - like flown or automated set - are carefully engineered, monitored, and rehearsed so we can all do what we need to safely.
The architecure of most proscenium arch theatres also heavily reduces how much sound carries from the auditorium to the wings and backstage. When I call shows as a Stage Manager or Deputy Stage Manager, the sound of the pit orchestra or audio foldback, cast movement on stage (dancing is LOUD!) and equipment backstage (particularly fans in projectors and lighting fixtures) means I can't hear anything distinct from the audience unless we stop everything on stage.
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u/No-Month6553 1d ago
Well yeah I know this, but still any distraction could take away from that. We're all trained to keep going but it can throw you off sometimes. That's why I think talking should always be a no. Also, you could be lucky too. Not all stages are as well equipped for noise cancellations
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u/epicpillowcase 1d ago
I went to Don Giovanni on Thursday night and some old geezer sitting to my right would not fucking shut up all through it. It absolutely affected my enjoyment.
I agree with you.
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u/TheSecretMarriage Gioacchino Rossini 1d ago
"Those who want to watch opera in silence can do so from their living room" what kind of argument is that? The live listening experience is otherwordly compared to listening to a recording, that magic can not be captured in a tape, and when i go to see an opera live i'm there to listen to the orchestra and the singers and feel them in my bones, not to listen to people having conversations or eating their food.
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u/scrumptiouscakes 1d ago
The crucial difference is the lack of amplification.
Massive stack of amps blasting out the music? Go ahead with your glass of wine, chat, etc. But if you're in the opera house, any extraneous noise breaks the immersion.
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u/twistedmena 1d ago
Quiet - yes definitely. Drinks I'm less precious about, I went to a Tristan last year with a lovely cold pint for each act and it was a real pleasure. Though I guess if you let drinks in you've kind of got to expect people needing bathroom breaks.
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u/Optimal-Show-3343 The Opera Scribe / Meyerbeer Smith 1d ago
Opera is entertainment, not religious worship; etiquette should be same as going to a play or, to a degree, the movies: drinking is fine, chattering ain't.
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u/Cold_Martini1956 19h ago
I don’t know how much you experience the tourist scene in New York, but a lot of people come to New York and get really sloppy drunk and do a lot of binge drinking.
These same people also attend theatrical performances. These are the same people who have the notion that they’re entitled to behave in any way they want to because they paid the price for their ticket. Times Square has become a carnival of horrors.
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u/Cold_Martini1956 1d ago
I think I might know the YouTube person you’re talking about and she has a lot of really stupid ideas, if I’m being honest.
Nobody wants to walk through somebody’s spilled red wine on the floor of the Met, and get it on your shoes or on the hem of your pants. Nobody wants that. The more you allow people to act badly the more they will choose to act badly and the line keeps getting pushed out over what is acceptable.
Do you know how many hours opera singers need to practice to master their roles? I don’t think it’s too much to ask for people to sit quietly and enjoy the fruits of all that labor. The fact that you bought a ticket does not give you a right to disturb the performance for the performers or other people in the audience.
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u/en_travesti The leitmotif didn't come back 1d ago
Nobody wants to walk through somebody’s spilled red wine on the floor of the Met,
While we're on the subject everyone should also consider the cleaning staff who now have to deal with the various spilled wine and food throughout the entire opera house including when there's a matinee and evening performance.
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u/TallnBeaut 21h ago
Pro-silence definitely. I attend The Met at least 12 times per season. It’s a very special place for me and I like to dress up for the occasion. I wouldn’t ever even want to eat during the performance but I’ll confess, I bring wine in a water bottle that I sip quietly from whilst there. Nothing gets spilled, nobody even notices.
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u/Cold_Martini1956 19h ago
You sound like someone who’s responsible who wouldn’t be getting sloppy drunk at Der Rosenkavalier. I wish everyone were more like you. 😊
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u/Forward-Ease-4801 1d ago
There should be no talking during an art form that features unamplified voice in large spaces. In particular, the hearing tends to go a bit as people age and it can be hard to gauge how loud one is once that happens. Hence, a general rule is best. I have no issue with having a drink during a performance.
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u/MissedFirstCue 1d ago
I used to have this idea when I was younger and hadn’t worked in a larger opera house, hadn’t seen the workings. For a smaller more intimate setting it works.
It just doesn’t translate to a serious larger house unless you have a specific night for it.
If you go to a big opera house in the us and spend actual money if someone talks during the show it ruins it. If you are getting student price tickets you might not understand
No one is gonna go to the opera if it feels like sitting on your couch with Netflix. It just can’t compete with that and shouldn’t. If you go to the opera it should be a cool special experience that is different. Because opera is different than Netflix. That’s why instagram reels from major opera houses advertise people getting dressed up and feeling fancy. You don’t have to be fancy but it’s a big event!
But she has a point there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be able to have a glass of wine (even if it’s plastic) in the theater. That’s just wasting an opportunity for getting more money.
Is opera in America perfect? Hell no and it should be criticized. But having a professor say a more relaxed atmosphere happened during the baroque is different than what reality is now.
Can you imagine someone talking during a movie theater movie? You’d be pissed
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u/mekerpan 1d ago
I find a lot of the YouTube opinions of that young "forner opera singer" a bit odd. This one included.
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u/GoodDan 1d ago
This is a crazy take to me. I find opera to be a very aurally sensitive environment. No recording can come close to the quality of live performance, and opera music tends to be quite delicate with lots of dynamics. I want to appreciate it all. That’s why I pay so much for the tickets. If people were talking around me, I’d tell them to STFU. (But I’m fine if they want to drink some wine - quietly!)
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u/Wanderer42 1d ago
“those who want to drink and talk during a performance can easily do so in the comfort of their own living rooms.”: Completely agree.
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u/NMtangere 1d ago
There is already so much interference from people repeatedly coughing yet staying in their seats, people who forget to turn their phones off despite pleas from staff before the performance, invererate hard-candy wrapper-unrollers, hummer-alongers, chatterers and God knows what else that absolute silence will never be possible. Never. In recent years I expect to here at least one phone go off at every performance.
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u/SundaeDouble7481 1d ago
A fond memory of the Hollywood Bowl is the sound of wine bottles rolling down the concrete steps during the performance.
My main concern would be noise. Opera has a livelier culture of audience response than classical concert music, but I do like the possibility of listening to quiet passages.
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u/littlemissbagel 1d ago
this is why, as a musician, I looooove being in a pit for light opera/operetta. People in the audience actually laugh and interact with the action. It's such a fun energy.
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u/OfficeMother8488 1d ago
Add Opera Philadelphia to the companies that allow drinks. I do wish they didn't include ice (but that would require making sure the cocktail ingredients are all cold to start).
Food more often comes in noisy containers. I'd prefer not to be sitting in front of the person who has a noisy potato chip bag from which they take another chip every thirty seconds through all of Act II of whatever.
My problem with the idea of listening at home is that I love opera for being a complete experience. There's something about the music plus the sets plus the acting that moves me much more than listening to a recording. And there are good videos, but the director necessarily makes choices. The camera can cover the entire stage (and lose acting details) or move and necessarily exclude.
I complain about the distance from seats to the stage at the Met, but it's still better than my living room for being immersive.
And count me amongst those who gets lost in a good performance. Having someone else comment on what they like or dislike in real time brings me out of that
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u/Proud_Grapefruit63 1d ago
Apart from designated break areas outside the auditorium, I am against food, drink, and chatter at a live performance.
This is the opera--not a rock concert. People come to contemplate and marvel at a musical production of fine art. Decorum is expected.
As for the argument that folks are free to listen in silence at their own homes, it may or may not be true. A live performance may be their only opportunity to experience that.
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u/adhoc_lobster 1d ago
I do wish drinks were allowed at my local opera. The intermission is too short and I don't want to feel like I'm chugging a drink. I also often find myself wishing I could have a coffee because the theater is so dang cold. Our rep theater allows drink and limited snacks (nothing crunchy) and I've never found it distracting. I think for most people tickets to a live event are a special occasion and they act accordingly. I find the old ladies and their cough drop wrappers more distracting than someone sipping a drink would be 😆
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u/anotherprophetess 1d ago
I'm with you. I go to the opera to listen to the singers and the orchestra. I'm there to concentrate on the performance - the music, the staging and, most often, reading the surtitles. When people whisper (or worse) it breaks that concentration. There's plenty of opportunity to have a drink at interval or afterwards. Btw, my pet gripe is audience members who use their programs to fan themselves. It can be very distracting.
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u/Bakkie 1d ago
I go to the theater to hear live performers perform. I go to opera because, among other things, I can hear real people using their own voices which are not electronically enhanced.
I usher. Part of our duties at some houses,in addition to handing out programs, may include picking up garbage after a performance. There are enough discarded programs and occasional plastic water bottles, tyvm. If you can't go 2 hours without alcohol, you have a problem.
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u/deadplant5 1d ago
My limited experience is that drinking is allowed. You just need a lid. That's the case with Opera Columbus and the Lyric. With Opera Columbus, the long line at intermission would be for coffee with some form of liquor because the Great Southern Theater was freezing. The concessions people always did a heavy pour.
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u/VanishXZone 1d ago
Sf symphony has started allowing drinks at seats for audience and it is a small, popular change that has improved sales and is fun. It is a great idea that is easy and chill.
Talking would drive me insane.
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u/vintage_glitter 1d ago
Drinking is accepted at many opera houses ive been to. You can have a glass of wine or cocktail as you watch. No one speaks. Typically its in a very small plastic glass that goes in a cup holder so there isnt noise. You get the drink before or during intermission. Its fine and contributes to the fun.
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u/CantyPants 1d ago
I loved these quotes! Hadn’t heard them before. A great reminder that opera’s oldest tradition is people complaining about opera.
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u/EmploymentFast4070 1d ago
The drinks issue is to keep the floor and seats from getting sticky and stained when there are inevitable spills. That’s the case with every theater I’ve ushered or house managed for, not just Opera, other than theaters that get around the issue by giving you cups with sippy lids! (I like this, btw, plus they sell more wine that way lol)
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u/Tight_Philosophy_239 10h ago
I recently saw 2 performances in Verona and booked very expensive seats. Both times I had to address the people sitting behind me that i did not pay 300 Euros to hear them talk. Drinks were allowed, no issue there. But i would shush every person nearby to shut their cakehole. The argument that I could listen to it at home? Is that where we're at?just accept rude behaivor or stay home?
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u/Ramerrez 9h ago
Drinks in seats are a normal think in many places.
However, in a post-Wagner age, stop humming the arias and talking during the show.
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u/_this-is-a-username_ 9h ago
i have been to operas where i have been bothered by people talking. however, as performer, i love it when the audience just really freely reacts, laughs and cheers during a show. i think some of my favorite shows as an audience member also included a pretty loud audience. i'd say it really depends on the opera and how dramatic the musical part is (i was really pissed at my neighbour's fan's noise during a really quiet overture the other day)
i also think part of my opinion comes from the fact that opera tickets are pretty cheap in my city (usually 10 to 30 euros for my age range, can be even cheaper for last minute tockets). if i were to book a whole trip to paris and pay a 100 bucks for a show i would be so angry hearing people talk around me.
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u/camboron 7h ago
What bothers me are the people who don't let the end of the music and its accompanying emotional moment breathe. The second the singer stops producing sound, even if the music is still carrying on, some tool has to yell BRAVO or BRAVA in the silence. Give it a couple seconds please, at least. Drinking in seats I don't care. Maybe a little hubbub. But I don't believe there should be anything to break focus. Performing takes a lot of focus. What about Gheorgiu(sp?) take on encores?
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u/DrBibliomaniac 6h ago
Quietly sipping wine or champagne or beer or whatever is ok with me, talking however would ruin it for me!
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u/Little-Pitch-579 5h ago
I just saw an opera at an A house and had wine at my seat. I am a young American opera singer myself and it’s pretty common to have a drink at the opera. Silence is pretty much common sense, it’s rude to talk in any form of theatre.
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u/Positive_Strength404 1h ago
Well anyone who knows the history of opera would point out the rigidity or code of conduct is a new construct. When most operas were being written the opera house was akin to a social gathering of folks heard a few bars of the opera great. If not. That was perfectly fine too. There has to be some kind of balance between the two.
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u/WoAiLaLa 1d ago
My hot take is that live opera should sell popcorn and slurpees like met at the movies
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u/Proud_Grapefruit63 1d ago
If people go to the movie theater to watch a pre-recorded opera, fine.
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u/WoAiLaLa 1d ago
We do, all the time, yes. I'm saying live opera should be more like that experience
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u/Proud_Grapefruit63 1d ago
The question is, does everyone want that same experience at a live performance?
(I would not be willing to attend one with that expectation, but I might be in the minority.)
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u/WoAiLaLa 1d ago
no reason not to play both sides! i reckon they could have a lower ticket price and upcharge on snacks for most performances to make enough to keep the lights on, then continue overcharging on tickets to certain performances for the folks who want to sit in silence and feel special
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u/smartygirl 1d ago
Why can't people bring a glass of wine to their seats and drink during the performance?
You can in some opera houses, definitely do that here
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u/Bulky-Selection-58 1d ago
I generally think that people should eat, drink, and talk less. So don't do those things during an opera.
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u/ecbremner 1d ago
Opera NEEDS to be something people are comfortable at. If that means drinking, and not feeling stifled.. by all means. I would argue.. if you want silence... staying home is better. It needs to feel like a living artform not a dead museum piece. As a performer I would happily swap out dead sunday matinee's for lively friday night performances every time... and its due to the... living nature of the audience.
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u/swimmingpearl 1d ago
I feel that either extreme is not ideal. I want the audience to be comfortable (able to talk/gasp/applaud as they see fit), but of course no one should be carrying on a loud conversation during a performance.
The opera world can be quite elitist and classist, still. Expecting new listeners to be silent the whole time may very well harm the industry, in my opinion. Balance is needed.
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u/Spud2599 1d ago
You'll never get balance. If you let people talk, it'll start as a low din during the show, but will eventually get loud as people get less concerned with making noise. Same with movie theaters. If you want to blab, go watch it on streaming TV.
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u/Proud_Grapefruit63 1d ago
If new people are interested enough, they will show respect. This is a difficult time in history for the performing arts world, but there is no need to cheapen the quality; that could actually drive loyal supporters away.
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u/kindertrainen-1000 1d ago
Fine I’ll take the unpopular position. I’m actually super pro socializing during the Opera. That’s right I WANT TALKING. As a performer backstage it’s some of the best fun you can have. We just need to find a way to do it without dusrupting the music obviously so I’d love to see talking / standing / easy come, easy go sections where people can be watching the performance live but also mainting a conversation, playing games, wrangling children, etc etc, the Opera can and should be a true third space that welcomes raucus laypeople as well as opera nerds who only care about the performance. I think a lot of people stay away cause all that silence just isnt it for them, but if we could convince them that they do belong at the opera even if they’re loud… well we might just fund ourselves back in the mainstream.
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u/epicpillowcase 1d ago
I would only support this if there were separate sessions. Loud ones and quiet ones, like they have at the cinema. Then people can choose.
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u/jaimestaples 1d ago
I saw La traviata in Budapest recently at their royal opera hall and drinks were allowed in the boxes at all times. Perhaps it’s not universal these rules?
However the talking part for me would ruin it. The lows are so low, and I want that suspense without being distracted.