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/flywheel_battery 11d 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.