Munich boosts audience from 200 to 500
mainThe Bavarian State Opera has been allowed to admit 500 ticket holders to the world premiere of “7 Deaths of Maria Callas” this week. Booking opens today.
The Government describes it as an experimental easing.
Nikolaus Bachler, director of the State Opera, calls it an ‘important step’ adding: ‘theatre without an audience makes no sense.’
the extra 300 tickets sold out in 20 min
Although the numbers are small, this is an encouraging sign for theatres when they do reopen properly. It suggests that “you don’t know what you have till it’s gone.”
Just curious: did Callas ever sing at the Bavarian State Opera? I wish they had an online archive, similar to what Vienna and the Met have.
I doubt if “7 Deaths…” makes any sense either.
How many extra covid cases and deaths are allowed? If 10 people are found to get covid at a concert and 1 or 2 die do you shut down the concerts? What if 20 people get covid but no one dies? I don’t think we should be making calculations like that. We should be letting people know the risks and let them take their chances. Science says we don’t need music to survive, just food, water, and shelter. Shouldn’t we follow the science? Or should we follow the principals of freedom?
False dichotomy.
Also, provocative misrepresentation, no doubt for the sake of being clever, of available scientific evidence: “science” says no such thing.
Neuroscience shows clearly the connection between the auditory and limbic system. Basic emotions are triggered by sound. Dopaminergic excitation is triggered by pleasurable sound. Sensory deprivation is deleterious, in extreme cases health-threatening.
So no, we shouldn’t get on without music.
Fortunately, there’s no reason to. We are less likely to suffer music deprivation than at any other time in human existence on this planet.
Packed live audiences during a live pandemic are a different matter entirely. If we are to deserve the accolade of an intelligent species, we should do that at which intelligent humans have excelled throughout their history, transcending our innate biological limitations: ADAPT to changing circumstances.
We should cease all artistic activity forever. Covid-19 is simply too dangerous to grandmas.
In case it were interest, here are some official data I found on data.gov.uk for the UK.
Last year (2019), there were 1748 road deaths in Great Britain (NB: this *excludes* Northern Ireland), so an average of 4·8 deaths per day.
As of 24th August 2020, the 7-day average for COVID-19 deaths in the UK (NB: this *includes* Northern Ireland, so not a perfect comparison, but Northern Ireland has only 2·5–3% of the total UK populuation) was 8·3 deaths per day.
So, the daily COVID-19 death toll is currently in a similar order of magnitude to last year’s daily death toll from road traffic accidents.
Since early-July, cases have increased, but deaths and hospitalisations have continued to fall steadily.
Perhaps, we should ban all non-essential road journeys? Or maybe, we should accept that we cannot eliminate the risk of death, but take sensible and proportionate precautions (such as speed limits, restricting people with certain medical conditions from driving, social distancing, and encouraging people with certain medical conditions to shield) that are updated as and when appropriate?
Sources:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-provisional-results-2019
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/deaths
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare
The latest study from Iceland shows a covid case fatality rate of 0.3% – only 3 times worse than flu. Is that a good reason to shut everything down?
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2026116?query=featured_home