Dudamel: How I’m rejuvenating Paris Opéra

Ramesh Nair says:

I attended the Bastille’s ‘Nixon in China’ featured in the linked news clip. I’d flown from New Zealand principally to attend the Rijksmuseum’s Vermeer mega-exhibition, and delayed my return home to catch the opening night of the Adams. ( I’d originally booked to fly home the day after the performance shown in the video clip, as I didn’t realise until later the ‘first night’ was actually a preview only for youngsters ! )

To my surprise, Dudamel elicited a very enthusiastic ovation indeed as he entered the pit at the start. I sat relatively close to him, and was impressed by the precision and unflagging energy of his conducting : I’ve never seen the Bastille orchestra play so precisely and rhythmically.

It’s hard to judge in that news clip how much Dudamel’s assertions of ‘rejuvenation’ for singers, opera as an institution, or audience , is simply PR pabulum or does he sincerely intend to deliver. Paris Opera tickets, adjusted for inflation, are considerably more expensive than when I first attended the Bastille as an indigent postgrad student in the early 90s. Really, the only major differences I saw in the first Bastille opening night I ever attended, for ‘Elektra’ 30 years ago, and for Nixon, is that a majority of the male attendees in 2023 wore athleisure shoes, and there was a sizeable minority of ethnic East Asians. Black and dark brown faces still seem relatively rare.

However, the Paris Opera programmes just as many ballet shows as opera. The ballet audience seems very different to the opera. At Crystal Pite’s ‘Body & Soul’ at the Garnier in 2019, I seemed to be almost the oldest person for the seats up to about 5 metres away from me in the two shows I attended ( stalls and 1st row box ). At the Bastille for Nixon this year I seemed to be almost the youngest in my section of the side stalls. I’m returning to Paris nest month, and will see Dudamel conduct two shows of the Ades Dante ballet at the Garnier — and these shows were almost sold out when I booked months ago — something hard to believe if these were symphony orchestra concerts entirely devoted to Ades.

So I wonder if the future of rebuilding an opera-going audience, at least for those prepared to pay high prices for tickets, as Parisians seem to have done for ballets composed by Thomas Ades, is to somehow siphon off these enthusiastic young ballet goers to a dance-lite version of music drama? ( I didn’t attend the O dP’s ‘Index Galantes’ a while back that featured break dancing, so have no idea whether that stunt was effective in proselytising.)