English National Opera tells young people to stay away
OperaThe trigger and warning cultures have just hit rock-bottom at ENO.. This piece of patronising website advice about an opera that speaks to all ages above 15 is simply beyond comprehension:
Is Jenůfa a good opera for beginners?
An emotionally intense piece of work, those new to opera may want to opt for something lighter than Jenůfa. The diverse and impactful storyline makes for more of a complex viewing, which may be difficult to follow if you’re not familiar with the variety of opera formats.
For something more accessible with a simpler storyline, start your opera journey with a performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute or Rossini’s The Barber of Seville.
Now THAT’S how you build an audience!!!
Yes, it probably is. For at least most first timers, this production might put them off trying opera again. Probably less true of Magic Flute and the Barber. The article does not support the headline, which, presumably deliberately, suggests that the ENO wants to keep all young people away from everything. The poor old ENO has enough troubles without this kind of distortion.
Disagree. Don’t underestimate first-timers of any age, we can’t know what they’ll find appealing. The Magic Flute is not easy to understand at the best of times and Barber will only appeal if you happen to like opera buffa. My elder daughter’s first opera was Der Rosenkavalier, aged five, and she sat there transfixed the entire time.
I know some adults who just couldn’t hack five hours of Rosenkavalier if they tried!
Can’t vouch for Flute, but their Barber is a terrific production, and I wouldn’t hesitate taking a child or an adult to that if they hadn’t been to an opera before. Not sure I’d take them to Jenufa for the first time, much as it’s a beautiful production. Could really put them off.
Of course, it’s about understanding adolescence – you begin with forbidding something so that it becomes more attractive. And then they want to come no matter what.
Yeah and they shouldn’t go to the movies and watch serious stuff like Oppenheimer either…………..
Adults are constantly underestimating young people and their depth of understanding. Any child 10 or over has all the intellectual underpinnings for adulthood. All they lack is experience of years of living. But, children are deep thinkers. Only someone who doesn’t listen to the questions of even small children could believe they can’t experience certain forms of art.
True, yet… Mozart or Rossini are indeed “more accessible”.
But not necessarily more interesting.
Is not the tragedy and the drama of Jenufa easier to understand than The Magic Flute? At least in my experience, Jenufa was the first opera I listened to following the action consciously, and I was 18 back then.
I was sent to that flute opera when 17, and when 24, and recently again for my work and after preparation, and I never cold make head nor tail of it but I liked the beast in the beginning. I think it’s really good for youngsters because you don’t need to understand anything of it to get bored.
Sally
My first “serious” opera (apart from some wonderful G&S productions) which I saw in my mid-teens was The Rape of Lucretia, in a marvellous Australian Opera production starring Lauris Elms, John Pringle as Tarquinius, Robert Gard as the Male Chorus, Elisabeth Fretwell as the Female Chorus, etc. etc. My parents had bought me a season ticket recognising my interest, and my mother took me to all of the Saturday matinee productions. I was transfixed from the first note to the last, and even asked for (and received) the recording for my birthday that year. I’m 67 now and still look back on it as one of the high points of my opera going life. I saw The Barber of Seville a few years later and, I’m ashamed to say, it bored me to tears; I adore it now! Kids, huh?
This seems eminently sensible advice.
It refers to being new to opera, but what about those who have experience with other genres of ‘classical’ music? Quite apart from Jenufa appealing considerably more than Mozart would to many who might come from other music tastes (3 hours of Mozart would be heavy going I suspect) someone familiar with early 20th Century music could well have a great time with this superb opera.
“3 hours of Mozart would be heavy going I suspect”. Sir, with all due respect, that is possibly the most inane comment I have read in all the years I have read both insightful and insufferable commentary on Slipped Disc.
I think you misread the comment you were so rude about. Try again.
That’s why when I was starting to explore opera, I was listening to some 20th-century works. To me, they seemed to be more convincing dramatic and plot-wise than 19th-century operas.
Ridiculous. We took our 11-year-old son to a wonderful performance of Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” and he was enthralled, on the edge of his seat the entire length of the opera. It wasn’t even a stage production, just a splendid concert performance. Telling people where to start imposes arbitrary and unnecessary limits on a listener’s imagination. Something that’s great about opera, and classical music in general: you just never know what will catch your fancy, so try everything!
“Emotionally intense stuff is, like, totally triggering?”
Incredible, just incredible. Talk about patronising…
My first opera – at fifteen – was Figaro and I was bored sh*tless. Had I had something more substantial to chew on I might have warmed to the genre earlier.
I’ve now been working in opera for decades and have well over a hundred titles under my belt, some on their eighth or ninth different production, and The Magic Flute and Barber are still as much of a turn-off now as they were when I first did them. However, if I’d discovered the form via Wozzeck, Jenufa, Lohengrin, La Bohème or Otello, I’m sure the love affair would have started earlier.
Message to patronising management technocrats with no clue about their audience: schedule quality (get someone to tell you what it is if you’re not sure) and let the great unwashed decide. You might be surprised.
My first was Katya Kabanova at Opera North. I have never looked back, but I can’t stand The Magic Flute.
Very good advice, whats the problem?
And how does one become ‘familiar’ with operas such as Jenufa without attending them?
And as a child, who is going to take them if the parents are not the slightest bit interested or part of the right social class in London to have the right sort of parents.
I never let anything get in my way artistically, nor was I discouraged from doing what I wanted with books, music, theatre, cinema. My father argued with the local library to let me have an adult library card when I was 8, because I had outgrown or read everything in the children’s library and was hogging the lends available on my mother’s card. (I got the card). The school forbade us from seeing certain films, but my parents disapproved of such arbitrary nonsense and let me choose what I went to.
My first opera happened to be The Flying Dutchman, which I saw with my father. Mind you, it took me a long time to warm up to Wagner. It was not actually an ideal starting point — though I knew enough operatic music not to be put off the genre or, ultimately, Wagner. And I returned to the Dutchman in time.
I, and my late parents, would find this sort of warning indeed patronising and silly. That said, I don’t think Jenufa is the opera I would choose to introduce a young friend to the genre. But if it, and that notice, had come my way at 15, it would have been red rag to a bull, and I would have been there like a shot. Young people considering a trip to ENO can do their own research as to whether they want to see this particular opera. The information is on their permanent attachments, their phones.
Unless they are sub-snowflakes, so grounded in the culture of fear (of any idea they have not held since birth) that has developed around today’s youth that they will flee from anything outside their extremely limited comfort zones. In which case, who needs them.
Is this for real? Tell them to stay away as most Italian composers have a very dim view of human life, but at least they usually die wonderfully with their voice and make-up intact. The German and Russian opera composers take local subjects that are hard to understand. If they happen to survive endless music and aria’s tell about their hardships and bleak future. NOT for the weak of mind
I’m a little bit puzzled as to what “trigger” is being warned against. NL could you enlighten me?
I think they’re dead right! I remember from my student days being almost paid by the Friends of Covent Garden to attend performances at the Royal Opera House. I was fortunate that my first exposure to Grand Opera was a performance of Rigoletto. Had it been Jenufa or Wozzeck, I would probably never have gone again.
I know of a perfectly decent youngster who turned to crime after having been exposed to Götterdämerung. He’s now in jail and still has to do 15 years.
This suggestion seems realistic rather than patronizing (U.S. spelling). Although I love JENUFA and have multiple recordings, I would not urge it upon first-time operagoers unless there was a specific reason to think they would enjoy it.
If (as at ENO) Jenufa is performed in English, I would recommend it to anyone of just about any age who’s interested in serious theater, even, and maybe especially, if they weren’t opera fans. (I would not direct people who like serious theater to The Magic Flute.)
Almost more even than by its patronising sentiments, I am infuriated by the illiteracy of this copy. The subordinate clause “An emotionally intense piece of work” apparently relates to “those new to opera” not “Jenufa”. And what is a “diverse storyline”? “A complex viewing experience” would be OK, but “a complex viewing”? Why are these things written by people without a basic grasp of how to speak and write English?
Because those are getting thin on the ground.
Oh, dear!
One can understand the motivation, but this is condescension in extremis.
Even in my (pre-internet) childhood, I’d have been aware that Jenufa was in a different class from Flute or Barber and I’d have done my homework (or my parents would have done it for me) before asking to attend.
Oddly enough, I’d probably have begged to be taken along. My parents were devout Catholics and I was forced to attend Mass (sometimes High, sometimes not) every Sunday. High Mass had some dire organ music being played. The Benedictine monastery banned Bach because he was (horror of horrors) a Prod.
Fearful, however, of losing lucrative wedding ceremonies. Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desire was granted an exemption.
In my early teens, I became aware of Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass and I ached for the organist to play the Intrada as the congregation was leaving High Mass. Alas, it never happened, but the idea of attending an opera written by the composer of such a wonderful work would have had enormous appeal.
This is not patronising- it’s helpful. So many young people have been put off Shakespeare for life by attending a performance that went over their heads – just ask them! (And ask older people too). Suggestions of operas more likely to appeal to ‘beginners’ are also helpful.
I never quite understand why people in the music business recommend Mozart operas for young beginners. When I worked at the Chicago Lyric Opera about 40 years ago, they gave full scale afternoon performances for kids of high school age. I vividly recall some of them arriving all excited to see “Don Giovanni” after it had been hyped up for them by their teachers. When they left at the end, they were overwhelmed by sheer boredom. Mozart is just too stylized and lacking in what they would perceive as “drama.” I’d be willing to bet that they never experienced another opera again. Perhaps Jenufa might actually go over better. I do recall them reacting positively to “Carmen.”
Carmen is a great starting place for opera newbies. Full of banging tunes and a straightforward plot that can most people can, if not relate to directly, recognise as a plausible human story.
I think ENO is confusing the comparative lightness of Mozart and Rossini’s music with accessibility of form. In some ways, Le Nozze and Cosi are about the worst introductions to opera imaginable.
Absolutely! The ‘recit and aria’ format is so unreal, whereas later operas are cast in a more immediately dramatic way and so perhaps more understandable to a newcomer to opera – not just music but action too, without everything stopping while a long da capo aria is sung. For me, Britten’s operas are perfect in this respect. And you don’t have to ‘understand’ everything at first hearing; it’s the initial ‘impact’ that counts.
I repeat my earlier remark at the incredulous shallowness of observations about Mozart’s operas, albeit is indeed possible that Chicago Lyric Opera was culpable of turning out excoriating performances of Don Giovanni during the period in question so dull, it would have sent any high school student into somnabulance.
Spot on. I came to opera via Porgy and Bess, then Peter Grimes.Billy Budd.And Jenufa. Mozart and Handel still bore me, gorgeous music but not to watch. I still remember a degree of concern at two girls with their parents at Otello. Around 10 and 12. They were gripped and after Desdemona’s death, one whispered to Dad, has he killed her?
Same here. I watch opera regularly now and enjoyed Eugene Onegin, Manama Butterfly, Carmen, Orfeo and Tosca as a teen, but Don Giovanni sent me to sleep. Nothing wrong with the opera as such (OK maybe the sold out opera house was a tad stuffy and needed more ventilation but I saw the other operas there too, all sold out and full house). It’s just really long and for a first timer, can be a long wait to get from aria to aria (and it’s quite predictable what will happen next- DG seduces yet another woman, boasts about it, rinse and repeat). Woke up for the last act though, and enjoyed all the bits I was awake for! Tosca, Carmen and La Boheme are quite concise and actually quite good ones for newcomers to opera – how old a newcomer depends on the production.
That’s what I mean. There is no drama in that stuff, as there is in Jaws and The Offering. And no fun as there is in SNL or The Nanny.
Sally
People in the music business recommend Mozart operas for beginners for the same reason they recommend Mozart symphonies: they think Mozart’s music is pretty and not too complicated and won’t scare anyone off. The possibility that a newcomer might find Mozart — especially a Mozart opera — dull doesn’t seem to have occurred to them.
I will grant that The Magic Flute could be good for young children. The Met’s holiday production of the opera abridged for kids apparently does reasonably good business. But I don’t think The Magic Flute is better for children than, for instance, Hansel and Gretel.
It’s not any old Mozart opera, but Flute! Perhaps Hansel and Gretel might be a better choice, but then not done very often in any country of the UK, other than the odd time at Covent Garden, out of financial reach for most.
it’s time that they go as I have hardly read anything more pathetic that this – youngsters see all the bad English TV (also on BBC) and read the rubbish of the Media so you think the youngsters can’t deal with Jenufa? Why aren’t we finally facing history and show what happened and will always happen as long as we keep going with the nihilism of our society?
Didn’t we have enough of socialism? When will it finally backlash? Time will come as we are all going bunker…..
Um, I don’t quite see what Jenufa has to do with socialism …
Jenufa is about people their age, with problems they’re familiar with. Is Bartolo in the Barber an innocent bumbling fool? Hmm.
‘Journey ‘; says it all.
Unless you are going to quote the actual bit where they said “young people”, isn’t this journalism somewhat misleading?
Those young people won’t stand a chance with Eastenders or Corrie, then!
Young people had better stay off Tristan and The Ring, then!
The comments here in support of this ‘advice’ drip the same smug condescension as the original.
Ohhhh, do the Wokey-Kokey. Ohhhh, do the Wokey-Kokey…..
I recently saw Medee at La Scala in Milan and I wish they had given a trigger warning, as I have been mentally damaged by the ending. I may have to seek counselling as a result of the trauma. Boo hoo.
Brilliant, ENO encouraging audiences to keep away from one of their best and most successful productions.
What’s wrong with that? The statement is true and helpful!
Wow, what a rubbish response to the question of whether Jenufa is a good opera for beginners. It sounds like the person answering doesn’t actually watch much opera or thinks ENO’s Magic Flute and Barber of Seville are bad, simplistic productions or that the Jenufa director has made the plot excessively complicated. Either way, it’s both condescending to the person asking the question and the directors and singers of all three productions!
Jenufa is in fact clear and simple to understand. I understood it when I was 16 and found the opera interesting and thought provoking – a great piece of theatre. It’s fine for teens who understand about the realities of the world – that life is not a happy ever fairy tale for everyone. But probably not one to take under 10s to, what with Jenufa getting her face slashed and the step-grandmother of the baby (although she treats Jenufa as devotedly as a daughter) murdering her own step-grandchild.
As any questioning individual has ever told you after seeing The Magic Flute, the opera is quite complex if you start to question who exactly Sarastro is, what the Temple is supposed to represent, and what those trials are about. Is Monostatos a dangerous sex offender (and how explicit is the production in depicting his attempted attack on Pamina)? Would the plot revealing that Pamina’s mother is either at worst a murderous baddie or at best not to be believed, be too upsetting for children?
It depends on how old the beginner is and what the production is like. Some productions of Magic Flute/Die Zauberflote are almost Disney-like and U rated, many are PG but some are not meant for children under 16 (as with operas ans opera productions generally!) I agree that most Magic Flute productions are fine for children who enjoy the hero being victorious and good triumphs over evil. But it is a very long opera with lots going on and some older beginners might prefer a more straightforward storyline.
The ENO Barber of Seville (in English) also has its own complexities and potential minefields. Why is an old man effectively allowed to restrict the freedom of a young woman he is guardian of? Isn’t the fact that he wants to marry her rather creepy and a form of grooming? Should ENO be encouraging children to watch this? That’s not how guardians are supposed to behave- in a civilised world he would be locked up and Rosina be assigned another guardian! The fact that the comedy makes light of the situation and suggests it is fine as long as a man rescues her by marrying her doesn’t make educational viewing- it gives the veey dubious message that society won’t help girls or vulnerable young people from coercive situations unless they can be married off.
The libretto is fine for adults or experienced opera goers who accept that it’s just a story set in a flawed world but it’s definitely not a simple storyline. At least in Jenufa, a bad deed and a tragedy is called out for what they are rather than being laughed off as a comedy.
My first opera experience as a teenager was Tippett’s King Priam, viewed from the old ‘gods’ at the Royal Opera House. I was totally enthralled and couldn’t wait to go again. My next one was Otello with del Monaco, Gobbi, and Kabaiwanska, Solti in the pit. Wow!
Yes, King Priam is a wonderful opera
It is both common sense, and also depressing to read.
I dislike equally those who have no ambition for art, and those who think that their children, Tarquin and Jocasta, need to see Wozzeck first. (“They absolutely loved it, you know!”)
Needless to say, the gobby online critics Mark Valencia and Hugh Canning have run off with this shrieking, and somehow managed to both shit the bed and and clutch their pearls at the same time. They destroy any good cause!
The first opera I ever saw was ENO production of Gotterdamerung I was 19. First 20 minutes I didn’t understand or enjoy. By the end I was totally immersed. An opera fan eversince. Music speaks to you on a visceral level. You don’t need to fully understand the complexity to enjoy.
Imagine wanting to go see your first opera and some uppitty British fopface tells you “actually it’s a bit to COMPLEX for you.. try something more simple”
And you people wonder why audiences are shrinking
Please please PLEASE don’t patronise our young people!! They WANT and LIKE to be challenged!! My 3 children ( now in their 30s) were lucky enough to have played the children roles in Albert Herring 20 years ago. It changed their whole outlook of opera and classical music in general and they’ve never looked back.
Date: 13th March 2024.
If I was in charge of ENO, young people would be encouraged to see the broadest choices of opera provided production costs were viable.
How about the following:
Richard Strauss – Electra and Salome.
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies – The Lighthouse, The Martyrdom of St. Magnus and Tavener.
Georg Ligeti – Le Grande Macabre.
Sir Harrison Birtwistle – Gawain and The Minotaur.
Alban Berg – Lulu (complete).
Bela Bartok – Duke Bluebird’s Castle.
… and, to be really precocious, Jerry Springer, The Opera (Yes!).
So, please stop this political correctness and pandering to the “Dresden China Doll Syndrome.” Today’s youngsters aren’t fools and resent being treated as such.
And, above all, have some real fun.
Where does that ‘trigger warning’ come from? I can’t see it on the ENO website.
Wherever it originated, it seems to be saying the plot situation is too complicated for new opera-goers to follow.
But surely Magic Flute and Barber of Seville are just as complex?
Does ‘beginner’ or ‘those new to opera’ mean the same as ‘young people’? (I was put off opera at the age of 15 by being taken to Wagner’s Siegfried, and I only tried again in my 50s starting with Handel and Mozart.)
When my now 40 yr.old son was 7-8 and would hear my music playing in the apt. His favorites were:
Wagner-Ride of the Valkyries, Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla, Descent into Nibelheim
and parts of Turandot
The endings of Sibelius 2nd Symphony and Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony.
Mozart…nah
After the best part of 40 years spent performing (mostly) classical music, I have been asked by many, many parents what they should do if their children show an interest in playing a musical instrument. I invariably say to them right at the outset – encourage them. I was lucky enough to have had parents who were not in the least bit musically knowledgable, but to my good fortune they always encouraged me (in my case in violin playing). What a shame no-one in this company seems to have had the same start to their involvement in music (I hesitate to use the term ‘love of music’ because it appears that most of those in power seem not to have that love of music!)
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What an absolutely idiotic comment by ENO.
First, because arts consumer research consistently shows that opera attendees (and visual artists enthusiasts) rank among the highest educated and most sophisticated of all arts-goers. And, second, because JENUFA’s visceral score has the potential to reach out and nearly literally grab a first-time buyer.
Many people (very likely like the person who wrote this outrageous statement on the ENO site) who’ve been raised on Mozart and Beethoven might find Janacek’s musical language to be difficult. But a first-time attendee is free from predisposed classical expectations. Time and time again I’ve seen first-time buyers absolutely knocked out of their seats by works like WOZZECK and LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK, and I’ve seen far too many first-time buyers completely turned off by MAGIC FLUTE and BARBER, which can be such huge yawn-fests that plod along for hours.
Of course, it depends on the person. But having been an avid opera-goer for 40 years, I will always push new buyers to the exciting visceral works and tell them to steer clear of the earlier classical and bel canto pieces, which are really more the realm of aficionados who especially love the human voice.
Bad, BAD advice from ENO. Sad to see this kind of leadership in the opera world today.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it is difficult, if not impossible, to predict what a beginner will appreciate. This applies to concerts as well as opera. Friends have asked for recommendations from time to time but I gave up years ago. I simply stress that the range of styles is extremely wide and people should endeavour to sample as wide a range as possible and never be put off by a single performance.
Exposure to music at school was a miserable experience. Put me off Peter and that bl***y Wolf for years.
Jenufa would be my first choice for a teenager’s first opera. Does ENO deserve to exist if they put out rubbish like this , let alone saying Britten wrote the soundtrack for Zeffirelli’s film of Romeo and Juliet and Richard Strauss’s father wrote Fledermaus.
Let them go and give the money to Opera North.
Very sad. ENO is acknowledging that it is failing to fulfil its mission and vision, which includes this statement:
“At ENO, we believe that opera is a living art form able to connect to people from all parts of our society”
… but if you’re new to opera, stay away from Jenufa because you might find it difficult to follow.
Opera can be very upsetting.
If the Brussels theatre had had a trigger warning in 1830, Belgium may never have existed. On the night of 25th August of that year, a performance of Auber’s ‘La muette de Portici’ sparked the Belgian uprising which led to the foundation of the Belgian nation. And the main role did not even sing, because she was supposed to be dumb.
https://riseofbelgiumnationalism.weebly.com/belgian-revolution.html
Aged 11, Saturday matinee, Newcastle Theatre Royal , Gods
Don Giovanni
There with my Dad!
Think of the movies and television folks consume by the millions. Perhaps they’ve got this the wrong way ’round. Maybe staging the most brutal operas, and there are plenty, is precisely the best plan for building audiences.