Saturday 15 July 2023

Candide in six parts?

 Search for "making opera more accessible" and you will turn up dozens of possible solutions (such as this one) to the problem facing opera companies, that of attracting new audiences. As traditional audiences age, it is difficult to counteract the image of opera as stuffy. 

Perhaps the opera world should take a leaf from television's book (and that of the streamers). Multi-part drama series are perennially popular. Why not give longer operas the same treatment? I am not suggesting that they start with the Everest of the Ring Cycle, but the foothills of opera would provide a gentle introduction. Leonard Bernstein's Candide is an excellent candidate. It has good tunes and it is episodic, which makes it fairly easy to parcel up into 30 or 40 minute episodes.  Besides, there is much material discarded by Bernstein from the final stage version (much to the chagrin of his hard-working collaborators) which could be mined if the first TV serial offering proved popular.


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