Opera is cooler than you think In 1975 Queen released their fourth album, A Night at the Opera, a little-remembered record containing one of the most famous ballads in the history of rock and roll. Queen’s Night is capped off by the climactic ballad “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a song rich with vague references and intimations of classic opera. The headbangingly beautiful “Rhapsody” serves as a tenuous bridge between the high art of opera and younger generations, who find the world of high- pitched, window-breaking, fat-lady-singing opera intimidating and irrelevant. Yet Queen succeeds where many opera companies in America today fail, that is, in introducing a generation of ears to the power of operatic song. The reason for this failure is clear: opera today offers little to young audiences. Opera is not on the Internet, and does not come off as an art so much as a stereotype. The only opera that Generation X experiences is through marketing. Opera is a Rolaids commercial spelling R-E-L-I-E-F to the sounds of La Boheme. And who has not watched a middle-aged sitcom husband cooking up some wacky scheme to avoid a night of certain agony? Most opera companies and opera insiders boil these perceptions down to intimidation, based most often on “myths” about their sacred art. Books and articles attempt to arouse new audiences but offer little real advice for opera newcomers. The recently released Getting Opera: A Guide for the Cultured but Confused offers a list of “opera jokes” in its first chapter. One timely example: “What’s the difference between a soprano and a terrorist? You can negotiate with a terrorist.” Clearly there must be a better way. Maybe there’s a kind of elitism going on here on the part of opera insiders, who are happy to see the public enjoying popular warblers like Charlotte Church or the Three Tenors but are reluctant to more to make opera truly accessible or maybe it’s just a matter of finding ways to hook newcomers that actually work. In Milwaukee, a place not usually associated with the cultured refinement of opera , the Florentine Opera Company is taking practical steps to put a friendlier face on its art. The nation’s fifth oldest opera company, the Florentine has created a stage for itself in some unlikely places, reaching beyond the audiences it regularly draws to the Marcus Center downtown. A longtime field trip destination, the Florentine has a tradition of educational outreach to Milwaukee’s primary and secondary schools, touting programs that help students make the “transition from Itsy Bitsy Spider to Madame Butterfly.” Yet for many years the Florentine, now entering its 72nd season, neglected to make this transition any easier for parents and young professionals in the Milwaukee area. Audience development consisted exclusively of outreach to high-end donors and season ticket subscribers through galas, lectures and champagne receptions. Today, audience development at the Florentine has shifted to a demographic defined by Florentine Special Events Manager Molly B. McDonald as “anyone who is focusing on a career.” This audience, so often neglected by the mainstream opera community, is finally on the Florentine’s radar. “We have just recently formed a new audience development committee,” says McDonald. “They are focused on reaching a younger audience.” Of this audience, McDonald continues, “they are scared by stereotypes and hoity toityness….We are trying to break stereotypes, really trying.” The Florentine has recently taken steps to back such words with action. “Lectures will put people to sleep, but we have so many different possibilities,” says Florentine education manager, Elizabeth Siefert. Last summer, the Florentine partnered with a hip and popular coffee shop on the city’s lakefront to create a new stage for itself and a new presence with Milwaukee’s career-oriented crowd. Alterra at the Lake, a pump house-turned-coffee shop with century-old brick lining the walls and steel valves lofted in the ceiling, opened in September 2002 on the shore of Lake Michigan. Designed as a place to meet and gather beside the city’s natural wonder, the Alterra café seemed the perfect space for the Florentine to expose its art. The rustic cottage, powered by renewable energy, captures the vitality and casual sophistication of Milwaukee’s latte-drinking, cultured adult population. With dozens of outdoor tables spread about the café’s large terrace, the Florentine found the space, seating and location to breathe the spirit of opera into an untapped audience. Florentine at the Lake, the concert series spawned by this partnership, saw over 1,500 Milwaukeeans enjoying highlights of the Florentine’s program over six appearances this past summer. With well-recognized pieces and previews of the coming season, the series offered opera as “a little more cutting edge, not stuffy, and a little more fun,” according to Siefert. Every other Thursday from June until August, Milwaukeeans were treated to high opera in an open-mic atmosphere (minus beatnik drummers and slam poets, thankfully). Putting an emphasis on familiarity, education and a local feel, the performers from the Florentine chorus were able to connect to the audience in a way that opera is rare today. Evoking a romantic vision of Italy in the summer, Florentine at the Lake combined coffee and culture in a setting embraced by a younger generation more willing to lie on a blanket and pack a picnic than get dressed up and toast champagne. A mere introduction to the experience of opera, the Alterra performances may not translate into immediate box office sales, but the event is an example of how new ideas and different approaches can invigorate the community to break stereotypes and old ways of thinking. The success of the partnership, described as “impossible to measure in traditional terms,” by Alterra co-founder and owner Lincoln Fowler will more likely change the perception of opera in Milwaukee than in runaway ticket sales. A long-term investment plan rather than a get-rich-quick scheme, the Florentine’s outreach program at Alterra, is the first step toward creating a new wave of traffic at the box office. The current season at the Florentine features three classic Italian operas and however recent the relaxed Alterra performances may have been, renewed intimidation for opera newcomers. “It’s great we had this run throughout this summer. 350 people in a night,” says Siefert. “But then fall comes along and people forget about us.” During the regular opera season, from November to May, the Florentine and other American opera companies have all too much in common in terms of audience demographics. However, when a company like the Florentine takes steps to change its traditional perception and dispel intimidation with action, the stuffy air of the Marcus Center begins to feel more like a breeze off the lake. With supertitles – subtitles, but bigger and better – running above the stage and no dress code, the Florentine’s home looks and feels like a giant, acoustically perfect movie theatre, with prices just a tick higher than your typical blockbuster. Such little assurances, the Florentine hopes, in addition to the comfort created by the Alterra performances, are making it that much easier for budding fans to put their apprehensions aside and let the grandeur of opera wash over them. This season’s performances include Il Trovatore, La Cenerentola (Cinderella) and the quintessential classicLa Boheme, all in traditional form, and all as accessible as they were to audiences during the open-air summer performances. As the Florentine waits and hopes to see a gradual migration of summer-series audiences making their way down Water Street to the Marcus Center this winter, the warm relationship between Alterra and the Florentine will not lay dormant. Plans are in the works for a day of caroling by the Florentine’s chorus on December 11 at the coffeehouse and another outdoor series at the lakeside café next year. It isn’t likely the crowd will have the opportunity to sing along to their familiar favorite “Bohemian Rhapsody,” but for an ever-growing young audience, some new favorites are starting to sound even better.
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