Last Saturday, I was blessed with a free ticket at the Canberra Theatre Centre. I was umming and ahhing about going to this production: tickets for under 30s were $60, plus a fee which brought it up to almost $70. I had never seen this opera before, but I thought the tickets were quite steep — for comparison, in Germany I got a ticket to a production of The Magic Flute for the equivalent of $40. I know it is perhaps slightly unfair to compare the two, given they are in different countries, but I do feel that it is worth considering in a climate where opera is dying due to disinterest from the younger generations. I could go see 3 movies on a Saturday for the same cost, or 2 IMAX features. But more on accessibility later. I ended up deciding to go to the theatre and see if there were any discounts I missed out on or they could give me on the night, and it was clearly my lucky day as I was given a hand-back ticket as someone could no longer attend. Alright!

This production is a national tour by Opera Australia, but it’s focused on regional areas (which Canberra is included in). I want to emphatically say that as a production it is excellent. The costumes and sets are wonderful, the cast are talented, the orchestra is phenomenal. Each cast member has such gravitas that they are captivating to watch on-stage, leaving a lasting impression. The lighting and effects are well done too; unfortunately the surtitles were slightly mistimed in my showing to begin with but they soon got into a groove. You know an opera is captivating when the performances are so captivating that the surtitles fade into the background in any case. As a theatrical production, it is great.

Controversially, I just don’t think the opera itself is good. It’s a tough sell, I think, given that its plot has been directly redone in the musical Rent and indirectly in the film and musical Moulin Rouge, both of which take this basic plot and expand upon it into something interesting. Here’s the synopsis of La Bohéme: poor man meets sick woman. They fall in love. Interval. Poor man is struggling to support sick partner and is cruel to her to make her want to leave. They separate, until she is dying and returns to see him one last time with all their friends. That’s it. All of the interesting developments actually happen off-stage in the interval; instead we are just told about all of these behaviours and we never get to see the cast perform in any of the ways that they’re telling us about. The music is also middling; there are no tunes you can sing back. I dare you to go to someone who saw this opera and ask them to sing you a melody from it; I doubt anyone could do it unless they were deeply familiar with it. Before going, I read that this was a good opera for first-time viewers. If this was the first opera I ever saw, I think I’d appreciate it but I don’t think I would come back for more. Again, none of this is to do with the production itself, which is excellent. But in our attention economy, theatre companies need to do more than just put on good productions: they need to choose the operas that people are going to experience the full range of the medium. A first-time viewer may like the show, but may not like the medium.

So, coming back to accessibility. Obviously, opera is expensive to stage, and I appreciate that it is hard to price these things. But this is a short opera, and tickets for both Rent and Moulin Rouge start at only $9 more in what are also high-scale productions. Why would someone who had never seen opera before come to this one when it is better value to see those productions? Of course, they’re not direct competitors because you can’t see them in the cities this tour is going to, but going to Sydney from Canberra or Melbourne from Geelong is really not that inaccessible. This tour was financed partially through public funds through Creative Australia, Create NSW, and Creative Victoria. There is an obligation, then, for these companies to give back. Is this the way forward for Opera in Australia?

Opera needs to remake itself if it is to survive. It has class connotations, and it doesn’t help that musicals are just much more accessible to most audiences. A Gen Zer can put Rent on and bop away, you put La Bohéme on and they’ll will have no idea what’s going on. Tickets need to be ridiculously cheap, undercutting musicals by a significant margin to encourage purchases. Programs need to be more accessible, and translations could be too (the translations last night were proper English — but I wonder how a more slangy one would have been received). Music communicators also have a ripe field here: imagine TikTok explainers of famous operas so you know what to expect bef This may have a short-term cost implication, but it would guarantee the survival of Opera into the future.