Dear Randy and Vocalisters:
I hope you understand that I was attempting to be funny. Obviously, I am not good at it.
But, to give answer to your question I would offer the following.
Opera is presently the fastest growing performance medium in the US. It has a long way to go, of course, but its audience now includes more young than it has at any time in its history in the US. So it is NOT "basically dead"
I am sure that the late Jerome Hines is not far from wrong about the fact that little money can be made singing opera. The very same is true about public school and college teaching, my profession for 45 years. I probably could have made a lot of money in another profession. The point is, I did not want to! I liked teaching. And, it is also true that I would probably have continued singing professional opera longer if I had not had a mid-grown family when my opportunity came. And, if I had been blessed with a good enough instrument to compete favorably. Who knows.
As for subsidy, opera has always been heavily subsidized throughout its entire history. So has theatre. So have symphony orchestras. If paying their own way is the primary criteria by which classical performing organizations are to considered successful, then all such arts ventures are failures. But then so are almost all forms of public and private education as well. In fact, it is only when education is treated as a business that it ceases to be quality education because it then must treat its students as "consumers" and provide what the "consuming market" seems to want. By definition, it is education's responsibility to determine what is needed educationally, not the students. This is one of the primary reasons that education in this country is in such terrible straights.
The recording industry has made reductions in classical recordings before. They are profit driven as they need to be. I have seen such reductions change many times during my lifetime.
Finally, the fact that most of the performing art that is being purchased in the US today is art that emphasizes commercial values means that it is also art that is not free. It is art that must overcome enormous limitations if it is to become great art. The fact that it occasionally does so is a real tribute to its artists, rich as they are.
-- Lloyd W. Hanson
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