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* As much as I love Rene Fleming and was thrilled to be at her final performance of Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera House recently, I really do think that a top ticket price of 270 for an evening at the opera is taking things too far. If anything makes opera seem elite and unapproachable for ordinary people, its this sort of astonishing mark-up whenever a star appears on stage.
The Royal Opera is currently undertaking a massive building programme which is opening up the theatre by creating a proper ‘shop front’, in the hope that the building will appear much more inviting to the general public and to passers-by in Covent Garden.
This is all very well, but why bother going in if you have to be as rich as Croesus to get a ticket to actually see an opera – which must surely be the ROH’s be all and end all, unless it regards opera as a glorified adornment to its shops, bars and restaurants…