Squillo

MARKET FORCES

When it comes to generating column inches in the national press, opera has a better time of things than most other departments of classical music. It’s visual, so there’s a picture to be had; it’s narrative, so there’s a story to be told; and it’s sexier than your average string quartet – especially if there is a vague possibility of the cast taking their clothes off . Hence outrageous marketing deceits like the one that Covent Garden perpetrated earlier this season, with a photoshoot of Renée Fleming artfully encircled by a writhing mass of semi-naked men: a scene I failed to notice in any of the shows it was promoting.

That said, opera remains a relatively hard sell. And we all know why: the foreign languages, the long sit, the expense of tickets, the perception of high culture as beyond the reach of ordinary, Brexit-voting folk… familiar issues every one. Yet how I am sick of hearing them, because they’re founded in objections that can mostly be addressed (though the objectors rarely want to know).