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OPERA

Paris Opera offers cheap tickets to young fans

With this season's line up revealed on Wednesday and the new director hungry for a younger audience, Paris Opera has announced that people under the age of 28 will be able to get discounted tickets.

Paris Opera offers cheap tickets to young fans
Le Palais Garnier, home of Paris Opera. Photo: Treye Rice/Flickr
New director Stephane Lissner, formerly head of the Scala in Milan, will offer 18 new productions for the 2015/2016 season and re-run 14 others, despite budgetary constraints.
   
"Faced with a crisis, you have to go on the attack and produce more," said Lissner.
   
"This generates financing, brings in the public, sponsors, co-productions, television, tours," he added.
   
Lissner promised to present a "balanced" programme with more traditional productions interspersed with "artists who question the world without taboos."
   
"My choice was to present both Schoenberg's 'Moses und Aron' and Verdi's popular trilogy," he said.
   
The Paris Opera — spread out over two sites in the capital including the famous Garnier Palace in central Paris — hiked prices last year.
   
But it is now poised to introduce a new youth policy already instituted by Lissner in Milan.
   
The average age of the Paris Opera's 750,000 spectators per year is 46, which is younger than the median age for classical concerts in France that currently stands at 61.
 

Le Grande Foyer in Le Palais Garnier. Photo: Peter/Flickr
   
But in a bid to attract even younger spectators, the opera will put on 13 preview showings (25,000 seats) at the reduced price of €10 euros for opera-goers under the age of 28.
   
Lissner has vowed to make the Paris Opera the world's "number one" destination for opera buffs with "the best conductors, the best singers and the best directors."
   
The 2015/2016 season will be dominated by Verdi with two new productions of "Rigoletto" and "Il Trovatore", as well as a re-run of "La Traviata."
   
Among the more "radical" directors lined up will be Poland's Krzysztof Warlikowski, who will direct a version of Bela Bartok's "Bluebeard's Castle."
 

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OPERA

A Masked Ball: Madrid opera forced to cancel show after protest over social distancing

Spain's main opera house, the Teatro Real in Madrid, defended itself Monday after it had to cancel a performance when a small group of spectators loudly protested against being seated too close to each other amid a spike in Covid-19 infections.

A Masked Ball: Madrid opera forced to cancel show after protest over social distancing
View of the Teatro Real in Madrid. Photo: Claudia Schillinger/ Flickr

The performance of Giuseppe Verdi's “A Masked Ball” on Sunday night was called off after a “minority” of spectators repeatedly jeered and clapped despite being offered the chance to be relocated or get a refund for the value of their tickets, the theatre said in a statement.

Videos shared on social media by several spectators who were at the performance showed full rows in the upper sections where seats are cheaper, while in the pricier floor section many empty seats could be seen.

Clapping and calls of “suspension!” could be heard even after the actors tried to begin their performance.

The Teatro Real had “respected the health norms” put in place by the regional government of Madrid to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and “even reinforced them”, the chairman of the body which manages the theatre, Gregorio Marañon, told a news conference on Monday.

Attendance at the performance had been reduced to just 51.5 percent of the total, well below the  limit of 75 percent set by the regional government, he added.

The regional government does not require there to be an empty seat between spectators, but it does require there to be a distance of 1.5 metres (five feet) between people, or if this is not possible, that they wear face masks, which is mandatory at the theatre, Marañon said.

The Teatro Real, which celebrated its bicentenary in 2018, is studying “what measures we can take for those spectators who… clearly felt in an uncomfortable situation,” he added.

The incident comes as the regional government of Madrid has imposed a partial lockdown in several densely-populated, low income areas mainly in the south of the Spanish capital where virus infections are surging, sparking a debate about inequality and triggering protests in these neighbourhoods over the weekend before the new measures took effect on Monday.

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