The Long View | Elitism State of Mind

The ‘E’ word is back. This time it was called into play by its old partner in crime, the high ticket price. Classical music Twitter was in uproar a few weeks ago when it noticed that the cost of attending an Adele concert was far higher than that of attending almost any classical concert or opera (that, and the songstress’s promoters were segmenting her audience into cut-glass champagne and plastic beer types). How can classical music possibly be elitist, we fumed, when it’s a cheaper club to join than Adele’s?

It’s hard to know where to start with that, but try the fact that Adele’s music quite evidently cuts through the socio-educational barriers that have been needlessly erected around classical music by the media, the education system and the court of public opinion. Then consider the economics of it: there’s only one Adele and she doesn’t take a public subsidy. Do we really believe the classical music industry wouldn’t reach for the same business model if it still had a Pavarotti to wheel out? Thankfully we don’t appear to rely on that sort of model anymore.

This isn’t about ticket prices – it was never about ticket prices – it’s about whether our art form is blighted by the perception of being reserved for a particular class of person. At the risk of repeating myself, when you have to attend a private school to be seriously and regularly exposed to classical music, a perception might well emerge that classical music is for the type of person that attends a private school (as it might when we fill concert programmes with ads for those schools). Likewise, when opera is increasingly marketed using images of well-coiffed couples in evening wear ambling through the English countryside sipping from champagne flutes, you have to accept that a degree of elitism is built into the business model of some exponents of it. Is classical music elitist? Yes, bits of it are, of course.

Perhaps that’s necessary, but it can be counterbalanced. Most of the UK’s funded classical music organisations do everything within their power (and budgets) to avoid elitism – by which I mean, they strive to avoid roping off their wares from individuals who are deemed unworthy. Perhaps the status of a particular form of artistic expression in our national consciousness can’t be altered by marketing campaigns, outreach initiatives or ticket prices. Maybe that requires something more fundamental. Has the UK – ridden with social and geographical hierarchies – ever not believed theatre, classical music and opera are for a particular class of person, outside of a few decades in the Victorian era and the social curiosity that is the city of Liverpool? Discuss.

We inside the industry spend a great deal of time handwringing on this subject (I’m aware of the irony in that comment, but this is a monthly column that tries to respond to current conversations). Some say audiences aren’t that bothered, a learned colleague pointed out that thousands attend classical music events every day of the week across the UK. However, if we really believe classical music is a miraculous, open-hearted art form, there are still too many empty seats at concerts and operas to deny we have a communication problem. Besides, the current audience clearly isn’t the problem; it’s the potential audience – the necessarily more diverse audience – that we’re not getting through to. The price of West End shows, Premier League football and Adele concerts suggests it’s not the cost that’s putting them off.

Individual organisations can’t and won’t shift the ‘posh person’ aura around classical music until the genre shifts its place in the consciousness of a sufficient critical mass of the population. That happens further down the line, but admittedly isn’t aided by a polarising media that relies on establishing stereotypes it can then shoot down (it’s the stereotype that ends up sticking). What fascinates me about Nordic societies is how seriously they take classical music while also assuming that attending it is a perfectly ordinary thing to do – like visiting a library or going to the cinema. That happens, in part, because classical music has a major, permanent presence in every major city, is broadcast weekly on TV and is discussed in the media for what it is (not who attends it).

Once upon a time, I worked front of house at a large theatre deep in England’s provinces. It hosted musicals, pantomimes, touring plays, the odd reactionary comedian and high quality opera and ballet from our best touring companies. My colleagues would talk openly about avoiding taking shifts during the two weeks a year an opera company visited – it wasn’t worth the agro, they said; the operagoers are just insufferably rude and pretentious.

It was an overreaction, and things have changed. But I remember the strain of working on opera weeks, including a run-in with a furious individual who couldn’t comprehend that the 21-year-old me didn’t know what sloe gin was (when he asked for one, I simply poured him a normal gin, but slowly). I was writing an essay on formal procedures in Wozzeck at the time, but still managed to ruin his evening. It was almost as if, to him, the music was the last thing that mattered.