It’s the credo of every opera house in the world, and each has its own ways and means of attracting new – and, crucially, younger – audiences. But it’s rare that one gives away thousands of tickets to anyone who applies. In New York last week, mayor Mamdani took to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera to tell his city that previously opera-shy citizens should apply for one of the 70,000 free tickets that he and the opera house are giving away this and every season.
That means a staggering 10,000 free tickets a month. Not just for the under-25s, not just for the productions that they can’t shift tickets for on Mondays and matinees. New Yorkers simply enter the lottery the day before and if successful, will get a pair of tickets to the next day’s show.
Mamdani’s announcement coincides with the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, going on a fundraising drive hoping for $1.5bn to secure the opera house’s future. Generous as the offer seems, the Met can surely spare the tickets, given how few of their shows actually sell out the 4,000-seat hall – the Met averaged only 72% capacity the last season. But what’s different about the Met scheme to that of, say, English National Opera’s free tickets for under-21s, or the heavily discounted ticket schemes on offer elsewhere is that it’s the mayor who’s doing the talking, putting his political capital and small-p populist appeal behind the art form.
And that’s where there’s no comparison between Mamdani and British politicians in terms of cultural bravery. Whatever party they belong to, no UK politician for several decades past has wanted to get too close to opera for fear of being contaminated by its associations of elitism, out-of-touchedness, unaffordable posho luxury, and cultural irrelevance. Angela Rayner was branded a champagne socialist for daring to enjoy opera at Glyndebourne (her ticket cost her £62); politicians who are known opera-lovers, including George Osborne and Michael Gove, saw no benefit in being associated with Opera North or Covent Garden during their time in office, and didn’t really want their shameful opera-loving secret getting out.
Which is where Mamdani’s essential message is so refreshing: that the best of what humanity has done in music and theatre, in opera as in all forms, belongs to everyone. That sounds like the most straightforward proposition there could possibly be when it comes to arts policy, but it has never been as powerfully articulated by any British politician in recent memory as Mamdani has just done. Mamdani referenced a previous incumbent in his announcement: Fiorello La Guardia, who was mayor from 1934-45, and his creation of “the people’s opera”, the New York City Opera Company, in 1943.
La Guardia said: “I want justice on the broadest scale … justice that gives to everyone some chance for the beauty and the better things of life”. Mamdani is taking on that mantle. Will any British politician have the courage to do the same, and bet their political fortune on a belief in the socially transformative power of culture in general, and opera in particular?
Extract — continue reading at the source.
