Streaming Hoosiers
Background: After undergrad, I convinced Indiana University that they should accept me into their performance masters program. I started graduate school there in flute performance and was soon miserable.
I also took a job in the ticket office at their performing arts center. This is the building where they stage their full-scale operas and their huge ballet productions (did I mention this was a college? It’s amazing). After spending a year watching performing arts administration/management/ticketing/production, I knew that I had much more to give that world than the concert stage. I moved on to do a masters in arts administration. It is a decision that I have never regretted, and I credit IU with having the first-class facilities and performances to lead me to that end.
This morning I saw a note about Indiana’s on-demand streaming of their operas and ballets. You can see it here. I absolutely love this for a number of reasons:
1) Working in the classical music realm, it makes me angry when professional ensembles make a ton of content free. Where’s your value when you can get everything free? Didn’t your mama tell you about buying the cow and getting the milk for free thing? I appreciate those organizations that see a real worth beyond “promotional value” and limit what I can see gratis.
That being said, this is not a professional organization. These are students. These are AMAZING students, but they are students. Making the performances free isn’t going to cut into their ticketing revenue or lower the demand for their performances. Ain’t no one going to Bloomington just to hear someone sing, I don’t care who’s singing!
2) What perfect experience for today’s performing arts students! So you’re telling them that not only do they have to sing well, not only do they have to act well, not only do they have to engage the physical audience, but they have to engage a viewing audience. That’s got to be a difficult skill to learn, but it’s one that they will need to have when they get off the stage at the MAC and onto the Met Opera stage. Because these people will.
3) You can view these around the world, right? What’s stopping an artist manager in Europe or an opera company in California or a ballet company in Japan from watching this and recruiting? No, this isn’t college football, but it can be. I don’t book, but wouldn’t you rather cast based on their performance in on a full-scale production with costumes, a full orchestra, sets and a live audience? Seems that it would give you a much better glimpse at who’s a well-rounded performer.
4) It’s difficult to get people into a concert hall. But if they know someone in the production (a la Marin Alsop’s Rusty Musician program), they are more likely to attend, or, in this case, tune in. These are students who have toiled their short lives to get this far. Their family and friends are so excited to see them - and now they can. Once they see an opera production or the ballet, maybe they will enjoy it enough to take a chance on a show where they don’t know someone. In their hometown. Where there’s a ticket to be purchased. Just maybe, but still.
5) OK, and then let’s get to the coolest thing for me, opera ADD girl. I can fast-forward. I love opera, I do, trust me I do. I think that opera is a theatrical art that needs to be experienced on the stage to really enjoy it. That doesn’t mean that I always enjoy sitting four hours somewhere to see it. I like that I can move through the show and watch just the arias.
I’m awfully proud of my alma mater (MA 2000). They just successfully married a first-rate educational experience with global entertainment with a fantastic development/sponsorship tool. They just gained another viewer in me, and - it might happen, kids - they may finally get that money for the alumni fund they keep calling about.
