MUSIC AND THEATRE

Up until quite recently, I would have said that opera is first and foremost theatre. Not any more. After a brief spell working at u national opera house, I learned that opera is, in fact, only secondly theatre. The music comes first. That’s as it should be, of course. But I come from a different world, the world of the theatre, where the word and the actor speaking it have primacy, where there is nobody out front directing the action once the event is under way, and where performer and audience (mostly) speak the same language.
At any musical performance, whether in concert hall or opera house, there will generally be a substantial minority of people who, like me, have little technical or academic understanding of music. Some of them will be aware of, possibly even embarrassed by, how much they don’t know. Most will be awestruck by the skill of the performers. A dazzling coloratura or an impeccable string section are easy to admire. Even a moderately good musician is showing us the results of years of punishingly hard work. Being in the audience for top-class music is not unlike watching an athletics match - we know athletes are doing something broadly similar to what we do when running for a bus, but we also recognise by how much it excess our best efforts.
Theatre audiences by contrast, come with a different set of expectations. In the main they do not understand the nature of an actor's skill and are not particularly awed by an activity which, a lot of the time, appears to be very close to what they could do themselves. They are not usually impressed when an actor completes a long and difficult speech (although ‘how do you learn all those lines?’ is the question every actor gets asked). None of this means that theatre audiences are more generous or less demanding than their counterparts in the concert hall, indeed quite a lot of them are the same people. What perhaps it does mean is that audiences and performer meet on more equal terms in the theatre than elsewhere, no matter how challenging the material or spectacular the event. The question is, does music need to learn anything from the theatre about this relationship? I would say yes, partly because I have seen how a different approach can transform the concert-goers experience.
Music in live performance is inherently theatrical, full of passion, humour, melancholy, intimacy, grandeur, vulnerable to the possibility that something will go unexpectedly wrong, reaching into the imagination of the listener not just as an individual but as part of a collective. The conventions which still largely dominate music presentation, including strict dress codes and an exaggerated deference to the status of conductors and soloists, emphasise the difference between players and listeners in a way which often feels uncomfortably hierarchical. On the other hand, the tendency of contemporary music audiences to interrupt the momentum of performance by applauding between movements or after a canicular piece of virtuosity, while it is often a spontaneous expression of appreciation, can also be insensitive to the dramatic integrity of the whole work.
Is there anything to be done? Of course a huge amount is being done. Pioneering work is going on all over the country to encourage new audiences into concert halls and opera houses, and to break down the barriers that make people feel that ‘serious’ music is not for them. I remember a remarkable event, the staging of Jonathan Dove’s community opera In Search of Angels, which followed the action from location to location within a cathedral and then out into the town. It was a musical experience of the highest order, in which the skills, and the generosity, of the professional musicians were absolutely central and it was also life-changing for many of the audience, who were not just there to see and hear but also to contribute directly.
Perhaps what I yearn for in music is a bit more of the risk and radicalism that theatre at its best can display. Sometimes it can come from the use of unfamiliar or challenging locations, where normal expectations are disrupted. This can have startling effects on performer and audience alike. Comforts may have to be foregone, perhaps the acoustic isn’t great, maybe it’s a bit cold, but theatre audiences have learned to be intrepid as they follow artists into the most unpromising spaces. I accept that most plays get put on in a pretty uncontroversial way, not greatly different from what happens in a conmen hall. However I remain convinced that something can and should happen to change the conventions of music-going. The only authority I can claim is that of the enthusiast: I love, and live by, the theatre and I spend as much time (and money) as I can going to hear music. I want them both to thrive, and for more and more people to get the pleasure I get from being the audience.