{"id":127,"date":"2009-04-16T14:06:29","date_gmt":"2009-04-16T14:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp\/?p=127"},"modified":"2009-04-16T14:06:29","modified_gmt":"2009-04-16T14:06:29","slug":"not_waiting_for_an_engraved_in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/2009\/04\/not_waiting_for_an_engraved_in\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Waiting for an Engraved Invitation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> Two years ago when I still lived in New York, I purchased a ticket to see a production at the Metropolitan Opera. Ever since then, I have received a steady stream of promotional emails, and though I&#8217;ve never purchased anything else, I have enjoyed looking at the pictures. Then a couple weeks ago, they sent this to me in Baltimore:<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"opera.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/opera.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"margin: 0pt auto 20px; text-align: center; display: block;\" height=\"266\" width=\"400\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The package struck me for a number of reasons. It was exceptionally heavy, had traveled far (considering what it was selling), and emitted that intoxicating fresh ink smell. Inside was a five-piece subscription solicitation that included personalized mailing labels plus a 50(!)-page four-color brochure jam-packed with more tempting pictures than the JCPenny&#8217;s Christmas catalog. The real kicker, however, was the eight-page, double-sided, tri-folded (and perforated!) &#8220;Order Forms&#8221; section. If I had been perusing the catalog with &#8220;Maybe we should go to the opera in New York this year!&#8221; fluttering around in the back of my mind, I was now paralyzed by the complexity of buying tickets. Forget <i>Tosca<\/i>; I suddenly did not feel mentally equipped to handle filling out the seat request form. There were New Year&#8217;s Eve tickets and Opening Night tickets and Season Tickets and Single Tickets and something that cost $50,000, but I was too scared to look.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I bet opera fans were drooling all over this same package, so I don&#8217;t mean to knock the concept. And it must have cost a small fortune to produce and mail, so I hope they all immediately put in extensive season orders. But it was way more than I, a one-time single ticket buyer, knew what to do with.  I&#8217;m more a teaser video and &#8220;Buy nosebleed seats for this Friday&#8217;s show NOW for only $25!&#8221; kind of girl, myself.<\/p>\n<p>And at root, that&#8217;s probably the real problem. My image of myself does not include season subscriptions to anything, though (peeking cautiously back in on the order forms) I guess I could afford to incorporate one.  This package was a great sales piece, I just wasn&#8217;t the right customer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two years ago when I still lived in New York, I purchased a ticket to see a production at the Metropolitan Opera. Ever since then, I have received a steady stream of promotional emails, and though I&#8217;ve never purchased anything else, I have enjoyed looking at the pictures. Then a couple weeks ago, they sent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}