My friend Meg joined me at the exceedingly lovely Mostly Mozart
\nFestival’s presentation of Ravel, Faure and the-man-of-the-two-hours on
\nSaturday night. Previously, Meg was my date to Satyagraha <\/i>at The Met, lured
\nthere by the promise of puppets. Whenever I go to a classical
\npresentation with a first-timer, I become eminently more aware of the
\ncomedy of errors that is the audience. What a crew. Here are some of
\nthe highlights:<\/p>\n
Saturday night, 7:45 pm. We found our seats in the orchestra and
\nsat down without incident, which is more than I can say for the gaggle
\nof men in front of us. AA or A? Are we in AA or A? What’s the difference? MM? Does your ticket say MM? <\/i>Then,
\nas it turned out, an elderly couple in their row was in the completely
\nwrong seats, and a middle-aged set of ladies had tickets in the correct
\nseats but for Friday night, not Saturday night. Cut to two rows in
\nfront of us, where not one but three ushers kept trying to seat people
\n(presumably without tickets?) next to this poor woman, who repeatedly
\nsaid, “This is my husband’s seat!” I couldn’t hear properly, but I
\nthink one usher actually declared, “If he doesn’t come soon, he’s going
\nto lose his seat!” Oh really? Is that how it works at Avery Fisher? I
\ndidn’t think it was.<\/p>\n
Concert starts, and I lean over to Meg and
\nsay, “There’s no clapping ‘allowed’ between movements, but there might
\nas well be because everyone coughs disgustingly.” Sure enough,
\ncoughing, sniffling, shuffling, page-ripping – a veritable Stockhausen
\ntribute – between every damn movement. Is everyone just saving up the
\ngerms for the silence? Are you just coughing because the guy next to
\nyou coughed? Are we extras in 28 Days Later<\/i>? <\/p>\n
Transition
\nto the piano concerto. Five to seven minutes of stage reorganization,
\nand then, at the precise moment the pianist sits at the instrument, a
\nhatted woman in stage-seating starts making her way down the staircase!
\nRight-left, right-left, right-left…we’re all waiting…right-left.
\nThe usher helps her off the stage. And then, one minute later, just as
\nthe piece starts, down comes another one! Clunk, clunk, clunk, goes the
\nLaura Ashley-clad broad. Usher helps her off the stage, too.<\/p>\n
Intermission.
\nAs if the whole first-half ordeal with the seating mishaps and The
\nLadies Who Lunch making their exits during the piece weren’t enough to
\nput you off classical music forever, the outfits on display at
\nintermission would do the trick. Everyone is so dressed-up! When did
\nthat happen. Is it because going to a classical concert is a
\n“night-out” and people want to dress-up for it? Is it because tickets
\nare so expensive that folks assume they have to bust out their finest?
\nWhen people ask me, I always encourage them to wear what they would
\nwear to work, whatever that may be (granted, Amanda Beard has never
\nasked me). I wonder if this can be fashion-policed by venue ads and
\nposters: include photographs of audiences of all ages wearing nice,
\nnormal clothes. How many people are avoiding classical music because
\nthey assume there’s a dress code? <\/p>\n
The second half of the
\nconcert involved more unabashed and exceedingly distracting rudeness. A
\nwoman behind us started opening up a candy. Slowly. Crinkle. Crinkle.
\nCrinkle. Normally, I would chalk that up to someone just being
\noblivious, but she was laughing while she was doing it! Laughing! If
\nshe had been a 22-year-old in jeans, she would have gotten yelled at,
\nbut because she’s old and sitting in the orchestra, it’s OK? The
\nconcert ended, and half the people leaped to their feet, not to applaud,
\nbut to leave as fast as they could. This was a good concert. Stay
\nanother three minutes and applaud.<\/p>\n
I had gone to the Batman IMAX earlier that day. The audience was better behaved. I went to a
\nRadiohead concert the night before. That audience was better behaved.
\nThe assumption that new, young audiences “wouldn’t know how to act” at
\nLincoln Center is absolutely correct; they wouldn’t know how to behave
\nthat inappropriately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My friend Meg joined me at the exceedingly lovely Mostly Mozart Festival’s presentation of Ravel, Faure and the-man-of-the-two-hours on Saturday night. Previously, Meg was my date to Satyagraha at The Met, lured there by the promise of puppets. Whenever I go to a classical presentation with a first-timer, I become eminently more aware of the […]<\/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":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-55","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}