knsherms

Was one of the first places I went to when i got here! Love wine and the prices were quite resonable and the service was great.

I gotta agree with Bob that the movie is wonderful, but nothing compares to seeing it live on stage. If its done well of course.

Stev-o, I wanted to comment more on the folowing:

"But one thing I still wonder after seeing a much emptier house than I expected — why don’t people don’t turn out more for American opera? It’s sung in English, based on American themes and has a very American sound. Why wouldn’t more people want to see this?"

I truly believe that unless a show is a huge commercial success, less and less people are attending live theatre/performing arts. There are simply to many other things to do in a city. That along with expensive ticket prices to these types of shows, the economy and the general lack of exposure to a new audience leave many of these shows less than full. How many younger people were in the audience?

There was a fantastic article several months ago in the NY Times about the new artistic director of the Met and how he really wanted to reach out to a younger audience and broaden the patrons attending the Opera. He basically flat out said that as his base of subscribers got older that it would become imparative to get the attention of a younger generation and turn them on to the Opera.

He has lowered ticket prices considerably for certain shows making them affordable to all, put the Met live in Times Square etc. Really reaching out and finding ways to entice people to give the Met/Opera a try. You are not going to reach out to a new audience by advertising to the same people over an over again.

The article talked about the use of ticket companies such as TKTS in NYC, Bostix.com in Boston and Stubdog.com in Texas that are actively working with venues to give people the opportunity to try these events at a fraction of the cost while leveraging these empty seats.

Basically he said that they needed to use all means necessary to fill these seats to get people to realize how great the opera can be. And hopefully return.

Maybe performing arts companies will take notice of the success of the Met. Or maybe they won't. Either way its a shame more people do not attend the arts.