So, Savoy Opera has already packed up. After not even two months, the company which aimed to ‘change the way opera is presented in London’ has closed down, defeated by poor ticket sales. Some of the performances of The Barber of Seville did not even reach 30% of the capacity, and without any government support or strong financial backing Savoy needed much better figures than that! Few people might have been surprised by this early demise, some people certainly breathed a sigh of relief in their offices in St. Martin’s Lane, and the critics of opera as an elitist form of art which cannot be popularized and should be put into a museum had a field day. Still, only in March a member of London Audiences, a government organization which monitors the entertainment audience, had confirmed that market research indicated a demand for traditional opera at lower prices in London. And certainly Savoy’s impressive marketing machine made sure that its presence was known. So, if we are to trust market research, what went wrong with Savoy? Or is there really no room for more opera in London?
When the new company was announced, it was indicated as a major competitor for the troubled ENO. Opera in English, in the middle of the West End, with young singers and at competitive prices. But if we look at the product that Savoy intended to offer, it was clear that its target audience was not the average opera-goer, a well-listened punter who knows his Azucenas from his Aidas. Its favorite target was rather the opera shy, or even the opera virgin who is easily intimidated by the Royal Opera’s grandeur or by ENO’s experimental productions. The core of the audience for Savoy should have come from the very large audience of Classic FM, one of its official sponsors, which daily reaches over 6 million listeners (a very impressive figure, when we think that BBC3 only manages just over 2 million). Therein lies one of the problems, the image of opera that those listeners have. This is fabricated either out of mythological tales including divas, elephants and fat tenors, or from recordings often portraying some of the greatest performers in their favorite roles. How could young singers, with little stage experience and even less stage presence, compete with the likes of Callas and Pavarotti, or even with Leslie Garret and Bryn Terfel, in a dry acoustic and without the help of digital sound enhancement? Without great voices Savoy was not competing with Covent Garden or ENO, but with the West End.
Now, spring is traditionally not a good season for Theatreland, nowadays even more so because of the secondary effects of the international political climate, and perhaps the new company should have looked to the autumn as a more favorable time to start. But even so, the rule of thumb in the musical theatre stage is very simple: ‘razzle dazzle them’. People go to the theatre to be entertained, to be amazed, to forget their dreary daily hum-drum lives. If you do not have beautiful dancers, or great voices, you need all the tricks of luxurious staging to compete. To be honest, Savoy’s productions were quite the opposite, the producers must have had an agenda of their own, because the results were nothing we had not seen before in the average kitchen. Now, I do not go to see opera to be reminded of the dirty dishes waiting for me at home: if there is amazing singing and fantastic orchestral playing I might forgive the producer, but otherwise there is simply no point. And I am not willing to pay an average of £40 for that, while I am happy to do so for a night out at Anything goes or Chicago, or indeed to the Royal Opera House.
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Opera can be done with limited resources, but not on the cheap, and certainly not in a repetitive, mechanical, uninspired way. I wonder whether the fact that opera was available eight times a week worked against Savoy. It takes away the element of the occasion, of the exceptionality of the event. It is different with straight or musical theatre. Although it's on a similar stage, opera works at different levels and its appeal to people is of a different nature. Historically, opera has always been limited to a special occasion, or a limited season, and even if contemporary opera-houses do run a year long season, each event has a limited number of performances. Perhaps the artistic team at Savoy misunderstood the nature of the art form more than they misread their audiences. I believe that market research might not be completely wrong and that there is space in London for more opera, at competitive prices: after all Holland Park has made a real success of their summer season, and they could probably sell more tickets if they had them. So, why should something similar not work during the winter months? Some kind of Chamber opera, like the Viennese Kammeroper, presenting the right kind of works in the right kind of circumstances.
Young singers should be given the chance of exposure in a secondary role, while relying on the experience of more mature singers whose artistry and stage presence alone is enough to carry the show, even if they do not come from the A-list of the international vocal jet-set. The productions should be able to be inventive within the boundaries of traditional staging and offer people a good introduction to a work before they see it deconstructed on a ‘higher’ stage. Perhaps with a small but very committed orchestra, and in a space small enough to remind us of the fact that beyond the spectacle opera is often a very intimate affair, be it Aida or Dido and Aeneas. In English, if it must be, but with good diction and committed acting. And perhaps with a season that only presents a few performances of a piece, but interesting enough for people to want to make the effort to catch at least one. Maybe the economics are tricky, but that has always been the nature of the art form: it needs sponsorship, and the right kind of ambition. It is a shame that Savoy’s ambitions, whatever they were, were obviously not quite right.
Petra Torre
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