BY LYNDON TERRACINI, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
It's interesting to observe how for centuries the consumption of art has been directed by the changing nature of society and culture....or has it been the reverse!
It's interesting to observe how for centuries the consumption of art has been directed by the changing nature of society and culture....or has it been the reverse!
Whatever the order, what is clear is that in today's technological and digital age, the way art is consumed by a voracious public has seen a change of spectacular velocity.
The fact that I'm writing a blog on Opera Australia's web site would have been the stuff of science fiction not so long ago. A blog was unknown, a website was unknown, the Internet and text messaging were unheard of. Images and sound bites are now distributed across the globe instantaneously and we can watch a performance on YouTube from Catania or The Met at any time.
We can also make instant comparisons and judgments about the merits or otherwise of artists and share them with colleagues worldwide in a heart beat.
While these marvelous inventions and innovations are fabulous to behold, they also put far more pressure on today's singers than at any time in our history. We now expect to see singers who not only sound magnificent but who also look as fabulous as movie stars and who are completely believable in their roles. Seeing artists performing on a Big Screen magnifies all of the deficiencies that might be camouflaged in an opera theatre which means that singers not only need to exercise their voices and maintain them in peak condition but they also need to exercise their bodies so that they are in peak physical condition as well. Naturally this places more demands on what constitutes a complete artist in the twenty first century. We may disagree with it but that voracious audience that I mentioned earlier has a very high global expectation.
Consequently opera companies, theatre companies and obviously dance companies all need to be thinking of their possible worldwide digital audiences when making casting decisions. To survive in a highly competitive environment we all must be aware of what contemporary audiences expect and even demand.
The art forms change with or without us and unless we also keep pace with those changes, we will be left wondering why our analogue black and white television that our parents bought in 1971 no longer works.
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