Bob Draper <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>I believe that Mozart Mania is doing damage to music itself.  My wife is
>not into classical music, but she loves Stravinsky.  However, she would
>never had heard him if it weren't for me.  Most newcomers to the classical
>scene (I reckon) consider that Mozart IS classical music.  They buy a cd
>or two listen to it get bored and drift back to pop. If we had a more
>even playing field this would not happen.  (You can verify this theory by
>looking at the record collections of music lovers who like mainly pop)

There is a sad helping of truth in this, but the odium should fall on the
bland opacity of the providers, rather than on Mozart.

It is sad to appeal to the snobbery of the uninitiated in this way.  In
my experience, if we want to interest the unconverted (especially younger
people) in opera, for instance, it does no good taking them along to these
Classic Museum Exhibits as a first stop.

There's simply too much which is too far away from the theatre conventions
and rhythms of our own time in, say, "Don Giovanni" or "Il Trovatore" to
enable these great masterworks to make their impact straight away - thus
the understandable, and understandably doomed, efforts of directors to
make these pieces "accessible".  Of course "children's operas" such as the
witty, adult and sophisticated "Hansel and Gretel" should be avoided at all
costs!

No, take children to "Akhnaten", "War and Peace" and "Turn of the Screw" -
pieces much closer to our own time, infinitely less veiled by time and
convention.  Believe it or not, a fair proportion will be fascinated and
want to explore further.

Better save the great Museum Pieces for later, when people wish to come to
them by choice, rather than because some bland executive vaguely thinks its
good for them.  Force feed people Mozart Designer Classics, and the whole
Museum will soon be dead in the water.

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"