Opera needs new Audiences FAST

Some of the most glaring points for me to come out of doing this opera was seeing the amount of young people and audience from the Black community who attended the shows. Opera Houses are fighting to keep themselves at the top of the Arts funding foodchain.So are having to attract new audiences. Most Programmes seem to be corporate led now so are also Fairly uninspiring and predictable.Doing the same operas over and over again.The resulting in a large percentage of the new composers who would normally lead a sheltered life away from contemporary music of any sort are actively seeking out and experimenting with musicians from a real mixture of music styles and backgrounds with the result that they quickly become bored with the regimented world of so called serious music.The opera then attracts smaller and smaller mostly so called elite middle class audiences,with their age groups getting older fast and entering their final coda..Therefore the Opera Houses have to open up to interesting composers from different backgrounds who will bring in new Audiences or face badly attended shows or worst possible closure..For financial reasons as well as Artistic ones they are going to have to wake up fast.It's not just restricted to these shores as the home of Opera Italy is also under going rough times check out this piece I read in the Independent that illustrates the point. http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/news/article322299.ece