As a rule, you come to the Family Circle not to see or to be seen but to listen.
I could tell that Fleming had entered when I heard a flurry of oohs and ahs on my left. For “Thaïs,” I had a partial-view box seat on the right side. From that lofty perch, fifty-five feet above the orchestra level, I took in the company’s new productions of Massenet’s “Thaïs,” with Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson, and Puccini’s “La Rondine,” with Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. My first stop was the Family Circle, the uppermost balcony of the Met. How much music can you see for a hundred dollars? In the second week of January, I decided to find out, looking for the cheapest available tickets. Students can get in to the New York Philharmonic for the price of a movie. Concerts at churches and music schools are usually free. Chamber-music concerts at the Frick, the Met Museum, Tully Hall, and Bargemusic are in the twenty-to-fifty-dollar range most new-music events go for ten to twenty. (Prince infamously charged more than three thousand dollars a seat for a series of shows in 2007 standing room was a mere three hundred.) The cheapest seats at the Metropolitan Opera are fifteen dollars, slightly more than the bleachers at Yankee Stadium. They can afford to attend because classical events aren’t nearly as expensive as most people assume, especially in comparison with the extravagant pricing schemes for élite pop acts. One day, an intrepid art director will come to a concert and discover that the classical audience is well populated by schoolteachers, proofreaders, students, retirees, and others with no entry in the Social Register. The monocle returns to fashion for the first time since the death of Erich von Stroheim. When Hollywood filmmakers set a scene at the symphony, twits in evening wear fill the frame, their jaws tight and their noses held high. The image of the classical concert hall as a playground for the rich is planted deep in the cultural psyche. You can get a seat at the Metropolitan Opera for as little as fifteen dollars.
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