Re:First signs of a slight decline in secondhand bookshops i...
by Tade0 on Thursday October 13, 2022 @11:01AM
(#33191959)
> Why should we make exceptions for things like professional opera and professional theatre?
Because that is our cultural heritage and it at least preserves the know-how necessary to perform it.
It's notable that our most prestigious cultural event - the International Chopin Piano Competition - is largely publicly funded.
You can think of it as a form of branding - just applied to entire nations.
> Well-known polish actor (Jerzy Sztuhr) mentioned once that what he liked about Italy is that going to the opera was part of upper middle-class snobbery there.
I happened to have spent four years in Bologna - exactly where Stuhr went in the 80s - and have been in the opera there because my neighbour(old man) had an, ahem, monthly subscription of sorts, which awarded him discounts and he invited me along because his wife couldn't go that time.
Does that strike you as an upper-middle-class thing?
My experience is that especially in Italy people participate in culture much more than around here - it's what makes their national brand strong despite longstanding economic issues.
> At least in my city, most of what is played in my local opera house are foreign operas
Most of the artistic value in opera is the performance which, looking at the cast, is still firmly Polish. Singers often sing in languages that are entirely foreign to them - even if there's a sizeable amount of material written in their own.
Because that is our cultural heritage and it at least preserves the know-how necessary to perform it.
It's notable that our most prestigious cultural event - the International Chopin Piano Competition - is largely publicly funded.
You can think of it as a form of branding - just applied to entire nations.
> Well-known polish actor (Jerzy Sztuhr) mentioned once that what he liked about Italy is that going to the opera was part of upper middle-class snobbery there.
I happened to have spent four years in Bologna - exactly where Stuhr went in the 80s - and have been in the opera there because my neighbour(old man) had an, ahem, monthly subscription of sorts, which awarded him discounts and he invited me along because his wife couldn't go that time.
Does that strike you as an upper-middle-class thing?
My experience is that especially in Italy people participate in culture much more than around here - it's what makes their national brand strong despite longstanding economic issues.
> At least in my city, most of what is played in my local opera house are foreign operas
Most of the artistic value in opera is the performance which, looking at the cast, is still firmly Polish. Singers often sing in languages that are entirely foreign to them - even if there's a sizeable amount of material written in their own.