Proms 2023 - what is in your diary ?

[smittims]

I'm sure classical music purists generally, not just opera, have been avoiding the Last Night for some years. I certainly have; I don't know how the members of the orchestra put up with it.

[Bryn]

I'm sure classical music purists generally, not just opera, have been avoiding the Last Night for some years. I certainly have; I don't know how the members of the orchestra put up with it.

They probably treat it as the end-of-term party it is.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Opera purists had better avoid the Last Night - random bits of four unrelated works by very different composers, shockingly sung in sequence, quite possibly without a single change of costume!

Opera purist is a bit of a contradiction in terms as it’s such an “impure” art form. Any one who loves opera must also love the human voice : Lise Davidsen has one of the best around currently and as far as I’m concerned she can sing anything she likes. I think her selected programme is excellent - with rarely heard Grieg and some opera hits.

PS she’s currently on iPlayer singing in the Met Der Rosenkavalier (wonderfully).

[Barbirollians]

I'm in the camp of LeWoiDeWeigate on this one, finding it condescending to assume that children will find bleeding chunks, jokily presented, more fun than being treated like adults at a complete opera, with dialogue, pretty costumes and a great story. If it's anything like the Horrible Histories series, the kids will see through it and be sneering within minutes. They know, you know.

Just as young teenagers knew that Seven Deadly Sins must be cool, when Covent Garden gave it a '16+' rating.

Never mind those headless nuns. Give 'em Wozzeck!

I am not sure about the recent Horrible Histories series - but the original run with the cast that went on to make Ghosts was massively popular with children - rather than "seen through".

[Master Jacques]

They probably treat it as the end-of-term party it is.

Quite so. And as someone who avoids parties, on the grounds that one has to listen politely to all kinds of rubbish that one normally avoids like the plague, I won't be there! I don't know that "purism" (a dog-whistle idea) comes into this, so much as honest pragmatism.

[Master Jacques]

I am not sure about the recent Horrible Histories series - but the original run with the cast that went on to make Ghosts was massively popular with children - rather than "seen through".

I'm sure you're right. Massively popular indeed. And adept at exploiting mass media. Whether it serves any worthwhile educational purpose is another question. The Horrible Histories franchise is a vast empire, which limits activities to areas which can make money: as their commercial director put it, "We have covered every possible era that has a commercial outcome..."

I am amused to see that BBC and ENO, as publicly-funded bodies, are happy to use their money to augment corporate mega-profits, rather than offer fresh creative ideas of their own.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Has any one noticed that with 1 hour 22 minutes of music this must be the shortest Last Night of the Proms ever ?
With a 20 minute interval it’ll be over by 9.15 - allowing for applause.
They are other quite short Proms . What is going on ?

[Master Jacques]

Has any one noticed that with 1 hour 22 minutes of music this must be the shortest Last Night of the Proms ever ?
With a 20 minute interval it’ll be over by 9.15 - allowing for applause.
They are other quite short Proms . What is going on ?

I guess we think we know what's going on! Add in the quantity of pop, crossover and popular concerts, and we see the downward trajectory of an ailing institution run by a timorous organisation, starved of funds, which no longer believes in what it was set up to do.

[Master Jacques]

For the record, I plan to attend just one Prom: the Kurtág opera Endgame.

[Barbirollians]

Has any one noticed that with 1 hour 22 minutes of music this must be the shortest Last Night of the Proms ever ?
With a 20 minute interval it’ll be over by 9.15 - allowing for applause.
They are other quite short Proms . What is going on ?

The first half of the Last Night has been in decline since they scrapped the concerto to be replaced by itsy bitsy classic Fm favourite pieces for the soloist. I think Benjamin Grosvenor was the last to play a concerto in 2015 when he played the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No 2 with Marin Alsop.

I am surprised that they didn't get SKM to play the Elgar.

[Ein Heldenleben]

The first half of the Last Night has been in decline since they scrapped the concerto to be replaced by itsy bitsy classic Fm favourite pieces for the soloist. I think Benjamin Grosvenor was the last to play a concerto in 2015 when he played the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No 2 with Marin Alsop.

I am surprised that they didn't get SKM to play the Elgar.

Don Juan is 20 mins. I wonder if it’s to save overtime costs and rehearsal time - a kind of disguised cut. I can remember LNOP’s going beyond 10pm.
The first night has a mere 1 hour 15 minutes of music. It’s a disguised cut isn’t it ?
I withdraw the “proms tickets not a rip off remark” I made on a Proms thread . £62 for 1 hour 15 of music is a ripoff.

I paid £55 for a stalls ticket for Die tote Stadt at RNO recently . The rehearsal and production costs must have been enormous.

[Ein Heldenleben]

For the record, I plan to attend just one Prom: the Kurtág opera Endgame.

At 2 hour 5 minutes duration it’s looking like a comparative bargain.

[Master Jacques]

At 2 hour 5 minutes duration it’s looking like a comparative bargain.

And a guaranteed good script to boot.

[Retune]

Opera purist is a bit of a contradiction in terms as it’s such an “impure” art form. Any one who loves opera must also love the human voice : Lise Davidsen has one of the best around currently and as far as I’m concerned she can sing anything she likes. I think her selected programme is excellent - with rarely heard Grieg and some opera hits.

PS she’s currently on iPlayer singing in the Met Der Rosenkavalier (wonderfully).

Yes, not being a purist I'd love to go to that one, given the opportunity. I haven't seen her live, but she was very good in the ROH Fidelio that was shown on BBC4 back in 2020. But Last Night tickets are increasingly hard to get hold of since they changed the rules (anyone who 'wins' the ballot gets 2 tickets, even if they've booked only single tickets to qualify under the 5 concert rule, and you can no longer improve your chances by booking specific concerts). And of course online touts probably hoover up a significant proportion these days. Sadly, I missed my last chance a few years back, when the invitation went to an old email address I must have used to register my account in the distant past, rather than the address that was being used for normal ticket correspondence.

[Simon B]

Don Juan is 20 mins. I wonder if it’s to save overtime costs and rehearsal time - a kind of disguised cut. I can remember LNOP’s going beyond 10pm.
The first night has a mere 1 hour 15 minutes of music. It’s a disguised cut isn’t it ?
I withdraw the “proms tickets not a rip off remark” I made on a Proms thread . £62 for 1 hour 15 of music is a ripoff.

While not wishing to pick at your general point, in terms of concert length (as distinct from actual amount of music) there's nothing out of the way about either the first or last nights.

Based on the timings given on the Proms website, the algorithm I usually rely on has the first night coming in at 118 minutes. With an encore from the concerto soloist likely, the 2 hour mark will probably be passed.

The Last Night is a bit trickier to calculate as they normally have its bittiness highly organised and move from item to item with unusual haste. This year's looks to be around 2.5 hours by the time you've added the conductor's speech, encores of the usual suspects and general messing about.

The point about the events being poor value in terms of minutes of music played stands of course. Bitty concerts take a long time to play not much music. It probably makes little difference to the costs though. Not hiring any/many extras has much greater impact - and the First Night programme scores there. There's some extra percussionists needed for the Britten and that's about it. Past memorable First Nights include Gurrelieder, Mahler 8, Mahler 2, Elektra... Enough said.

The last time the Last Night was truly worth bothering with was 1994 in my view. The first half included the tightest and most exciting Belshazzar's Feast I've ever seen - from a long list. Those were the days. Hard to believe John Drummond has been dead for nigh on 20 years. Upon looking this up I note Wikipedia quotes him late in life saying: "The lowest-common-denominator, accessibility-at-any-price, anti-intellectual laziness of so many of today's leaders [...] is a form of appeasement. Failing or refusing to differentiate between the good and the indifferent, while sheltering under a cloak of spurious democracy, is simply not good enough. It is a betrayal of all our civilization has stood for". Hard to imagine what he'd make of today's lot then!