A night at the Lyric Opera – with Neil Steinberg?

Neil Steinberg may be one the best things to ever happen to the Lyric Opera, where publicity is concerned. His Jan. 19 column (“A night at the opera”) not only promotes 100 free tickets soon to be available through the Chicago Sun-Times for the Lyric Opera’s Feb. 18 performance of “Pagliacci” and “Cavelleria Rusticana,” but, just as important, addresses misperceptions of consumers who have never attended an opera. This kind of media coverage, whether in print or online, is pure gold for fine arts and very difficult to obtain. I call it “PR beyond the review” — promoting fine arts performances to people who don’t read reviews or read the arts section or follow arts coverage on the Web or pay much attention to fine arts at all.

Yet anyone who has seen an opera knows that it is not nearly as high-falutin’ as the ticket prices might suggest, and many operas require a severe suspension of disbelief. Dying of tuberculosis?  No problem — you can still sing an aria (“La Boheme”). Ditto for dying of anything else, including lack of oxygen (“Adia”) or going insane (“Lucia di Lammermoor”) or being freshly stabbed (numerous) or perhaps hit on the head by a statue (“Don Giovanni”). Steinberg’s column covers such concerns as the dress code (casual is fine unless you like to dress up), the foreign languages (purists don’t like surtitles, but everyone else finds them helpful) and the length (it ain’t necessarily so long, with a few exceptions). Tickets prices can be steep, but where else can  you get blood, sex, violence, ridiculous plots, incredible stage sets and fantastic music? Now if we could only convince Steinberg and non-arts columnists like him to cover chamber music…