When You Can’t Even Give Away The Opera Tickets…

“Scottish Opera’s ambitious complete Ring cycle at this summer’s Edinburgh Festival sold out as long ago as October, but the organisers of the Festival held back one performance of Götterdämmerung for people under 27. Faced with frequent attacks that it was elitist, “out of touch”, and aimed only at the “middle-aged upper middle class audience”, the heavily subsidised Festival hoped that the free ticket offer would help to reverse its demographic. But only 237 young people turned up for the performance on Friday, leaving a staggering 1,660 seats empty in the flagship Festival Theatre.”