In a unique attempt to appeal to new audiences, the Royal Opera House will perform a new opera in an undisclosed location via flashmob.

It's a great idea to get some publicity and get more people exposed to the genre. Hard to imagine how that would go over, for example, here in New York. I think most people would be pissed there was crap in their way. Still, bringing an opera via a new and hip method of meeting (the flashmob), seems like a promising idea, especially with a new piece that focuses on a contemporary story line.

I've been thinking a lot of the role of "high art" (for lack of a better term) and the role modern art plays in a commercial society. Peter Bagge's incredibly funny, and incredibly spot-on indictment of modern art and it's institutions has had me pondering a lot about the relationship of life - my life, I guess -- and some of the more esoteric and abstract aspects of contemporary art that I love. Having been outside that world for almost a decade now gives me a good bit of perspective. In the end, I feel, it's not the language of modern art that has failed (except, as Bagge points out, the end-in-and-of-itself of pure performance-arty shockvalue). On the contrary, the language of the modern (or, perhaps early/mid 20th century abstractionism, both in music and art) has a solid place in daily contemporary life -- but the medium itself has withered away at it's core: concert music, galleries, museums, record companies, and especially the supporting infrastructure of academia, blue-hair arrogance, non-funded non-profits, and the deification of old(er) commercial art and music (i.e. Gentrification-via-Marsalisification).

What the hell am I saying? I'm not sure exactly. But read Bagge's comic, it's funny and smart. And note that in all the publicity that this flashmob opera is getting, not a single one of the articles mentions who wrote this new opera -- neither music nor libretto.