From Pop to Opera

Talking about opera artists, what come to our mind could be having a big body like Pavarotti, or singing with a straight body and communicating with audience only by gesture and eye connection. The reason why bel canto cannot be prevalent among the mass is because their high-required singing skill and non-amiable stage performance. However, there has one thing that has to agree that the artists who can sing bel canto are all excellent singers. No one would deny. Then what if these songs are sung by pop singers?

There has a reality show I saw on the Internet called Popstar to Operaster, produced by ITV, Britain. This is the one that meet the above question. Most opera listeners are in the middle-age or above, but this show is to train popstars, who the young people love the most, into opera singers. Understandably, if the target audience is failed to set, none of the audience from these two generation will be catered (young people still think opera is old-fashion; aged people would believe the pop singers destroy opera). Then the ratings would not be optimistic.

However, when the show aired, the reaction of audiences is not so negative. There have approximate 4 million views per episode in the first season, which is rating 15%. The reason why I say it is not bad is because Popstar to Operastar is only a sheer singing reality show, which the target audience is not wide. Comparing to other similar reality show (The X Factor/Britain’s Got Talent), the contestants in this show are all from entertainment industry, who are celebrities already. So it is lacking in the concept of “changing ordinary people into stars”. It is normal that missing this concept, audiences who love succeeding-overnight drama would not watch the show. Concerning these reasons, 0.15 is not a low number for the prime time TV show.

Obviously, production team is disappointed about this statistic, an insider said they originally believed this show would have over 7 million viewers like Soapstar Superstar, but, he said: “it just proves that people weren’t fussed about it (Popstar to Operaster)”. In spite of that, they are optimistic to the future development. He thought the low rating was because the contestants are not famous enough. Champion Darius is only a contestant from Pop Idol 2002, other contestant like Danny Jones from McFly and Vannessa White from The Saturdays are just second-tier stars.

Nevertheless, from the purpose of music communication, this show is significant. Pop singers singing opera can more or less encourage young people to accept opera and bel canto and makes opera more than an entertainment for mid-age people. Meanwhile, the information about opera will be disseminated via the show, so it provides a good platform to educate audiences to learn opera. Actually, mixing bel canto and pop is not a new production, Il Divo, who has sung the theme song of World Cup 2006, is the bel canto group labeled “Pop”. If this show could be more creative in both content and contestants, to attract more audiences is not impossible.