Not All Publicity is Good.

And if you're a big opera house, try not to turn good publicity into bad.

Putting it another way, Intermezzo has been blogging about opera in London and around Europe for a few years now, and has published many interesting and informative reviews of productions and performances at the Royal Opera House.

Intermezzo got email from the ROH asking her to take down all photos included in her postings that are "referenced to performances at the ROH." In response, she took down all of her ROH postings. She also published the correspondence she received, and her replies. (Do follow that link!)

Look at it this way: the ROH got a lot of good, free publicity from someone who was paying for tickets. Their action has resulted in the loss of that publicity and, I bet, any future publicity.

Way to go, ROH!

Labor Day

Yesterday was Labor Day, and a few reminders are in order. If you have a 40-hour work week, if you get overtime, if you have employer-provided health insurance, if you have worker's compensation insurance, if you are protected by occupational health and safety laws - why, organized labor got those things for you.

And take the time to read this sobering article about how welfare "reform" has hurt the poor and reduced their chances of leaving poverty behind (h/t DeLong).

We'll See How Long It Takes the Times to Post a Correction

Found in today's review of Christine Brewer's new Strauss CD:

It is in the Wagner repertory that Ms. Brewer has truly frustrated her fans. She has sung Isolde magnificently, though so far only in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Tristan Project,” which used Bill Viola’s videos, while Ms. Brewer and the other lead singers performed as in a concert, with music stands and vocal scores. 

Funny, here's the Independent covering the concert performances in London that were recorded for the Runnicles/Treleavan, Brewer, Peckova recording, not to mention that run of stage performances at San Francisco Opera in the fall of 2006.

Urban Opera 2010

Remember Urban Opera?

They staged a spare and magnificent Dido and Aeneas last year in freezing outdoor conditions a little too close to San Francisco Bay. I've been hoping they'd be back, but it's been a tough year for opera companies large and small.

John Marcher has the skinny on their 2010 plans: Purcell's The Witch of Endor, on October 30 and 31, somewhere in San Francisco. This information is not on their web site, and I haven't gotten email from the company, so I envy John his sources!

Perhaps There's More to This Than Meets the Eye

Readers of the NY Times and Parterre Box might recall that Peter Stein withdrew in July from directing the new Met Boris Godunov. At the time, the Met said it was "for personal reasons" and declined to elaborate.

Dan Wakin has the rest of the story today. It seems that dealing with the U.S. visa bureaucracy was hard, and the Met didn't do enough to reassure Stein that he was wanted and that nothing like the boorish treatment he got from an official would happen again. Note: the Met flew an employee to Europe to help Stein get a visa.

Brig Fryderyk Chopin in London

Via IanVisits -

The brig Fryderyk Chopin is currently moored in the Thames and can be toured; she is on the last leg of a seven-nation journey in celebration of Chopin's 200th birthday.

He Was Thinking of Sandow, Wasn't He.

Proper Discord on the subject of predicting the future:

Chacona, Lamento, Johannes

The audio guide for Chapter 2 of Alex Ross's soon-to-be published Listen to This made a brief appearance as a blog posting yesterday before being promoted to a static page. You can read it here.

Two points.

I own Hesperion XXI's Villacicos y Danzas Criollas, from which Alex takes the recording of Juan Aranes's "Un sarao de la chacona." It's a marvelously addictive CD that's rarely been far from my car's CD player since I bought it. Hesperion's big-band version of the Aranes, with strings, chorus, and brass, opens the CD and pulls you right in. I heard an unaccompanied rendition in 2008 by the men of the Concord Ensemble, and I can report that it works just as well in the sparer arrangement.

I'm surprised that Alex's audio guide doesn't (yet) include the mighty conclusion of Brahms's Fourth Symphony, a chaconne of overwhelming power. Furtwangler and Carlos Kleiber conduct it on YouTube.

The Bad User Experience: An Addendum to the Web Site Basics Page

Dear Metropolitan Opera,

I bought my donor-priority tickets to the Live in HD Telecasts last night. Dear me. I can think of something that would have made the user experience even worse, but as it is...

Here's what it took, and keep in mind that I bought five sets of tickets. It would have been seven if I hadn't been so damn annoyed that I gave up before ordering ticket to my two low-priority operas. Yes, the bad user experience cost you quantifiable money. 

1. Click the link on the Met web site.

2. Get taken to a third-party web site.

3. Select an opera.

4. Type in your zip code. You're presented with a list of locations at increasing distances from you.

5. Select a location.

6. Get taken to THAT location's web site. You're presented with the list of "available showtimes," which means ONE showtime, because this information has carried over from step 3.

7 . Select the show time.

8. Select the number of tickets.

9. Log in.

10. First time through, provide credit card info and check the option to retain it so that you don't have to do this again.

11. Okay the purchase.

12. Go back to step 3 because there is no option for continuing at the same location.

I might have put "Log in" in the wrong step. I just don't remember - but I do remember that I had to log in to the movie theater/chain web site for every purchase.

I understand, I really do, why it works like this. Patrons might want to go to different theaters for different operas, or the first choice location might not be available. And the Met itself does not want to screw around with ticketing for 1,500 different locations.

But look at it this way: some of us, like me, paid you money for advance access. All of us are used to better ticket-buying experiences, even if we've had to deal with the myriad frustrations of web site timeouts,  Tessitura minus the choose-your-own-seat module, and excessive 'convenience fees.' More importantly, you're selling at least 3 million tickets annually for movie theaters all over the world, many of them at times the theater would otherwise not be in use. 

(How did I get that number? Well, there are 24 broadcasts, two of each opera, one live, one "encore." The Met says there are around 1,500 theaters. I'm assuming each theater sells at least 100 tickets per showing, and I'm sure that is conservative. Do the math.)

Those millions of tickets mean you have some influence. You also have an IT staff. Use your heads and make it easier for your loyal viewers.

Tuesday Miscellany

Local to Me (San Francisco Bay Area)

Magnificat Baroque opens its 2010-11 season with John Blow's Venus and Adonis, with performances on October 8 in Menlo Park at St. Patrick's Seminary, October 9 in Berkeley at St. Mark's Episcopal, and October 10 in San Francisco at St. Mark's Lutheran.... San Francisco Opera's Ring Festival starts early, with classes taught at SF Conservatory by composer Conrad Susa; $165 for five two-hour classes taught on Saturdays starting September 24. Phone the conservatory at 415-503-6283 or register online....San Francisco Performances will have $20 Salons at the Rex again; performers include the sensational young soprano Leah Crocetto, the equally sensational soprano Heidi Melton, and killer pianist Sarah Cahill playing Scriabin, Rudhyar, and Crawford Seeger....Speaking of Rudhyar, Other Minds has a two-program Rudhyar in Retrospect celebration on September 27 (Swedenborgian Church, SF) and 29 (Valley Presbyterian Church, Portola Valley).

Out of Town

Want to try out the Met Player, which gives you access to a couple of hundred historic Metropolitan Opera radio and TV broadcasts going back as far as the 1930s? You can sign up for a free 7-day trial (or rent an opera for 30 days or subscribe on a monthly or yearly basis)....LA Opera will be having an Opera of the Day discount price from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pacific time, for a specific production, performance, and seating section. To find out today's special offering, visit the company's web site or follow them on Twitter or Facebook....Seiji Ozawa turns 75; you can wish him a happy birthday at the BSO's Facebook page or listen to a selection from his 1999 recording of Carmina Burana.  The BSO has also posted a PDF listing all of his recordings with the BSO....Metropolitan Opera Live in HD tickets go on sale to the general public next week. Be there or be square, especially if it's the only way you'll get a look at the upcoming Lepage Ring, Le Comte Ory (Florez, Damrau, DiDonato), and a few other operas worth seeing. (That link goes to the priority ordering page because I ponied up for advance ticketing.)

Waaaaay Out of Town

But I wish I could go anyway: Dancer in the Dark, a new opera by Poul Ruders, based on a screenplay by Lars von Trier, premiers at the Royal (Danish) Opera on September 5. There's a trailer at the opera's web site (Danish and English). The work will be performed in Germany, Sweden, and New York (one of these things is not like the others) in 2011.

Fall Previews - Opera Edition

I'm not one of the ten (10) writers tapped by SFCV to do previews of the Bay Area's fall music season, so I'm going to make some kind of attempt to post about what I consider the highlights to be. Let's start with the opera scene.

At the big guy, San Francisco Opera, we have a weird season that I've already complained quite a bit about: a dozen performances each of Madama Butterfly and Aida, a bunch more of Nozze di Figaro, plus Werther, a mixed bag of an opera, Cyrano de Bergerac, a genuine rarity staged for the benefit of the world's greatest living baritenor, and, finally, the opera I am really excited about, Janacek's The Makropoulos Case, starring one of the world's greatest living sopranos, Karita Mattila. If you're relatively new to opera, by all means, take in the standards even though Pat Racette is not singing Cio-Cio-San; unless you subscribe, it'll be tough to get a ticket to Cyrano, Domingo's probable swan song with this company. Werther has a fantastic third act, not so much the first two - I'm going, knowing that it will not be sung with what you would call French style. Makropoulos is a great masterpiece by the eccentric and distinctive Bohemian Moravian; it will be easy to get tickets; I hope you'll go.

Here on my side of the Bay, Berkeley Opera, renamed Berkeley West Edge Opera, has a great season all around, opening with Handel's Xerxes, followed by a re-imagining of Carmen into The Carmen Fixation, with the excellent Buffy Baggott, and closing up with Clark Suprynowicz's Caliban Dreams. Not yet up on their web site is the readings series, one-off concert performances of rare operas, but they were announced in the printed brochure I picked up at Legend of the Ring. (I realize not all of these operas are in the fall, but I am thrilled by the repertory!)

Down South, Opera San Jose is putting on a couple of standards this season, but also the West Coast premier of David Carlson's Anna Karenina. I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with Tolstoy's great and maddening novel of marital unhappiness. On the Peninsula, West Bay Opera has La Forza del Destino,  which would be interesting to see in a small theater.

Pocket Opera hasn't got dates up yet, though their season is listed on their home page. As usual, they've got a fair number of rarities (what, exactly, is The Marauders, which is by Verdi? I Lombari?) mixed with standards, but you have to have a high tolerance for a piano-dominated orchestra and unnecessary narration from the stage. Worth it for a piece you won't get to see anywhere else, but I would personally skip the standards.

Has Anyone Succeeded with the Blogger Cut-Tag Icon?

Tried to get it to work in my last posting - it didn't.

Why The Times Can't Call Liars What They Are

An exchange I had with the Public Editor's office.

First, I sent the following letter to the editor:

To the Editor: 

Jane Brody has written marvelously and informatively about end-of-life issues in her Personal Health columns, especially during her late husband's final illness. I was disappointed to see that in her latest column, she says that conservatives "erroneously" called certain counseling provisions in the proposed health care reform legislation the "death panel option."

No, there was no error involved. Those were outright lies told for political gain and they should be identified as such.

Yours truly,

Lisa Hirsch

I forwarded it to the Public Editor's office with the following comments:

I just sent the following letter to the editor to the Times, for publication. However, I'm concerned about how it is that outright lies can be termed "errors."

I understand that The Times and Ms. Brody might have felt that calling a lie a lie could lead readers to focus on that point rather than the excellent points she makes about end-of-life counseling, but it's seriously misleading to call outright lies, repeated constantly by opponents of health care reform, "errors."

There's a problem with your editing and writing standards when you allow liars to hide in this way.

Thank you for your attention to this.

The Public Editor's office started by not reading my email very carefully, and said this:

Dear Ms. Hirsch,

Thank you for writing.

This office has no say in selecting letters for publication in The Times. I will make sure that the proper person sees your letter.

Sincerely,

Daniel E. Slotnik

The Office of the Public Editor

The New York Times

I wrote back as follows:

I know that you have nothing to do with what gets published.

I am writing to you because the Times's writing and editing standards are of concern. That is, I am raising an issue with YOU, the Public Editor's office, about why the Times allows writers to call outright lies "errors."

-- Lisa

Lisa Hirsch

And Mr. Slotnick replied:

Dear Ms. Hirsch,

Thank you for this.

The Times has to be very cautious about using loaded terms like the word "lie." Using "lie" presupposes that the speaker does not believe in the "death panels" and is using the term dishonestly to influence a debate. Although that certainly could be the case The Times is not in a position to make that judgment with regard to its coverage.

Jane Brody used the word "erroneously" to describe how opponents to health care reform have used the idea of death panels. Webster's New World dictionary defines erroneously as "containing or based on error; mistaken; wrong." The definition of the root "error" is even more explicit: "The state of believing what is untrue, incorrect, or wrong" is the first definition.

The Public Editor's office thinks that "erroneously" was a more suitable word.

Sincerely,
Daniel E. Slotnik

My final comment:

The Times is a total humbug if it is unable to recognize that those "errors" were all in support of a particular political agenda.

-- Lisa

I posted this exchange on the Well, and there followed an involved discussion about which people using the phrase "death panels" were lying and which were simply in error, because they trusted what they were being told by the likes of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. There was also some discussion about whether it would be appropriate to call everybody a liar. I would be okay with "consistently misrepresented" or "misled" rather than "lied." I find "erroneous" rather lightweight for what was going on. The Times is certainly aware that there was a pattern of misrepresentation.

I am absolutely certain that Palin and Beck have legislative analysts on their payrolls, people who read legislation and tell their bosses what it says. (Your Congresscritter does too. Who has time to read legislation that's as long as a Trollope novel? People who get paid to do so.) And I do not for a second believe that those people read the provisions about reimbursing physicians for time spent counseling terminally patients about their medical options and thought they were reading about "death panels."

So somebody was knowingly lying to influence the political debate. I am also sure that some people were simply misled by the liars, because they weren't reading the legislation itself and they weren't reading the reality-based media, either.

Georgiana Longestaffe...

...is a stupid, self-centered fool.

Web Site Basics, Consolidated

Read all about web sites here.

Dear O.C. Register:

You have one of the best classical music critics in the country and you assign him to the drunken-20-something beat?

Did he piss someone off or are you just stupid? We should have known something was going on when you shut down the O.C. Register Arts Blog last month.

Okay, Tim explains exactly what happened and why. I'm glad Tim still has a job. But you do realize that this means the O.C. Register can't be taken seriously any longer?

Signed,

Part-Timer in SF

Anna Karenina Preview, Noe Valley Chamber Music

Noe Valley Chamber Music is presenting a preview of David Carlson's opera Anna Karenina, which will be performed at Opera San Jose starting September 11, 2010. You can hear excerpts from the opera as well as a discussion by Carlson of his approach to composition. There will be wine and hors d'oeurves.

Noe Valley Ministry

1021 Sanchez St.

San Francisco

Sunday, August 29, 2010

4 p.m.

$25 per person, cash or check only

415-648-5236

To get tickets for the opera itself, go to the Opera San Jose web site.

Relief

Whew!

I feel sure I read a rumor someplace that Andrea Bocelli would be appearing at the Metropolitan Opera. Since he is a microphone singer and lacks the technique for staged opera, yes, dread struck my heart.

Turns out, he's singing a concert. It'll include a few Handel arias and a bunch of songs, and I won't be there.

Pages

A newish Blogger feature is the ability to add static, undated pages that sit in one place and don't scroll off the current screen the way sequential, chronological postings do. I'm going to be moving odd ends from my crowded sidebar to pages just to clean up the look of the blog, plus, I plan to move the publicity and web site basics to their own pages.

My first page, though, is about the little matter of qualifications. Click the Creds link near the top of the sidebar to read what I think of this and see what my credentials are.

I Will Have to Consolidate All of This Sooner or Later

Do have a page with venue information. If you're SFS or SFO and you perform in one place, just put the address on the home page and on various second-level information pages.

If you're a small chorus or orchestra (Cal Bach, Philharmonia Baroque, NCCO) that performs each program in three or four locations, have a Venues page with an easy-to-find link on the home page.

Hell. Another Point.

Do tell ticket-buyers up front about those pesky per-order or per-ticket "convenience charges" so that they are not surprised by additional charges added only after they click the Check Out button. Your audience members' blood pressure may rise at the sight anyway, so warn them in advance!

Do consider dropping them entirely by rolling legitimate costs into actual ticket prices! It is galling to be an out-of-town visitor who cannot just walk up to the box office to avoid these charges. If it's a per-ticket charge and you're planning to visit NYC for two weeks, attending six opera performances, those $10-per-ticket and $2.25 fees add up mighty fast. Yes, that means you, Metropolitan Opera.

Two More Web Site Points

Forgot these:

Do increase web server capacity when you know your ticketing system will get slammed. I have heard plenty of horror stories about what happened when the Royal Opera House releases tickets for, say, the Fall opera season.

Don't time out a user session when someone is trying to buy tickets! (This means you, San Francisco Symphony.) If you've got a hard session limit of 20 minutes set, configure that fancy system for which you're paying a lot of money to increase the timeout limit by five minutes every time there's an addition to the shopping cart. Someone trying to buy 2 tickets to 15 concerts, with seats in different parts of the house, can easily hit a hard time limit. You do want to sell those tickets, right?

And a small additional word about choose-your-own-seat software: if Brown Paper Tickets can do it for the El Cerrito High School theater, where Berkeley Opera performs, your organization can figure out a way to do it too. Okay, if you're a small chorus with open seating for your concerts, this is not a big deal. But if you're LA Opera or a small theater company, it is a big deal.

Web Site Basics

A companion to the publicity basics posting, because I've been surprised at how many arts organizations have web sites that aren't necessarily meeting the needs of their audience. I'm going to try a slightly different format owing to the nasty readability problems with Blogger bulleted lists.

DO make it easy to find information about your next concert. If you're a small organization, put all concert info right on the home page. If you're a big organization presenting dozens of performances a year (that means you're a big-city orchestra or opera company), put an obvious link somewhere on the home page. Putting it another way: information about your next concert should be no more than one click away and the information should be easy to find.

DO make it easy to buy tickets. Because you want people to buy tickets, don't you?

• Make it easy to find prices.
• Make it easy to buy tickets on line. You can use PayPal (I know of several small Bay Area organizations that do this), you can use a third-party vendor such as Brown Paper Tickets or City Box Office, you can have a custom page for credit card entry, but make it easy.
• If you've got the budget to use Tessitura (again, big-city, big-budget organizations that perform in big venues), for the love of God, get the choose-your-own seat module. Do not make your customers loop through the ticketing process multiple times before they are assigned a satisfactory seat. (That means YOU, LA Opera.) Some percentage of them will give up on you, meaning you didn't succeed in selling a potential audience member a ticket.
• If you're using Tessitura or other ticketing software, I assume it can tell you how many people get into the system without buying tickets. That's important to know and think about.
• Regardless of which ticketing software you use, web analytics programs can tell you whether or not people navigate to the ticket-buying page.

Do make sure that some staff and board members of your organization check out the web site and go through the ticket ordering process. If there are issues with either, it's better for you to hear about them from a sympathetic party rather than a crabby blogger like me.

Do get some ordinary folks to try out your web site and comment on it.

Do think about accessibility issues. This topic is too complicated to really get into in a single blog posting, but there are many, many web sites out there discussing how to make your web site accessible for users who have visual impairments or blindness of different types, whether they are completely blind and use screen readers or they're color blind or partially sighted. Suffice it to say that it is not that hard to modify the HTML on your pages to make them easier to use.

Just a few minor points -

• Don't make any web site functions or information dependent on color coding. About 10% of the population has limitations on what colors they can see.
• Don't use teeny tiny fonts or fonts with super-light stroke weights.
• Don't use white-on-black. Looks snazzy, but much harder to read than black on a lighter color.

Do make it easy to find the all-important Contact Us page. Put a link on the home page and, in fact, on every page. You want to hear from your audience members, whether they are happy or unhappy. You want journalists to contact you with questions. If your group can be hired for special events, you want to be contacted. So don't bury this page.

Do make any music on your page optional! Use a Listen to Us link instead of automatically launching an excerpt from your last performance or recording. Keep track of how many people click the link and how many don't.

Do make a list of the specific tasks you expect people to accomplish on your web site, then check to see how many clicks each task takes. Don't make people click too many times; they will give up. Don't make people scroll too much, either.

Don't make your web site look like a ransom note. Stick with a headline font and a body text font and leave it at that.

Don't have any blinking text at all on the page. It looks amateurish and silly and it's really annoying.

Do think about the layout and where you want links to be on the page. Make it consistent.

Don't hide content by only having important information linked to a second-level page.

Do hire a pro to help with all this stuff. And do get some trusted testers to try out all the functions before you launch.

Yet Another Update to Publicity Basics

An addition to the publicity basics posting:

Keep the contact list for your organization (or client) consistent. That is, if you're sending press releases to a particular list, always use that list; if you're offering comp tickets or interview opportunities to a particular group of people, keep it consistent.

For Everyone Who Feels Faintly Guilty About Reading the Stieg Larsson Books As Fast As Possible

Admit it: you're one of them. Read this.