Opera Needs the Young, and the Young Need Stories
Opera, contrary to appearances, has everything a young audience could fall in love with: strong emotions, drama, absurdity, exaggeration, spectacle, and even an aesthetic that, from today’s perspective, can verge on camp – the very thing TikTok and Instagram thrive on.
So why is it so difficult for opera to attract a new, young audience? The latest study by the National Centre for Culture reveals the scale of the problem. In 2024, 61% of people aged 18–24 and 55% of those aged 25–34 had never attended an opera performance or a philharmonic concert. These are among the lowest results across all cultural activities surveyed. What’s more, over 80% of Poles did not set foot in an opera house or philharmonic at all during the year.
Many theatres declare their willingness to reach younger audiences. They organize opera lessons, educational concerts, invite students to dress rehearsals. Such initiatives are needed, but they tend to be limited to schoolchildren. When formal education ends, the connection with opera tends to fade — there is no one to lead this audience further. Theatre and cinema understood long ago that, to keep young audiences, they need to speak their language, invite dialogue, respond to the pace of life and social change. Opera often remains stuck in the pattern: education, long break, return after forty… or never.
According to the NCK report, younger respondents perceive culture differently than older generations. In the 18–24 age group, only half agree with the statement that “interest in culture and art speaks for who you are,” while among those over 65 it is more than 80%. Even fewer young people equate culture with classical music — the generational gap is even more striking here. If, for a large portion of young adults, classical music is not an obvious marker of being “a cultured person,” it is hard to expect its mere presence in the repertoire to serve as a magnet.
Opera houses still speak to audiences in the language of another era. Even their websites can be discouraging: libretti summaries read like academic dissertations, announcements sound like they were written in the 1990s. There is little room for the real questions young audiences ask themselves: Why should I go? Will this move me? Do I need to know Italian? Will I understand what’s going on? Will I feel like an intruder?
What should be an “open door” — the first contact with the institution — often becomes a wall that’s hard to climb. And even if a young person decides to attend a performance, they quickly encounter further barriers: ticket prices, lack of a simple booking system, complicated discounts, convoluted terms and conditions, the sense that “this isn’t a place for me.” For someone accustomed to buying everything on their phone through intuitive interfaces, purchasing an opera ticket can feel like a trial of patience and persistence.
And yet opera does not really need a revolution. What it needs is an honest invitation. Sometimes, instead of pretending Verdi is rap, it is enough to explain why his scores still move us. Instead of forcing “youth formats,” it is better to talk to young people as equals. Without a mentor’s tone, without didacticism, without the pressure of “cultural maturity.” A young audience does not need pop-cultural filters; they need context and space for their own interpretation. They need to understand that opera is not a museum. It is a living, multidimensional experience. And experience — as we know — is what the younger generation seeks today more than anything else.
There are places and projects that understand this. The Mozart Junior Festival shows that young people can not only watch opera but co-create it — and that nothing is more engaging than artistic responsibility. OperaVision and online broadcasts make it possible to enter the theatre from anywhere in the country. Some opera houses are experimenting with social media, inviting audiences backstage, showing rehearsals, people, voices, emotions. It is not yet the norm, but an important sign of change.
There are open-air productions that break traditional boundaries — but too often, they lack consistency: the audience member who discovered opera in a park or courtyard is not always invited further. No one tells them they can join, that it is worth it, that they are welcome.
All this leads to one conclusion: opera in Poland needs the young. But even more — the young need opera. They just need a chance to discover it. The numbers speak for themselves: participation of young adults in opera and philharmonic audiences is minimal, and overall engagement with institutional culture in this group is most often limited to cinema or entertainment concerts.
It is not the young audience who must “grow into” opera. Opera must step down from its pedestal and move a few steps closer. Speak simply about difficult things. Invite, rather than examine. And above all — trust that young people are ready. Ready to be moved. To be delighted. Or even to be bored — as long as they have the space to feel it all on their own terms.
* Study “Cultural Activity of Poles in 2024” conducted by the National Centre for Culture on a representative sample of 1K adult Poles between November 14 and 25, 2024