Music for the masses!

If only anyone in this country would do anything like putting on Wagner's entire Ring cycle for cheap. Or having a government program to train little kids. Or enabling taxi drivers to see opera.

The opera house in Manaus, Brazil was apparently built during the rubber years (I guess the local analog of an oil boom in other parts), and has, by and large, stagnated until the 60s or so. Now:

"People attend the formal productions and other events by the thousands, and the performances in the opera house generally sell out."

Hot damn! For a city of a million and a half, I'm impressed. You seem to need at least three mil to put on an even halfway-decent production (cough Philly cough) in the States.

When the festival first began, an effort was also made to upgrade the orchestra here, with musicians ... [many of whom] also agree to give master classes to young people from Manaus who are preparing for careers as singers, musicians, stagehands and dancers.

A handful of graduates of the program were among the 75 musicians in the orchestra pit on Saturday night, including Elismael Lourenço dos Santos. He is a 20-year-old clarinetist who spent his childhood in a remote jungle community, helping his father fish and farm, and had never seen a live performance by a band until he moved here as a teenager.

"To have this opportunity to play not just Wagner, but the 'Ring' cycle is a real honor and a dream, one that is still a bit hard to believe," he said Friday after a rehearsal. "If it weren't for the government's program, there is no way I could have gotten this far, because my family is not rich and could never have afforded private instruction for me."

I suppose a few scattered programs like that exist Stateside. (Wasn't there some movie about a high-school strings teacher battling for an orchestra program recently? Not to mention Mr. Holland's Opus all those years ago.) But I don't often see evidence of them.

And, finally:

"It's not at all like pagode or forro," said Abner Correa Caleu, a taxi driver, naming styles of popular music. "You really have to concentrate, and because it's in a foreign language I don't really understand it all. But I was curious to see what it was all about, and I learned two things: it's good, and I've come to like it."

Opera for the masses!