Negotiating Convention: Pop-Ups and Populism at the San Francisco Opera

Abstract

Twenty-first-century North American opera houses have attempted to bring in new audiences to make up for a declining and aging population of subscribers through means both traditional and unorthodox. The San Francisco Opera's SF Lab Initiative (2015–2018) was created with such goals in mind. Alternative forms of programming, which I categorize as auxiliary programming, have gained traction as a marketing and aesthetic strategy in recent years, and ultimately signal a dramatic shift in approaches to regional opera production in the United States. While scholars have explored the creation and funding of contemporary operatic productions in the United States, little attention has been given to forms of programming beyond the operatic mainstage. Using interviews with company members and analysis of advertising and reception of the events, I examine the SFO Lab programming as a site of negotiation between operatic convention and experimentation. Based on a populist vision of operatic access, the SF Opera Lab re-contextualized rather than eliminated class and intellectual hierarchies. More broadly, this application of experimental performativity contributes to discourses about Pan-American experimentalism(s) and demonstrates the ways in which a focus on local encounters can yield broad applications for genres and/or scenes beyond opera in the United States.

Network Traffic Monitoring and Marketing Strategy of Online Music Products in Multimedia Environment

“…e main types of music products include popular songs, traditional music, and MV with video images. Simply put, it is a music product that uses wireless or wired music as a medium and modern science and technology as a means to digitally process, create, disseminate, and sell it [9]. Unlike the traditional music industry that requires certain material carriers, online music products do not need to rely on actual material carriers for their spread and sale, which are done through digital means.…”