U.S. opera sees future in black and Hispanic audience

By Timothy Gardner

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Keeping opera alive in the age of the Internet and hip hop is no easy task, so when Donna Walker-Kuhne seeks to convince black Americans to come to a show, she dares not open conversation with the "O" word.

"If the first thing we say is 'opera,' a lot of people are going to just kind of shut down," arts marketer Walker-Kuhne, who has been cultivating black audiences for the New York City Opera since May, said in an interview.

Next week, New York's City Opera puts on "Margaret Garner," which centers on the real 1856 story of an escaped Kentucky slave that inspired Toni Morrison's novel "Beloved." When marshals surrounded the cabin Garner had escaped to, she killed her two-year-old daughter and attempted to kill herself rather than return to slavery.

Walker-Kuhne, who is African American, says blacks historically aren't big opera patrons for a simple reason: "They haven't been invited. You have to be invited to places, you don't just barge in."

As the U.S. population diversifies and live arts compete for audiences with other entertainment forms like movies, gaming and rap, opera houses from New York to Los Angeles are seeking out new communities, working with leaders in other art forms, and discounting tickets to entice new crowds.

"If we don't do it, the art form will die in this country," Evans Mirageas, the artistic director of the Cincinnati Opera said in an interview.

Opera must evolve as its potential audience is no longer the almost exclusively white upper-middle class elite crowd it was 50 years ago, he said.

While opera has centred on diverse themes since its start in Italy during the 1600s, it needs to embrace the stories of new faces he sees in the audience, he said.