Peter Block says the only measure of opera and baseball regarding their relative value is “how the body politic votes with its entertainment dollars” (“Fat lady vs. . . .,” Voice, Sept. 24).
He asserts baseball’s comparatively higher entertainment value as if it were self-evident. Even if I allow him that “value” can be connected only with dollars, I’m not convinced. For one example, how many bottles of Tott’s Champagne were sold because of their TV commer-cials using operatic music? A lot, if one can judge from the success of their product and from ancillary CD sales
Speaking of CDs, how many operatic CDs are sold annually? Not many, compared with those by ephemeral MTV superstars, but as a person with years in the classical recording business, I know that the business is large, growing and, best yet, attracts the most prized age and income demographics.
Moreover, classical CD buyers tend to be lifelong buyers. Record companies keep making classical and operatic CDs because people do buy them. Do not these dollars count?
Block’s yardstick reflects a typically American conviction that the value of entertainment increases as it plumbs for the lowest common denominator; that if it isn’t appreciated by the widest audience, it is effete elitist nonsense.
As Oscar Wilde put it, “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
