Names and faces

Thursday, October 4, 2012

— Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam and Blur andGorillaz singer Damon Albarn are trying to help opera shed its stuffy image. They are supporting a plan by the English National Opera to entice new and younger audience members with the promise of casual clothes, cheap tickets and cocktails. Albarn’s operatic show Dr Dee was performed at the English National Opera’s London home earlier this year, and the company said 60 percent of audience members had never attended an opera before. It hopes to attract more newcomers with its “Undress for the Opera” initiative, which reassures operagoers that it’s OK to dress as they like, even if that means jeans. The company also will make 100 top tickets at certain performances available for $40 as part of a package that includes an introductory talk, an information guide and a postshow party, complete with themed cocktails. The goal, Gilliam said in a filmed promotion, is to dispel the notion that opera is “art for the rich, the successful and the almost dead.” It is the latest innovative initiative from the English National Opera, which already has offered audiences 3-D cinema broadcasts and an opera about the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Albarn, frontman of 1990s Britpop icons Blur and cartoon band Gorillaz, said Wednesday that he hopes perceptions of opera as stuffy and expensive will change in the same way as “a lot of ideas about worldmusic.” “We’re carrying into this century a lot of ideas that belong to a previous generation,” said Albarn.

Filmmaker TylerPerry is donating a new van to a Georgia woman with cerebral palsy after her specially equippedone was stolen outside Atlanta. Perry told WSBTV Tuesday that he heard news reports about Alicia Day’s van being stolen this week in Decatur. Police said Day’s 2000 Chrysler Town and Country van was taken from her driveway sometime Sunday night. Day uses a wheelchair and told the station that she prides herself on being independent, working part time as a greeter at Home Depot. Her mother relied on the van to take Day to work and to doctor appointments. Day said her “mouth just dropped” when she heard Perry’s voice on the phone. Perry’s films include Diary of a Mad Black Woman, and he has a studio complex in Atlanta.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 10/04/2012