Sunday, March 15, 2009
FIE
Today I tried to go to the LA Phil to hear Martha Agerich play the Ravel Piano Concerto in G, and Shostakovich 5. There were no student rush tickets and the cheapest available seats were $93. But you could see on the monitors in the lobby that showed the stage and the area behind it that there were plenty of empty seats, at least in the behind-the-stage area. This makes me ANGRY. There were five or so of us student types hoping for tickets, and if they had charged us $15 or $20 they could have made $75-$100 and filled seats. But no, it was $93 or bust. I do not know anything about economics, but to me, this does not make sense. At all. Maybe if I had bought tickets weeks ago I could have gotten some for $40 or so, but seriously, this IS the symphony being elitist, if you ask me. And I always say that it isn't, because you can usually get reasonable seats and ball games will probably cost a lot more. But if you have seats available and you refuse to sell them at an affordable price to people who cannot afford premium seats, well, that's elitist in my book. So FIE, LA Phil, FIE. I really wanted to see that concert, but I really CANNOT afford to pay $93. Sorry.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I understand the frustration, Gabrielle. But in defense of the LA Phil, there is a decent likelihood that the tickets were actually sold, and the people holding the tickets didn't show up (which makes me angry for entirely different reasons).
I've got you one better: I am a season ticket holder to the LA Phil and wanted to upgrade my seats to Front Orchestra for a particular concert -- no dice, as I was told they were sold out. Of course I get to WDCH, and as I look down from my regular seats I see not just two but four beautiful seats in Front Orch all together and completely empty.
Given that I was happy to pay face-value for the highest priced tickets in the hall, I guarantee you that if that if they could have sold THOSE seats they would have.
So maybe they just didn't have the seats to sell. Maybe somebody was trying to sell the tix on stubhub.com for a profit and had no takers. I wouldn't be surprised if someone was trying to sell "cheap" bench seats behind the orchestra at a profit given that it was Martha Argerich and the demand was obviously high.
I don't know for sure, of course. Just food for thought. FWIW, I would have loved to see that concert. Instead, I resigned listening to the recording of her playing the Ravel concerto in G on my iPod and watching footage of her on Youtube playing Chopin and Scarlatti. (In case you missed it, check this out: Tim Mangan's recent post about Argerich)
Cheers!
Thanks for your comment! It had occurred to me that maybe some of those seats had been bought by companies who gave them to their employees who then didn't bother to show (which annoys me, too),or that people just didn't come, but mainly I was just upset that I couldn't see the performance. Oh well. Guess that makes two of us! Well, three, my friend Aki was with me.
Post a Comment