Damian Thompson is an associate editor of the Spectator and a contributor to UnHerd, from which this article was adapted.
Last week Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s left-wing mayor, astonished his conservative critics by doing something they wish they had thought of. He announced that the city is partnering with the Metropolitan Opera to give away 70,000 tickets in a lottery. “Every New Yorker should have the opportunity to see this, no matter how much money is in their pocket,” he said.
Some right-wingers complained about a waste of public money, but really, it should be a source of embarrassment for conservatives that a self-proclaimed socialist thought up this scheme before they did. For decades, institutions have tried to make classical music more accessible. The Kennedy Center parachuted Kendrick Lamar onstage with the National Symphony Orchestra; the New York Philharmonic plays second fiddle to blockbusters. Meanwhile, in an attempt to make the music relatable, the musical establishment desperately tries to insert modestly talented but slightly more diverse composers into the pantheon of the greats.
It has not worked — and let’s not pretend that Mamdani’s lottery will achieve spectacular results. New Yorkers will not suddenly start hearing the Triumphal Chorus from “Aida” drowning out hip-hop on the streets. Realistically, Mamdani and his colleagues may convert a few thousand people who would otherwise never have set foot in the Met or heard anything more than a burst of “Nessun dorma” on a playlist. Even so, the mayor will have achieved more than armies of arts administrators and music teachers, not to mention conservative guardians of culture who deplore musical wokery.
Opera is one of the least accessible art forms for modern audiences and always will be. Those who care about its fate should stop worrying about that fact of life and concentrate instead on introducing it to those people who would fall in love with it if they had the chance. The same is true of the challenging classical symphonic repertoire.
This is not to say that the most popular operas or symphony concerts with tried-and-true programs fail to sell tickets. But the ecosystem relies on snob appeal, corporate hospitality and private donations whose beneficiaries often occupy the same narrow social strata as the donors themselves.
The composition and performance of large-scale “art music,” for want of a better term, has required bucketloads of subsidy since the 16th century. What the New York experiment does is open the turnstiles to taxpayers, bypassing bien-pensant gatekeepers. Although its effect may be limited, any public initiative is preferable to the useless fantasies of social engineers.
While conservatives should be embarrassed, they also need to ask why Mamdani was able to outsmart them. The answer is that they belong to a political class that is increasingly deaf to classical music, for a combination of reasons. Recent generations have, for the most part, received a musical education that is perfunctory, politicized or nonexistent. Also, compared with previous generations of conservatives, they tend to be myopic policy wonks or self-obsessed mediocrities for whom Mahler’s Second Symphony does not represent “Resurrection” so much as 80 wasted minutes that could have been spent pressing the flesh at a cocktail party.
Am I exaggerating? Consider this: The last American president known to have taken a real interest in classical music left office in 1981. Now, no matter your preferred side of the aisle, neither Barack Obama’s favorite songs of 2025 nor George W. Bush’s iPod from 2005 included a single piece of classical music. President Donald Trump, to his credit, once requested Pavarotti be played at a town hall in 2024 — alongside, of course, Guns N’ Roses and the soundtrack of the musical “Cats.” Perhaps Mamdani should offer him a free ticket to the Met.
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