A new national study shows that 23.9 million Americans, 11.6 percent of the population, attended a non-opera classical music event in 2002. While the total number of concertgoers rose slightly from 1992, the percentage of the population attending an event fell by about 1 percent. The audience for opera grew from 6.1 million in 1992 to 6.6 million in 2002, holding steady at about 3 percent of the population.
The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts, found that 39 percent of Americans visited an art museum or attended an opera, musical, ballet, play, jazz performance or classical concert in 2002.
The survey showed that the median age of concertgoers has risen as the entire population has aged. At 49, classical music audiences have the highest median age of any of the categories in the survey; the median age of operagoers was 48.
Classical and opera audiences have also become more educated. About 85 percent of concertgoers had at least a partial college education in 2002, up from 77 percent in 1992. People with only a high school degree dropped from 19 percent to 12 percent of the audience. There was a similar trend in opera audiences, as the percentage of high school graduates dropped from 16 to 8 percent.
Women remain a majority of both opera and classical audiences. Both audiences
are skewed sharply toward the wealthy, with about 40 percent reporting incomes
over $75,000.
