Unlikely as it may seem, the Royal Opera House is always eager to snatch a few extra audience members from The X Factor – and has now produced an extraordinary viral marketing campaign. Called Danny Knows Best, it is – supposedly – an online reality TV show along the lines of Jerry Springer. There are three episodes, featuring shouty family conflicts broadly based on ballet and opera plots. The taglines are: "I'm a slave in my home . . . I want to divorce my family" (Cinderella); "My racist father is holding me hostage" (Romeo and Juliet); and "I'm sleeping with my father's boss" (the clue to which, if you haven't got it already, lies in the show's theme tune).
There's no hint it's from the House until you click "join the audience", at which point you are invited to buy tickets for shows. (Cinderella, we are told, contains an "amazing transformation scene which would even impress Gok Wan".) What to make of it? Part of me likes the strikingly unsnobbish approach. However, going to Covent Garden to watch an opera or ballet has almost nothing in common with tuning into reality TV, and it's slightly dotty to suggest it does.
