People respond to strong signals. This is really a point about education. There is nothing arcane about what we do in the arts. There can be something intellectually and certainly imaginatively ambitious about it. But people who participate, who play, who dance, who sing, express a natural and confident cultural ambition that leads directly to the concert hall auditorium or to the stage itself.
Participation is the key, and the key to participation is providing opportunity.
If every school student participated in music and theatre as unselfconsciously and confidently as they do in sport, the audience for opera would grow tenfold. We require the architects of our education system to develop and entrench the practice and appreciation of our arts in schools. Those children attending private schools with a strong music program are likely to be encouraged to play an instrument or sing in a choir. In the public system you might be lucky enough to live near a school that has some focussed music activity, but more likely not. If the benefits of a rounded music education are not available to children in the public school system, then we will indeed see a gradual elitisation of the audience for the performing arts.