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I like to dress well for such occasions.
For men, a suit for men or a sport coat, slacks, long-sleeve shirt, tie, dressy shoes.
For women, a cocktail dress, or skirt/pants with a very nice top, dressy shoes.
Dress to respect yourself and the performers. No flip-flops, please, because they make an unpleasant sound if you have to walk out to go to the restroom in the middle of the performance which is disturbing to other patrons.
More and more, lately, I've seen people 'dressing up' for things, even dinner out on a weekend. Maybe we're finally getting tired of the 'I want to be comfortable at all costs' thing?
This thread reminded me of an experience I had when living in NYC:
I had grown up in a university town with a well known music school, so we were able to attend excellent symphony concerts and operas. My family always dressed nicely - Midwestern Sunday best - for those events, and so did everyone else.
So the year I lived in NYC I was 26 and poor but excited to experience all that NYC had to offer. Surely a performance experience in NYC would be even more wonderful than a performance back home! It took me a long time to save up enough to buy tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. I was so excited! I dressed as nicely as I could afford - nice dress and shoes that hurt - and took a taxi instead of the subway (so expensive!) to the Met. I went up to my balcony seats, all I could afford . . . and sitting next to me were two women dressed in jeans. They had brought sandwiches with them, and chewed on them and burped throughout the performance. That just took the joy out of the whole New York City Opera experience for me. What a disappointment! I never went back. And obviously I never forgot it - that was 30 years ago.
That being said, I do know that historically people often went to the opera to socialize, eat, drink, and gossip, and completely ignore the performance on the stage. But they were well dressed while they did this, I think.
In NY I would see people in jeans, even, but that wasn't the norm/ Men wore jackets, if not full suits. I wore the dresses that I wore to work. I would see some women in gowns, but they were also the exception. I think NY is much more forgiving than some other places. You have students who love the classics and why should they be deprived of such beauty because they have little money?
When I lived in NYC I used to go to various concert events at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. I found the same gamut of dress, although at Lincoln Center events there were more suits and long dresses. Being a prole, my outfit was chinos, a open-neck dress shirt or solid shirt and a crew neck sweater. My nod to formal dress was that the sweater was always navy blue or black.
In European events that I see on TV there is much more dressing up.
In my small Midwestern city, the symphony tends to attract an older, wealthier clientele, with very few students or "young professionals", younger couples out on a date and so forth. Attire tends to be semi-formal. I normally wear a business-suit without a tie, but that's also my usual manner of dress at work. Women tend to wear conservative pant-suits... but keep in mind, they're mostly 70+.
In Europe one tends to find broader representation between the generations, and not such a sea of gray hair. Style of dress is reflected in a lower median age of the audience.
It depends on the venue. If it's at a concert hall, then I dress up. Not formal, but a nice dress in a fairly conservative style and dress shoes.
However, last summer I went to a symphony concert that was beside a lake and everyone was dressed casually, including the performers. It was wonderful! They had a fireworks show over the lake as the orchestra played the 1812 Overture.
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