The Metropolitan Opera, which announced its plans for the 2010-11 season on Monday, said Mr. Sellars would make his directing debut at the house with “Nixon in China,” John Adams’s 1987 opera. Meanwhile, a Zeffirelli production — “La Traviata” — will bite the dust.

CLASSICAL music is cool again. How do we know? Because cool people say so. Alex James, the bassist with Brit-pop superstars Blur, wrote in the British tabloid The Sun that “classical music isn’t just for snobs … Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet is great lovemaking music, better than Foo Fighters. You’re talking a different class of shag.”

It’s been observed here before, particularly by one commenter, that many of the classical music field’s attempts to be hip and draw in a younger audience are a little embarrassing, or stilted. (I’m putting words in ianw’s mouth here; he raised the point objecting to the term alt-classical. And I have to concur with him that if an orchestra were to use this term in its marketing, my instinct would be to run the other way.)

From time to time, people have mentioned in comments here a French government study that supposedly shows that the French classical music audience is very young, with a median age of 38. I’ve never been able to find the source for this number. From some of what’s been said, I get the idea that it’s on a flyer handed out at concerts.

Have you been noticing a growing number of empty seats at classical concerts in recent years? Have you attended a recent gallery opening where there was actually enough Champagne and hors d’oeuvres to go around — and perhaps even some to take home?

With opera house attendances falling alarmingly, venues such as La Scala in Milan are trying to titillate and lure the young