For a 400-year-old art form, opera had a bad fame: overweight actresses singing the words

For a 400-year-old art form, opera had a bad fame: overweight actresses singing the words which were hard to understand in one of those romantic languages you were supposed to learn in high school. And with tickets costing as much as $145 a performance, operagoers also had a certain appearance in people’s mind: rich, well-dressed and old.
But now opera panies around the country are loosening their ties and kicking off their shoes in an attempt to keep opera alive and take it to a younger and not so wealthy audience.
Opera producers have found that to attract this crowd, they need to associate opera with the mon people. That means no formal suits, old-styled theatre or bank-breaking ticket prices. And because young people don’t or won’t e to the opera, panies are bringing the opera to them, giving performances in such usual places as parks, libraries and public schools.
The Houston Grand Opera’s choice is the public library, where it performs “mobile operas”, shortened versions of child-friendly operas. This summer’s production is Hansel & Gretel. By performing smaller versions of large productions, producers are able to make people interested while keeping costs at a reasonable level. The San Francisco Opera, which will be celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, is staging Cinderella free of charge, keeping costs down by employing students from its Young Artists’ Training Program.
【小题1】Which is the main idea of this passage?A．Opera is famous for its long history.B．Opera is only performed for rich people.C．Opera panies are trying to keep opera alive.D．Young people are not interested in opera.【小题2】The underlined phrase in the second paragraph means     .A．breaking up the old rulesB．changing the dressesC．making the audience at easeD．advertising themselves【小题3】Opera panies prefer to perform short versions because     .A．they can be performed in public librariesB．short versions are easy to performC．it is hard to find long versionsD．they can make people interested【小题4】The San Francisco Opera employs students in order to     .A．celebrate its 75th anniversaryB．reduce the costC．attract young peopleD．make Cinderella popular【小题5】 From the passage we can infer that     .A．the tickets for opera are very expensiveB．opera is performed in a difficult languageC．opera is not so popular an art form todayD．students enjoy performing opera very muchC