Classic music originates from the chamber orchestras that the nobility started keeping starting from late 17th century. Opera originated from a mix of scholastic choral music, classical music and troupes. The art that emerged from those two always catered to, and represented the culture and sentiments of the aristocrats. Up until mid 19th century, when a white collar professional class sizable enough formed through the educated professionals that the upper classes employed in their businesses and state apparatus, there wasnt anyone else than the aristocrats who were consuming these art forms. The music that was being performed in the inns that plebs went for entertainment definitely wasnt classical. All the way until the late 19th century when Strauss brothers tried to bring music to the masses through performing Waltz music in public parks, classical music has been an elite affair to which a limited class of white collar professionals were participating.

But since there wasnt any other class that could produce intellectuals, thought leaders and revolutionaries outside the aristocrats and the newly created professional bourgeois, the leaders that shaped the coming centuries came out of these two classes and carried classical music into 'the intellectual' music status due to their consumption of this art form. So we see classical music being held and performed at large in high regard even in the Soviet Union, who tried to promote plebeian culture and art over all the former art forms - for all intents and purposes, the 'intellectual' music was classical music and the intellectual performance art was opera and theater as the early people's leaders who shaped the revolution had to come out of the educated professionals class of the 19th century. Then we see the USSR perplexed later in the 20th century, not able to understand why the youth is not picking up classical music as a habit and instead listening to anything else. Of course they would not pick it up - classical music never represented the culture and sentiments of the majority at any point in its history - it was always an art for the elite class.

Your article just demonstrates that nothing changed since then. Classical music, opera, while being the marvels they are, still belong to the culture of the uppermost class of the society. Maybe not even that, since the culture and norms of even the highest class in our societies have diverged greatly from the 18th-19th century aristocrats. But they are still the 'most elite' things to do, and hence, they are still there as they were...