The Business of Opera

Anastasia Belina-Johnson, Derek B. Scott, Anastasia Belina-Johnson, Derek B. Scott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317039549
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Musica lirica

The study of the business of opera has taken on new importance in the present harsh economic climate for the arts. This book presents research that sheds new light on a range of aspects concerning marketing, audience development, promotion, arts administration and economic issues that beset professionals working in the opera world. The editors' aim has been to assemble a coherent collection of essays that engage with a single theme (business), but differ in topic and critical perspective. The collection is distinguished by its concern with the business of opera here and now in a globalized market. This includes newly commissioned operas, sponsorship, state funding, and production and marketing of historic operas in the twenty-first century.

Chapter 1
Trends and Innovations in Opera

Nicholas Payne

The (very) English playwright and composer Noël Coward, author of the charming if retrogressive operetta Bitter Sweet, held an ambivalent, even bitter-sweet, attitude towards the genre. In response to the criticism that ‘the trouble with opera is that it is not what it used to be’, he delivered this verdict: ‘People are wrong when they say that opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what is wrong with it.’¹

On the surface, many aspects of opera appear not to have changed. It is performed in grand and historic theatres. The spectacle is often one of extravagant display. It carries a weight of tradition and heritage. Top ticket prices are perceived to be inaccessible to ordinary people. The repertory is dominated by the same old operas.

Under the surface, though, there have been many shifts. Some are structural; others are aesthetic, or presentational. Let us examine the principal ones.

Repertory

When I was introduced to opera nearly sixty years ago, the standard repertory covered less than two hundred years, from Gluck’s Orfeo of 1762 to the (then) new operas of Britten and Henze. Today, it encompasses more than four hundred years, from Monteverdi’s Orfeo of 1607 to Birtwistle’s, still classically derived, Minotaur. The breadth of this much richer heritage is demonstrated by a recent edition of Opera Europa’s Future Production Plans database, in which a cross-section of 84 companies lists 730 productions of 377 operas by 211 composers.² The downside of this gain is that it can leave less space for new creations, which may be marginalized by the sheer bulk of opera’s magnificent legacy. The tenor Jonas Kaufmann, in a radio interview in 2014, confessed to a conviction that ‘we are the preservers of an art form whose peak was in the past’.³ That same Opera Europa database included 73 new operas in its total, representing a not unhealthy share of 10 per cent of the productions and 20 per cent of the opera titles. Yet, that proportion falls well short of the 50:50 balance between old and new to which Nicholas Hytner has aspired as Director of the UK’s National Theatre.⁴

Repertoire and Stagione

The repertoire pattern of performances, whereby a substantial body of operas may be presented in rotation by a strong resident ensemble, remains the prevailing method employed by the great opera houses of Germany and central Europe. It is by far the most productive system when operated at capacity, as in cities like Dresden, Hamburg, Munich, Prague, and Vienna. But across Europe, repertoire is in retreat. The Italian stagione system, already the norm in most of France and Spain, is gaining ground; or variations of it, sometimes categorized as ‘semi-stagione’, are being adopted elsewhere as traditional ensemble companies are being dismantled.⁵ The erosion of this precious training ground for opera practitioners is compensated, to some extent, by the potential for improved standards deriving from carefully rehearsed productions with locked-in casts. The emphasis is moving away from developing a company for the long term and towards the more ephemeral achievement of a festival or an ‘event’.

Vernacular and Original Language

During much of the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth century, composers expected their operas to be presented in the audience’s own language, as with a play. The growing practice of performance in the original language was given an enormous boost by the introduction of surtitles, first in 1983 at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, but rapidly spreading worldwide. These titles are the electronic equivalent of the printed libretti made available in the lighted auditoria of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They are credited with instilling a more concentrated attention in our now darkened auditoria and as an effective educative tool. At the same time, they have contributed to the loss of direct communication between singer and audience in a shared language, which used to underpin the theatrical experience of opera and which may still be cherished at the few remaining companies which regularly use the vernacular, such as English National Opera at the London Coliseum, Berlin’s Komische Oper, Munich’s Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, and the Volksoper in Vienna.

Co-Productions

When most opera companies possessed their own production facilities, sharing sets and costumes was rarely desirable or necessary. Jointly owned or borrowed productions began as a device to maintain or increase the number of new productions in a season, but they have become standard industry practice as an increasingly sophisticated means to share both costs and ideas. It is no coincidence that their growth has coincided with a downsizing of many theatres’ production workshops and the outsourcing of production-making to independent providers. The loss of these crafts within the opera house weakens self-sufficiency, and the process can cause difficulties between physically or aesthetically incompatible theatres. On the other hand, co-productions have proved an effective way to disseminate the work of important creative artists to a wider and more geographically diverse audience. The composer, and Director of the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Bernard Foccroulle advocates the practice thus: ‘It is important that the best new pieces or productions are experienced more widely. The best must be shared. It is not a question of money, but of art. It is not a problem of identity.’⁶

A United Europe

‘The Fall of the Berlin Wall’ in November 1989 was a symbol of the removal of a much more extensive ‘Iron Curtain’ which divided Europe into the eastern communist and the more affluent western blocs. The ‘triumph of capitalism’ has created its own economic problems, not only for the former eastern bloc nations, but it has integrated Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, the Baltic states, and a growing number of Balkan countries within the Common Market of the European Union (EU). In practice, this open market for labour extends beyond the EU to include Russia and its remaining satellite states. The balance of trade is uneven, and some of the economies remain frail and over-dependent on foreign investment, but the process is irreversible. Germany’s success in absorbing the massive economic burden of reunification speaks of its reserves of strength, which is also testified by the survival of the world’s most extensive and productive network of opera houses. But the spectacular growth of opera in countries with far less operatic tradition, as distant as Norway and Spain, and the ever more harmonious collaboration evident among the increasing number of Opera Europa members, all show that, for opera at least, the Common Market thrives as a force for development.

Globalization

More than 1,000 singers were auditioned worldwide, from whom 40 were selected for the final rounds of the 2009 edition of the NEUE STIMMEN competition at Gütersloh in northern Germany. None of the seven finalists came from ‘old Europe’. The first three prizes were all awarded to Koreans. Here was rather chastening evidence that we live today in a global market and that, as in many other areas, the talent, training, and industry coming out of Asia are contributing to Europe’s future, even in traditional strongholds. The German network is part sustained by the influx of foreign labour; but, where once it was the training ground for well-schooled Americans, it is now the destination of choice for aspiring Asians, especially from South Korea. It initially surprised me when the New National Theatre Tokyo applied to join Opera Europa, later followed by companies from Beijing and Seoul, still more recently by grand new opera houses in Muscat, Oman, and Astana, Kazakhstan; but they all exhibit a hunger for the European model and have proved willing partners in learning and trading. Opera may have been born in Europe, but Europe no longer holds a monopoly in supplying or consuming it.

Technology

Asked to define opera, I would once have described it as a musical and dramatic performance which an audience may experience live and unamplified in a theatre. No longer! Contemporary composers have embraced technology, so that music is written using computer programs and sound enhancement has become common practice in opera houses. Whereas radio broadcasts and the gramophone were adjuncts which enabled live music to be replicated in the home, today cinema screenings are increasingly popular as a means to convey performances by leading artists to distant audiences. The New York Metropolitan Opera already reaches more people in a season with its energetically promoted cinema relays than it does in its large 3,900-capacity auditorium on Lincoln Plaza. With practice, the filming has become more sophisticated and intrusive in conveying a vivid impression of the theatrical experience. Some believe that, in a few years, it will have supplanted the on-site version as the primary offer of the Met.⁷

* * *

All these factors have contributed towards the internationalization of opera. It has been an accelerating trend since 1990, though its origins go back further than that. With hindsight, one might generalize that the first twenty years after the Second World War saw the democratization of the pre-war model, a process enabled first by application of public subsidy from social democratic inclining states, and second by the invention and wide distribution of the long-playing record. During the mid-1960s to mid-1980s, the leading theatres worldwide adopted an international outlook serviced by an elite cadre of top artists, while the domestic level remained wedded to national characteristics. Since the late 1990s, the majority of companies have, to a greater or lesser extent, been affected by the seven principal factors described above. The impact of technology is the most recent development, but its effect on delivery of the core product is spreading rapidly to include online streaming of performances via an increasing number of outlets, exemplified by the launch of the Opera Europa Digital Platform in 2015.

The changes to opera over the turn of the millennium are not an isolated phenomenon. Similar trends may be noted in pop music, in film, and in painting and the plastic arts. Each has to jostle for the public’s attention in an increasingly crowded global market place. If opera wishes to compete, it is inevitable that it will find it harder to be self-contained and reliant on the old values and structures. So, in order to address these changes, managers have had to rethink and adapt their business models, or to adopt new ones. It is a tribute to their ingenuity, or to the enduring appetite for the art form, to discover how well most institutions have survived. Given the high incidence of bankruptcies and takeovers in the commercial world, there have been remarkably few terminal business failures in the operatic world. Hardly any important opera houses have closed in Europe, except for renovation. Magnificent new theatres have been built during the twenty-first century in Copenhagen, Oslo, Tenerife, and Valencia, while others have been expensively restored. Beyond Europe, China leads the way with grand new arts palaces, but the Middle East follows. The highest-profile casualty in the United States has been New York City Opera, but the loss of that ‘people’s opera’ institution has been compensated by the growth of small artist-led groups, almost forty of which now make up the New York Opera Alliance.

For most of the second half of the twentieth century, the top brands would have been recognized as the New York Metropolitan, La Scala Milan, London’s Covent Garden, the Paris Opera, and Vienna State Opera. The opening up of Russia has enabled Moscow’s Bolshoi and Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatres to establish their premium brands in the international market; and several of the leading German-speaking theatres enjoy worldwide recognition. This eminence is a valuable commodity, because of the growing number of theatres that are now competing to secure the top artists.

Needless to say, solvency is not simply the outcome of virtuous financial practice. The solidity of state support in the traditionally strong artistic economies of Germany and France, Austria and Switzerland, has underpinned their broad national provision. In the less-traditional operatic countries, such as the United Kingdom and Spain, a plural funding model which strikes a balance of public and private support has proved a surprisingly effective compromise between ‘old European’ and New World ways, though the post-2008 international debt crisis has threatened to derail this delicate equation. Declining funding from the national budget has threatened the status of Italian opera and eroded the productivity of its leading theatres, but even that crisis is beginning to provoke new models. Italy has imposed a Valore cultura law (Legge 112), which compels 8 out of 14 of its leading lyric institutions to undergo a stabilization programme of reform between 2014 and 2017, the results of which remain uncertain. Likewise, the economic upheavals of the post-communist countries have created instability in Eastern Europe, but are also enforcing fresh thinking and different solutions in capital cities such as Warsaw and Prague. If implemented successfully, they will inform changes to smaller and regional theatres.

Income

Opera has never broken even or made a profit. The question is who picks up the deficit; and the answer tells you where the balance of power lies. In an age when public subventions are static or in decline, the emphasis must fall on other sources of revenue. They are listed below in descending order of importance.

1. Ticket sales are the barometer of public interest. While their importance as a factor in total revenue varies considerably, they remain the single most powerful indicator of approval. A half-empty theatre spells audience indifference, which damages not only the revenue stream but also the confidence of funding bodies. A sold-out house is the best advertisement, because success breeds success. In festivals such as Bregenz, Glyndebourne, and Savonlinna, ticket sales are the primary source of income; but, even for those companies less dependent on sales, the box office percentage is a key economic indicator. Opera is learning from other sectors, such as the travel industry, how to optimize earned income through forms of ‘dynamic pricing’.⁸ The aim of what is known as ‘revenue management’ is ‘to ensure that companies will sell the right product to the right customer at the right time at the right price’.⁹

2. Private contributions in Europe are unlikely to assume the dominant position they hold in the United States. Whereas an American may individual...