The Metropolitan Opera - What is to be done?

[Kathleen O'Connell]

While we wait for our NYCB subscription tickets to arrive …

Way back in March, Parterre Box’s own Dawn Fatale* posted a long, three part article that analyzes the Metropolitan Opera’s current financial, operational, and audience-building woes and proposes a number of ways to address them. Although opera is its own beast – and the Met in particular is practically its own order of charismatic megafauna – some of its issues echo those of other struggling performing arts organizations, including of course, ballet. It’s a long read, but hey, it’s August …

Some teasers:

Part 1: the met: what’s really wrong?

This section of the piece is primarily concerned with the Met’s funding issues and does a bit of “forensic accounting” to unpack both the Met and its Union’s claims regarding the sources of its deficits.

To put the Met’s annual fundraising obligation in perspective, here are two sobering facts. In a single season, the company requires more in donations towards annual operating expenses than the New York Philharmonic, BAM, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The New York City Ballet, and Lincoln Center Theater combined! Or, to put it another other way, the Met’s fundraising obligation of $161 million is more money than the National Endowment for the Arts disperses in a single year.

...

On paper at least, next season promises to be mind-numbingly dull. It’s not the season of an opera company that aspires to generate interest or increased attendance. In fact, it is the perfect season for a company that is anticipating a lockout as there is little that will be missed if it doesn’t happen.

Part 2: the met: can it be saved?

This section analyses the Met’s programming and production choices and proposes some alternative approaches to generate a more coherent company style and greater audience engagement.

Great intendants have the trust and support of their public. This relationship allows their company to embark on explorations of repertoire that unfold over many seasons. They gain that trust by choosing their first new productions very carefully to inspire the public to follow them down a new artistic trajectory. Pamela Rosenberg’s failure in San Francisco was not a lack of imagination or taste, but rather that she didn’t help her conservative audience find their own way towards more experimental production styles; she knocked them unconscious and had them wake up a shabby room filled with discarded shoes and strange men in raincoats.

…

I’m sure we Parterriani could crowd-source a couple of decades worth of suggestions for special evenings at the opera. I vote for a celebration of ballet at the opera with two or three acts from Verdi operas with their ballets restored. I would eagerly snap up a ticket to a show that featured Act III of I Vespri Siciliani with the celebrated Jerome Robbins version of the Four Seasons ballet and Act III of Don Carlos with the Balanchine Ballo della Regina.

Part 3: the met: what is to be done?

This section examines the limitations of the Met’s current casting practices, the opera-going experience at the opera house itself, and outreach.

Much as I’d like to fantasize to the contrary, hiring Schwanewilms more frequently won’t immediately cause the Met’s box office to rebound. However, more performances by the likes of her will, eventually. The Met, more than any other opera company, needs singers who can project both their voices and their interpretations into the house. The Met swallows up lots of performers not because they can’t be heard, but because they can’t be felt.

…

It’s unfortunate that the Met seems to have little budget left for some outreach and marketing that would get the company noticed by potential first-time opera goers. The summer retransmissions on the plaza are nice, but the Met has to go beyond the confines of Lincoln Center to find its audience.

• Shouldn’t the Met have a presence in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade featuring the show premiering on New Year’s or the holiday presentation for children?

• Couldn’t the Met make a large number of seats at the HD Live weekday retransmissions free at selected theaters in the NYC area for students or for people who enter a ticket raffle?

• Couldn’t the Met have one performance a season where all tickets, even in the parterre boxes, are $25 or less?

• Couldn’t there be Sunday matinees at friendly prices in the final weeks of the season when the orchestra and chorus no longer have rehearsals on weekdays?

Would any of it work? Is it even practicable? I have no idea (well, I have some ideas), but there's a lot there for a lover of any performing art to mull over.

* A nom de plume, in case you don’t know your Verdi backwards and forwards. It comes from the first line of this aria from Don Carlos. “O don fatale, O don crudel!” [“O fatal gift, O cruel gift!” The character, the Princess Eboli, curses her beauty, which has brought her and everyone else in the opera a world of hurt.]

Disclosure: Dawn Fatale is an acquaintance. We worked for a time at the same company, although we were more likely to bump into each other in a theater lobby than at the office.

ETA: In my subtitle, I referred to Dawn Fatale as a "fan": I want to make it clear that the estimable Ms Fatale has, as they say, forgotten more about opera than I will ever know. It says a lot about the current state of arts journalism that an article like this one had to be written for love.

[California]

Or, to put it another other way, the Met’s fundraising obligation of $161 million is more money than the National Endowment for the Arts disperses in a single year.

Just to underscore one detail in your excellent post: the FY2014 budget and the FY2015 budget request for the National Endowment for the Arts is only $146.021 million. Note that this includes the administrative costs of the agency (about $15 million). This is significant as it reminds us that Federal government support for the arts is in serious decline, putting even more of a burden on cities and states, as well private sources.

http://arts.gov/news/2014/president-obama-releases-fy-2015-budget-number-national-endowment-arts

[Kathleen O'Connell]

Or, to put it another other way, the Met’s fundraising obligation of $161 million is more money than the National Endowment for the Arts disperses in a single year.

Just to underscore one detail in your excellent post: the FY2014 budget and the FY2015 budget request for the National Endowment for the Arts is only $146.021 million. Note that this includes the administrative costs of the agency (about $15 million). This is significant as it reminds us that Federal government support for the arts is in serious decline, putting even more of a burden on cities and states, as well private sources.

http://arts.gov/news/2014/president-obama-releases-fy-2015-budget-number-national-endowment-arts

OOPS! My bad!!! That's a quote from the article I linked to! I'm going to modify the original post to make it clear that that's Dawn Fatale's writing, not mine!

[DanielBenton]

Many thanks for introducing me to the phrase "charismatic megafauna" . And, who knew that it is subject to taxonomic inflation, speaking pejoratively?

[sandik]

Not about the Met, but I am absolutely charmed by the term "charismatic megafauna," and look forward to using it in the future. In exchange, I bring forward a related term, the Ugly Animal Preservation Society.

ETA - apparently, Daniel B and I both clicked on the link!

[Helene]

I'm not sure if the hope about Gelb being marketing-savvy was like grandparents who think their middle-aged children are tech-savvy because they can make their iPhones do GPS, or if the Met as an institution is aghast at the idea of using established net-friendly marketing and outreach techniques because it would taint their brand and put off rich donors, but so many of the suggestions are like fruit rotting on the vine for the only company in the US with the critical mass of performances and visitors to pull them off to the max. And a lot would be possible at a relatively low cost by arts loving, net-savvy young people, one or two added to the staff and who might end up making careers in arts administration as a result. The type of phone apps that Ms. Fatale suggests would not be that costly and features could be added on as modules, and the info could be leveraged for the Met website, with one set of master info disseminated to multiple outlets. Having downloads available from the Sirius performances right after the performances is an impulse-purchase souvenir that could entice to get people to sign up for the subscription service, on Sirius or Met on Demand later on. It's not the same as buying a CD or DVD of a different performance in the gift shop. (Is the Met gift shop even open after performances? Most gift shops are shut down after last intermission.)

Seattle and San Francisco have a mass of summer tourists and the opera at least presents during part of the summer -- SFO has a handful of mixed rep productions, while SO usually presents a single one, this summer being an exception and the Ring being its own draw, -- but there's not enough demand + money to run nightly like at the Met. Most companies don't, and the same venue is used for more than opera. Keeping up the marketing momentum between productions is difficult. The Met has streams of tourists and business visitors to Manhattan year-round. That's not the same as visitors to Microsoft/Boeing or Silicon Valley, which are a schlep to Seattle and San Francisco, not a taxi ride, and something's playing at the Met every day but Sunday, not like elsewhere, where if the only day you overlap with the schedule, if you're lucky enough to do so, is the night before a 6am flight, you have to be extremely motivated to attend.

European opera companies have had in-season festivals for a long time, and they generate a lot of interest, the way Ring Cycles do. Tour groups make plans around them. In season festivals drum up local interest, too, since they're time sensitive, and you can't just think, "The Met will be playing another six months, maybe when I'm not so busy." Also, NYCB has long held its gala during the season, not on opening night.

My favorite suggestion is having a bunch of food trucks at Damrosch Park before performances. That's even better than a dedicated food court, which takes more administrative oversight and is less agile in response to quality and customer demand, and it wouldn't end up being the same corporate food that's available in malls. That would be great news for all of the arts institutions in the area.