The author Bai Xian-Yong once said, “Opera singers are old and fat.  When I saw Puccini’s ‘Madame Butterfly’, I was worried sick seeing a very fat Cio-Cio San unable to crouch while committing suicide.  Western operas can only be heard and not seen.”

In comparison, Chinese Beijing Opera or Kun Opera have more elegant and graceful movements, but their appeal is somehow not as universal as that of the Western opera.  Be it as it may, even opera in the Western world is facing a crisis of steady decline.

Over the last few years, opera houses lost roughly one third of their audience, and the average age of the audience rose to 48.  Baltimore Opera and Connecticut Opera closed their doors for good in 2009.  Having serious financial trouble, the Los Angeles Opera House had to borrow $14 million dollars from the city government.  The Washington National Opera, in its hay day with the star appeal of Placido Domingo as Artistic Director, attracted a steady inflow of corporate funding and private donations.  However, as the U.S. economy plunged into recession, the opera house suffered and had to streamline its personnel and cut its budget by $5 million despite Domingo’s fame.  In 2010, with only 5 operas on the program for the entire year, Domingo was harshly criticized by the critics as “not doing his job.”

The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City (The Met), the largest opera house in the U.S., is also having financial woes.  Established in 1880, in 130 years the Met hosted musical performances each year from September to the following May.  The 2009-2010 season was the first one completely  administered by Peter Gelb since he took over as the Met’s  Administrative Director.  The season was a costly one with 8 operas, including 4 brand new productions and 4 revivals of old classics unconventionally interpreted with new direction and complex changing stage props.

In addition, of all the Managing Directors in the Met’s history, Gelb is the most daring in spending money on publicity and marketing, paying $500,000 a year for advertisements on buses, in subway stations and public phone booths.  In mid-September, 3,000 free tickets were given out for a public rehearsal to promote the performance.  In 2006 Gelb pioneered in filming Met’s opera performances in high definition for showing in theaters in the U.S., Canada, England, and Norway, etc.  The audience could enjoy almost live performances at the price of a movie ticket.  Opra Winfrey’s “O” magazine described the experience of watching opera in a movie theater as “feeling like watching it live in a front row seat.”

Now, showing operas in over 1,000 theaters in 42 countries, the Met has developed a new business opportunity outside the opera house.  However, the combined income from the opera house, movie theaters, as well as television, radio, internet, and DVD sales only added up to a little more than $110 million.  The rest of the revenue still relies on large donations from the wealthy and small donation from the general public.
 
Based on dollars and cents, the survival of the opera houses seems to be teetering, but running an opera house has always been harder than running a Broadway show.  While musicals appeal to the masses, operas traditionally appeal to a smaller audience, those who can truly appreciate opera and be moved by it.  It should not be forgotten that opera is a classical art that has been around for over 2,000 years and it is not meant to please everyone like popular music.  It may appear temporarily wilted during the winter of the economy, but its extinction is not something we should worry about.  It is hoped that the necessary dignity and quality of the opera will not be sacrificed by its operators for the sake of profit.

(originally published in RooDo Magazine, June 2010)