Why the Closing of Opera Companies Has Nothing to Do with Money

(Thanks to twitterer @sparkoc yesterday for tweeting this article.)

In the last year, four significant opera companies around the country have folded.  Since this is a time in history where more than four significant banks, software companies, or car companies have or could fold in a year, it’s probably doesn’t shock the reader to hear that opera is not immune to losing its grip on solvency.

After all, opera is a specialized taste.  It’s also very expensive to produce and, consequently, to go and see.

And so when an opera company is in trouble, the first thing anyone is likely to say is that they didn’t have enough money, and of course, by definition, bankruptcy means you don’t have enough money.

But what I want to make clear is not having enough money was the symptom of the disease, not the cause of death.

Here’s a key tidbit from the article:

“Money troubles at all four companies, however, had been long-standing. As Ireland acknowledged to The Orlando Sentinel, as far back as the summer of 2006, Orlando Opera had nursed a deficit of $589,000 on a $2.7-million budget. An ensuing fundraising drive secured commitments of $1.6 million that reduced this deficit briefly to $200,000, but when the stock market sank in the autumn of 2008, ticket sales and donations sank with it. Ultimately, as much as $750,000 in pledges was left unfulfilled.”

In other words, the tide went out, and we found out who had been swimming naked, as Warren Buffett said.

The thing is, you can always blame an economic downturn.  They come along every 8 or 10 years and they make a socially acceptable scapegoat for failure.  But the fact is that the seeds of failure for these organizations were sown long before the meltdown last fall.

I found this insight about Opera Pacific quite interesting:

“David DiChiera ran Opera Pacific as its first general director from 1986 until his retirement from that company in 1996. (DiChiera remains founding general director of Michigan Opera Theatre, where he has served since 1971.) For him, the success of any regional opera company depends entirely on ties to the community. ‘Greatness on the stage is something all opera companies strive for,” says DiChiera, “but you have to connect with your community. That is the bedrock. By the time I retired at Opera Pacific, we’d built a large corps of local volunteers, over thirty chapters, created not geographically but by interest — there were tennis people who supported the opera together with small donations and regular attendance, dining enthusiasts who went out to restaurants and then attended the opera. It may not have been chic or sophisticated, but it gave us a foundation. You need to let people feel a part of what you’re doing. You need to build a pyramid structure of support, a large base of small local donors who become invested in you.

‘After I retired, my successors dispensed with our outreach programs, because they felt they weren’t up to the company’s elite standards. And they walked away from our pyramid structure of financing, concentrating instead on just a few large donors. In doing so they alienated a large part of their audience by making people feel that they didn’t count. I think the administration was constantly looking at the Los Angeles Opera and wanting to be like L.A. Well, you can’t be like L.A.! Opera is not L.A.’”

Wait, wait.  Let me get this straight.  Tennis players and dining enthusiasts are not sophisticated enough to be welcomed as supporters of this organization?

What?

Who were they expecting, the Monopoly man?  Thurston Howell the third? Winchester from M*A*S*H? Sir John Gielgud?

What?

I have no idea whether this is an accurate recitation of the facts as they happened, but if they are, Opera Pacific deserved to fail.  (UPDATE:  Note below commenter Kara Larson’s personal experience, which seems to back up the notion that Opera Pacific abandoned its broad-based strategy.)

That’s why I say that money has nothing to do with the failure of these organizations.  I get that opera is expensive, but I will also say that people who love opera really love opera.  Furthermore, people who love opera tend to have some money in their pockets.  It’s a glamorous and intense genre, with a lot of potential appeal.

In fact, despite having an audience that’s for the most part under 40, Goldstar always sells opera very well.  It’s got an appeal, if for no other reason than it ‘s a great way to go and feel like a sophisticated grown up.  Not the Monopoly Man perhaps, but a grown up.

But it appears to me at a glance that these companies were more committed to remaining the same and “focusing on the art” than they were in delivering something that an audience would support.  That’s Fatal Mistake Number 1 for any organization, especially a live entertainment one.

I truly detest the mindset you find some places that puts the emphasis on getting big donations from fat cats so that you can be as lazy as you want, produce whatever self-indulgent sludge comes to mind, and never have to worry about whether anybody cares what you put on stage.  I hate it, and it is a death-bringer to live entertainment organizations in the 21st Century.

If that’s why you’re in the business or that’s your basic business plan, you could save everyone a lot of trouble by cashing out your endowment now and having a giant bonfire with the money.  Or just buy everyone in Orange County dinner at the Olive Garden.  Or go to my old standby, drive around Irvine throwing Almond Joy bars at people and yelling, “Hey, you!  Opera!”

For those who are marketing opera in the 21st century, I have a simple message of hope:  I have seen that there is a real and significant interest on the part of the ticket buying public for your product, even among younger people.  I have the data; I’ve analyzed it personally.  There’s no question about it.

BUT…

You have got to focus on building a following for your organization and you must gear your organization’s activities, both on and offstage, to making that following happy.  Look at big dollar donors as a bonus, found money, a lucky freebie, and build your organization to run on small money donations and ticket sales.  I appreciate that opera is expensive, and compromising the show can only hurt.

But that’s what creativity’s all about, Charlie Brown.

It’s about making an audience happy by delivering something special and doing it within significant constraints.

Your genre (and not just your genre) has lost some time.  It has spent the last 20 years or so catering to the tastes of an aging audience and courting donors rather than building an ongoing and continuous new following.  You’re going to have to work through that difficulty to get healthy, but it can be done.

Opera is a great art form, and it’s a spectacular audience experience when it’s done right.

It’s time to understand that doing it right for today’s audience is what it’s all about.