Opera on the Maidan

Classical music concerts and operas in the West are seeing their audiences dwindle, and the management of opera houses and symphony orchestras are looking for ways to spark public interest. The New York-based Metropolitan Opera has hired a new general manager, Peter Gelb, who has come up with some interesting projects, including beaming live high-definition broadcasts of the Met’s operas to movie theaters and uploading them to the Internet. The theater’s management says this know-how has produced some excellent results. New Yorkers are now buying tickets well in advance, but they are still in short supply.

The Metropolitan Opera hosted its first Open House on the eve of its 123rd season. Patrons were allowed to sit in $375 seats free to see the dress rehearsal of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Three thousand tickets were distributed among opera buffs, who waited all night long for the box office to open. The tickets included a chit for a free bag lunch: three finger sandwiches with slivers of arugula, cheese and turkey, two bottles of water and two cookies. During the first intermission people munched on their lunches, standing in the lobby.

After the show, director Anthony Minghella and the Met’s principal conductor, James Levine, answered questions from the audience. The spectators were allowed to walk onto the stage and see what was going on behind the scenes. Hundreds of people lined up to have their photos taken as a keepsake of this unconventional event.

Theatergoers approved Gelb’s idea to hold an Open House, while the media called it “a carefully calibrated buildup of publicity,” but still spoke of the innovation in very complimentary terms. The theater will not only simulcast in movie theaters but also broadcast opening nights on Times Square and the radio. The Met recently draped a banner in front of the theater with the opera’s title in Japanese characters. Gelb said he wants to generate excitement about this art form by making it more accessible, relevant, and theatrical. “This is opera as it should be - music and theater in perfect harmony,” he said, referring to Minghella’s visually striking production.

The premiere was a success. Huge banners and illuminated photographs of the cast of Madama Butterfly lit up the night sky over Times Square, the heart of New York on the corner of Broadway, where most of the city’s gigantic ads are concentrated. Thousands of people sat on chairs behind metal barricades and red velvet ropes on Broadway to listen to Giacomo Puccini’s legendary opera. Huge Panasonic, Nasdaq, and Reuters screens beamed this majestic tale of love and abandonment. Art and publicity: which of the two will win?

A screen was also set up at Lincoln Center Plaza, where the crowd numbered 3,000 people. Those who had bought tickets for the premiere walked the red carpet. There were many celebrities and gorgeously dressed and bejeweled women - a true feast of opera and beauty!

But the theater is still beset with problems. How Gelb will handle the Met’s finances in an age of low ticket sales and mounting costs is an open question. The Metropolitan Opera is overstaffed, with 1,500 full-time and part-time employees. Last year the theater had a budget of $225 million. The Met has 222 shows planned this year, including 27 of its own productions. Ticket prices range from $15 (for students) to $375 (for VIPs).

The Metropolitan Opera was the first to broadcast its shows on the radio, so listeners have been listening to its operas at noon on Saturdays for the past seven decades. After Texaco Chevron stopped subsidizing the broadcasts ($6 million a season), the Toll Brothers construction company took over (their profits in 2004 reached $3.9 billion). As a result, 330 radio stations broadcast operas heard by 11 million people in 42 countries.

The New York City Opera - another opera house in the metropolis - is catching up with the Met, having signed a contract until 2009 with Gerard Mortier, who has a scandalous reputation in Europe. Until recently the director of the Paris National Opera, Mortier says that “it is extremely dangerous to turn an opera into a museum piece. Even an old work by Mozart has something to tell us about today.” He constantly promotes the idea to refashion old works in a modern way, and these “innovations” have found fertile ground in many European theaters. “If you don’t update yourself, you’re finished,” he says. The important question is whether Mortier will be able to raise funds for the theater, one of the main duties of American opera managers. The Paris Opera receives two-thirds of its funds from the state, while the NYCO gets only 3 percent. When the Flemish-born Mortier came to the Salzburg Festival in the 1990s to replace the legendary Herbert von Karajan, he shocked many traditional theatergoers with his modern productions.

How does one popularize operatic art? The Metropolitan Opera chose to beam live high-quality broadcasts to 300 movie theaters in the US, Canada, and Europe, and this move was crowned with resounding success. Lately, the number of people who have heard The Magic Flute has gone up from 210,000 to 480,000 people. The Met sold a total 324,000 tickets at $18 and pocketed half of the total box-office take. One broadcast costs about $1 million. The opera house is planning to double the number of movie theaters for each of its broadcasts next year and to expand the market from Europe to Japan.

The US experience appeals to the Royal Opera House and the Grande Opera, which have started negotiations with movie theater chains in the UK and France. What lessons can we draw? Should the National Opera of Ukraine also consider enlarging its audiences by broadcasting its shows live? Music buffs would have a wonderful opportunity to hear the sounds of a true opera and enjoy this great art. Such broadcasts would further popularize the opera genre as well as the classic theater and our singers. They would also attract larger audiences to the classics. Why not try showing a National Opera production on the screens at Independence Square or in Kyiv’s elite movie theaters? Calling all Ukrainian businessmen!