Breaking: Dallas 'within 3 months of bankruptcy'
mainAmerica’s orchestra world was shocked last night by an announcement that one of its richest members, the Dallas Symphony, is likely to run out of money in less than three months.
The orchestra, under Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweeden,
has stacked up multi-million dollar deficits in the past two seasons, with ticket sales running be,ow 65 percent. Zweeden has just been named Conductor of the Year by Musical America, but the board has been forced to put in place a ‘new business model’ involving fewer classical concerts and effectivr wage cuts for the musicians.
Official version here.
Dallas Opera, too, is scaling back. Times are getting seriously tough if oil-rich Dallas cannot pay its bills.
I thought that the DSO was one of the few orchestras with one of the highest endowment funds in the USA. After 15 years as season ticket holders we left three years ago when the ticket prices went up dramatically and the parking prices doubled. The DSO, to our knowledge, never asked the common, ordinary season ticket holders what they wanted to hear or what their ideas were. Somethin else – for the first 10 years after the “Mort” opened the seasons were all sold out. Somethiong has gone terribly wrong.