How opera finances have slumped in America

There’s an extraordinary shot of cold reality in SFOpera’s Matthew Shivlock interview with Janos Gereben of San Francisco Classical Voice. Brace yourselves, these numbers are really grim:

‘Ticket sales now only cover 16 percent of our revenue — a linear decline from 60 percent in the 1960s resulting from increases in total expenses, a gradual reduction in the total number of performances over many years, and changing buying habits away from full subscription packages. This means that donors are being asked to take on a larger and larger obligation each year.

‘We have worked incredibly hard as a company to keep expense growth to 2–3 percent a year (which can be very challenging when healthcare escalates at 10–15 percent), but our revenues are growing at 1 percent a year at best. Each year we must find $2.5–3 million of new revenue just to do exactly the same thing as we did the year before. The compounding impact of that over time is staggering.

‘From 2019 (the final season before the pandemic) to now, that is some $15–18 million of new revenue that we must bring in each year, and that is almost exclusively from donors. This has meant that the company’s budget for an eight-opera season is now in the mid $90 millions….’

The game has changed forever.