Edinburgh approaches Salzburg prices
NewsTop prices for Carmen this summer are £149, a shock for many festival subscribers. Hugh Kerr, editor of the Edinburgh Music Review, writes: ‘The Edinburgh Festival traditionally has been a low cost open access festival with big discounts for pensioners. It has now become a high cost Festival more like Salzburg. Top ticket prices for opera are £149 and lowest prices at £39 are twice what the Upper Slips at Covent Garden Cost. Nicola Benedetti may want to get the community more involved with the Festival but she is in danger of pricing many traditional festival goers out!’
Here’s some first-hand experience from EMR’s Kate Calder:
Two weeks ago, I reported on the launch of the Edinburgh International Festival 2024, and
wrote about ticket prices. As I suggested then, flexible pricing has again come into force, a
policy which Nicola Benedetti defended in an interview with Brian Ferguson in the
Scotsman. My £60 membership fee entitled me to buy tickets from 19 th March. Like many
others, I took advantage of the multi-buy offers for opera tickets, Queen’s Hall tickets and
for the Philharmonia Orchestra Residency, thus reducing certain prices by 20%.
However something which I missed, and has been flagged up to me by several people is that
the information in the printed programme about multi-buy tickets is misleading. Tickets in
the top price categories are excluded from these offers, and this information appears only
on the website. You’ll find a summary of the conditions on the Affordability web page, but
the precise details about which ticket codes constitute the top-price tickets are available
only under the heading ‘Booking Info’ on the page for each individual show. So while the
second price Usher Hall ticket for ‘Capriccio’ at £89 is not eligible for a multi-buy discount,
an £84 ticket is.
In her Scotsman interview, Nicola Benedetti used the phrase “” familiar enough if booking
tickets in certain theatres, but not one that has been used in EIF pricing. She said “ There
are many people who can afford expensive, premium tickets.” Indeed there are, but with
many Festival tickets becoming a luxury item, some people are treating themselves to
fewer but more expensive tickets. After the publicity about multi-buy offers – “the best
discounted deals the Festival has ever had” – it seems petty to exclude the higher-priced
tickets, and strange, to say the least, to fail to provide this information in the printed programme.
So let the buyer beware and check the small print before buying tickets. If any of your
discounts aren’t applied, email the box office, and if you don’t get a multi-buy ticket
discount because one or more of your tickets is a “premium” one, phone the box-office to
ask to change the ticket(s) for the next price down. The staff are very helpful, and are
already aware of the pitfalls!
I doubt those who can pay the eye watering, not to say bank busting, prices for Salzburg and most other summer festivals might think £149 chicken feed. Ditto Covent Garden where top ticket prices for their new Carmen are 50% more expensive. As to approaching Salzburg, Edinburgh has hardly left Waverley Station.
You live up to your title Cynical Bystander! The point the article makes is that ticket prices have doubled in the last few years and many people are being excluded. Yes Covent Garden has higher top end prices but also has lower prices and very low prices for young people. Hugh Kerr Edinburgh Music Review
The biggest shock to me is the notion that anyone would pay that for CARMEN. It’s the operatic version of The Nutcracker for me — if I had to sit through another one it would be too soon.
I quite agree!
Classism in the arts. Welcome to an increasingly Americanized Europe.
You might want to check the actual facts before reacting to the headline. Edinburgh Festival has some of the most affordable prices compared to most cities in the world for performances and productions of similar quality.
The most expensive tickets for the performance of Rigoletto tonight at the Stuttgart Opera are 126 Euros. Cheaper than the 179 Euros at Edinburgh.
You keep on bringing up provincial theatres, Stuttgart and Freiburg is not a basis of comparison. Edinburgh is a main Summer Festival, not a small theater production in a small town, or city. You want to buy a ticket for an opera performance at the MET, it will cost you more than the same in St. Louis.
The most expensive weekend ticket for opera in Freiburg is 63 euros. 52 Euros on weeks days.
Europe has always welcomed Americanism with open arms including woke-ism that originated in American college campuses.
These festivals have real costs, everyone from the suppliers to the producers and talent need to be paid a living wage. The Edinburgh Festival which started out as an alternative low cost festival is now a mature festival which offers top talent. The best and most unique no longer can be found for bargain basement prices. This is not a money gouge to increase profits. If you want festivals like this to continue and thrive, costs rise and the ticket buyers end up paying.
465€ for Figaro last summer in Salzburg. (Is that comparable? I don’t know what a pound is).
£149? That’s a bargain compared to Covent Garden (Royal Opera House) and Glyndebourne…and most other countries. I presume Edinburgh Festival is expecting Covent Garden and Glyndebourne quality and not cut price regional touring trimmed-down production quality.
Top price for Carmen at Covent Garden is £245, and at Glyndebourne it is £270.
Yes, the £39 lowest price is probably not affordable for low income households who have to depend on food banks. But if you are in a precarious financial situation and even affording food and electricity is challenging, going to the opera will be one of the last things you’re planning to do. For starters, transport to the theatre is also a significant cost.
The seats in Festival Theatre also not restricted view for £39 seats (they are actually a very good view) and to compare them with Upper Slips seats is a joke- Upper Slips are very resteicted view, at an additional level higher, some of the seats have no view of the stage at all, while the best Upper Slips view misses at least half the stage and you see only the side view of the singers. The £39 seats at Festival Theatre are more like the middle section of the central Amphitheatre- which are way more than Edinburgh’s £39.
If the complainant hasn’t got the facts wrong about Salzburg Festival as well, Salzburg seems incredibly cheap, at £149 for a top price ticket, which I can’t quite believe.
PS Festival Theatre also has discounts for children and those under 30, the disabled, the deaf/hard of hearing, the neurodivergent….it sounds very affordable and accessible compared to many festivals of similar quality!
As I remember, it was c. £120 a ticket in the upper gallery for Abbado’s Parsifal in 2002. Another issue for non-local Festival goers is the current cost of accommodation. £750 for 1 person in a Premier Inn for 3 nights (if you buy now). Scottish residents benefit from late night Scotrail services during the Festival. No such provision for the English. For example, if you run at Olympic speeds from the Usher Hall to Waverley Station after an evening concert you will still miss the last train to Newcastle. There’s always the overnight bus though.
The highest price ticket for Parsifal was, I think, £100. It was the most I had ever paid.
The issues for me with the EIF are the lack of transparency and the lack of discounts for the pensioners. I do applaud the intent to attract younger audiences.
I recall years ago one regional opera company in the U.S. let the patrons decide how much they were willing to pay.
I would pay $50 for the parterre.
On a similar theme, have any of you experienced the problem of buying a single ticket for the opera? I tried to book for Opera North’s Cavalleria Rusticana/ Aleko double bill in Nottingham a few weeks back, and the only decent seats left were unavailable unless I was willing to pay for two: the online booking system wouldn’t allow the choice of a single seat which would have left a single free seat. I ended up not going. 🙁
That’s very self-defeating. I have seen more singles at concerts than at any other form of entertainment.
Fyi opera is not entertainment.
Never come across that but it wouldn’t suit me at all. I’d rather go alone that drag “other-half” along to something I know she wouldn’t enjoy. It detracts.
I came across this for the first time when buying a ticket for the Bruckner weekend in The Glasshouse, Gateshead. ‘Choose your own seat’ said the website welcomingly. I did, only to be told to choose another one because they found it difficult to sell single tickets in that part of the hall. No wonder if they won’t sell them. I moved to the back of the hall and got my ticket. I felt ashamed all weekend at going out by myself. I won’t go back.
“Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive.”
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£149 top price for an opera? Cheaper than ENO. And less than half at Salzburg
Opera need not be expensive, just back from two one act operas by Rossini and Respighi with Carlo Rizzi conducting excellent seats £9 each, come to the Sherman Theatre Cardiff.