On Tour

I've been giving a lot tours of our Opera House and I've been surprised at some of the questions that I've been getting. People still ask if our singers are miked and I think are shocked when I tell them that no professional company that I know of in the country amplifies their singers (New York State Theater excepted, but that is not as blatant as some contend).

The other question that people ask often is about how much it costs to put on a production and how we pay for it. Too many people are under the impression that their ticket price covers the costs and don't realize how little it does contribute. For most opera companies it's about 40% of their expenses; for ours it is about 60% which is extremely high.

One person dared suggest a tax to help defray costs. It seems to me however that argument was lost long ago and that we in the U.S. have come to accept that fact that significant government funding is not forthcoming. I was recently reading some old (1960's) issues of Opera News and chuckled at how many articles call for increased government funding and looked to the subsidies that European houses received as a model. Of course that effort failed and now Europe is looking more and more how we fund our arts and increased corporate support.

Not that I wouldn't like to see more government funding, but with that likelihood pretty dim, we have to accept other ways to keep operating.

On the other hand it ticks me off a bit when people perceive arts organizations as greedy or "over-funded". None of us are rolling in dough. We all have expenses to meet and limited monies with which to meet them. The perception that just because an organization is successful in fund raising that it is the result of avarice is ludicrous. As a non-profit we CAN'T make money. And most of us who work for them are severely underpaid in relationship to the same jobs in the private sector.

Stepping off my soapbox. For the moment...