The Performing Arts in the ‘90s PANIC in the STREETS

By Susan Elliott

Are the performing arts an endangered species? One would certainly think so: Not a day goes by without another sky-is-falling report of dying audiences, growing deficits, shrinking contributions, soaring ticket prices, and expenses run amok. But this is nothing new. After all, isn’t brinksmanship in the non-profit world just business as usual?

There are indeed reasons for the current panic, some based in reality, some not, but do any of them justify the popular prophesies of doom and gloom? In conversations with key figures on both the presenting and booking sides of the business, several themes recur as reasons for the concern. One is the jarring contrast of doing business in the ‘90s versus the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. “We have a bunch of idealistic people in our field,” says San Francisco Symphony Executive Director Peter Pastreich. “And in an expanding time when it looked like government would give us more money, foundations would give us more money, like we could sell more tickets every year than we had the year before, we spent everything we had and then some.”

For orchestras, that idealism translated into generosity, which, up against tough unionism, yielded longer seasons, higher wages, and greater health benefits, all of which are now undergoing careful re-examination, as 18 of the 21 of the so-called Group I orchestras are running deficits and more than a few of their lower-profile cousins are struggling for their very existence.

Another cause for concern is the high price of superstars. Especially in this economy, their fees are unreasonably high, say presenters, driving ticket prices through the roof and limiting audiences to a certain income and social stratum. “Superstar fees are way out of line, says Omus Hirshbein, vice chairman of the Tisch Center for the Arts at the 92nd Street Y. “It’s one of the things that’s killing the business. In fact it may already have killed the business.”

“Some artists will barely do subscription weeks with orchestras anymore,” notes Henry Fogel, executive director of the Chicago Symphony, “because orchestras cannot afford to pay 25 or 30 grand a concert for four concerts. The attitude of either the artist or the management is, why should I sacrifice my income to play a subscription week? And my answer is, why did you get into this business? To maximize your income? Then go run an insurance company.”

It’s true: Superstars are greedy. (Of course, with the devalued dollar, they make even more in Europe.) But their fees merely reflect what board members and ticket buyers will absorb. “Everybody’s paying because the next guy’s paying,” says Pastreich matter-of-factly. “That’s how the market works.” The top tickets for Riccardo Muti conducting the La Scala Opera Company in the Verdi Requiem at Carnegie Hall cost $125. Not only were they the first to go, another performance had to be added to satisfy popular demand. Many people seem to want to pay more when given the option. If you look at the ads in the Sunday <i>New York Times</i>, more high-priced tickets have slashes through them than low. One presenter even believes the big fees justify themselves at the box office. “I think a million dollars for a music director is the greatest bargain Pittsburgh ever got,” he says in response to a question about Lorin Maazel’s rumored $1 million annual salary for 12 subscription weeks. “The Pittsburgh Symphony goes on tour and advertises Maazel in big letters and the orchestra in small letters, and they get tours and fees they’ve never had before. If they were doing that with Zdenek Macal, who was probably their other choice, those fees, grants, and ticket receipts would be a lot less.”

By the same argument, he rationalizes Klaus Tennstedt’s alleged payment of $62,000 for four Tanglewood concerts. “Tanglewood’s capacity is 14 or 15 thousand people. Tennstedt will fill all those seats. So what’s his fee relative to box-office earnings? He might not be any better at conducting a Mahler symphony than, say, Kurt Sanderling, and Sanderling would only get maybe $20,000. But the difference here is clearly box office. It’s the capitalist system.”

Perhaps a more legitimate concern about the star phenomenon, and one with long-range implications, is that it shuts out lesser-known artists. “The middle level of our business has fallen out,” says IMG Director and Senior VP Edna Landau. “In the ‘80s, when there was a bigger recital circuit, people were willing to take more chances. But as the economy’s become more difficult and marketing more sophisticated, everybody’s trying to present the same superstars over and over again, and we’re not really developing anybody new.”

CAMI’s booking director, Tim Fox, points out that many presenters nowadays are only interested in stars, what with increased competition for audiences and the fact that more and more presenters who book classical artists also book Elton John and the road tour of Phantom of the Opera. Hiring Itzhak Perlman, even at his rumored fee of $45,000, is a far safer bet than, say, Shlomo Mintz. No point in trying to negotiate a lower fee for Perlman, either. The superstar market, like premium-priced real estate, is recession proof.

There is said to be some play in the lower rungs, however. One artist manager recounts how an orchestra might call and say, “We have $6,000, and this is all we can spend. Take it or leave it.” “They may be lying,” he says, “but my inclination is to go ahead and take it, even if that artist’s fee is $10,000.”

“We have orchestras and presenters coming back after a contract has been signed to renegotiate fees,” says Landau, who notes, too, that bookings are later in the cycle than they used to be. “There are also more holes that stick around longer and then get cancelled late in the game,” she says. “This is particularly true in California, where they don’t get their state budgets until the beginning of the new year, so we can have surprises as late as January and February.”

So the performing-arts business, like the rest of the economy, is off a little. Harry Beall retired. Harold Shaw is said to be considering it, and Hillyer International recently filed for bankruptcy, due in large part to the poor reception accorded the St. Petersburg National Opera tour. But these are more the exceptions than the rule. “Though there are certain pockets of North America where it’s down,” says CAMI’s Fox, “business is not terrible.”

IMG’s Landau agrees, noting that she has actually been able to increase some fees for her firm’s younger artists. Her major concern is chamber-music fees, which haven’t risen at all. “It’s a real problem. We represent the Emerson Quartet, whose fee—which they have to split four ways—is equivalent to a middle-artist solo fee, yet they’re top of the line now in chamber music. Even the fees of the veterans of the field, like the Juilliard or the Guarneri, are disproportionate to solo artists of comparable standing.”

Landau goes on to point out that recital and chamber-music series have been hit particularly hard. “We see chamber-music societies dying out,” continues Landau, “and audiences growing older.” It’s a popular theme, this dying audience. But where’s the proof? Fogel cites a recent CSO survey that showed age levels to be the same now—early fifties—as they were 10 or 15 years ago. “It shows that this kind of music has a certain type of appeal at a certain time of life,” he says. “I’ve never seen any documentation that says audiences are older than they were 20 or 30 years ago. It’s a thing people like to say, but I’m not sure it’s true.” Another widespread misconception is that audiences are shrinking, relative to their proportions in the glory days. “Everyone thinks that more people went to concerts 50 years ago than do now,” says Hirshbein. “But it’s not true. There are many more concerts today—it’s a much bigger business—and many more people go to concerts. There’s never been a mass audience for classical music, and there never will be. It’s always been a small part of the culture.”

And while it’s no one’s imagination that ticket sales have fallen off, that too seems more a function of the recession—and, in the case of orchestras, of a levelling off after many years of increased services—than of the performing arts being on their way to obsolescence. “Actually, when you consider that everything is off,” says Pastreich, “that people are buying fewer cars, fewer TVs and refrigerators, the arts are probably doing better than the rest of society.”

From the long view, then, things really aren’t so bad. Indeed, opera—about which more later—is in better shape than it’s ever been. And as orchestras and presenters cut staff, season length, wages, and benefits, optimists point out that history is merely repeating itself. Pastreich recalls that the San Francisco Symphony closed down in the 1934-35 season, and that Pittsburgh disbanded altogether from 1910 to 1926. Not only did the latter rise from the ashes, but it now boasts an endowment of $62.4 million (although it is rumored to be spending some of that endowment to avoid a deficit).

“If you look at the last 10 or 15 years to where orchestras went out of business,” says Fogel, “there’s almost no place where one didn’t come back: Oakland, Denver, Nashville, Vancouver, Kansas City, San Diego, Syracuse, which folded last season but is restarting this one.”

Some orchestras, like Toronto, have reduced the number of services as a means of survival. Others haven’t been able to finesse such a compromise with their unions and so have opened their seasons this year with the knowledge—according to one source, at least—that they wouldn’t be able to finish them. Time will tell.

Asked what they would recommend to remedy the current perceived crisis in the performing arts, industry leaders suggest general downsizing and shorter seasons. “More lectures, more audience preparation, more outreach,” adds Pastreich. “We need to diversify our staffs, our audiences, and to a lesser extent our orchestras.”

“I’d like to revisit the relationship between orchestra musicians, managements, and boards of trustees,” says Fogel. “The old adversarial union relationship, which probably was necessary for musicians up through the ‘60s or even ‘70s, doesn’t apply anymore. We waste horribly the intelligence and talent of our professionals by not including them in a meaningful way in shaping our institutions. What university runs without a faculty committee? With the exception of the New York Philharmonic, we still don’t take advantage of the knowledge, expertise, and stake the musicians have in their institutions—it’s their lives, after all.” And that leads to morale problems.

All agree that arts education is a big problem. “None of us is doing a good enough job getting music out to the young and to other populations,” says Hirshbein. “We need to get more artists into the schools,” says Landau, “to develop video materials that will interest school kids.” It’s a huge issue, one that reaches far beyond the industry and into the realm of political priorities. “I find it absolutely appalling that the education program put forth by the Bush administration didn’t even mention the arts,” says Fogel.

Nor can the government be counted on for any decent funding anymore. Similarly, support from corporations has dwindled. Arts organizations must look elsewhere, outside their tight little circles. “We get so locked into the not-for-profit-taught models,” says manager John Gingrich of current fund-raising methods. “Yet history has taught us that you can cope in this business if you act creatively. So you have a few drinks, gambol with the biddies in the spring, and balance the budget.”

The opera world, while by no means exempt from the aforementioned problems, is faring very well in comparison to virtually everything else. Business has never been better, both in North America and Europe (although England and France, especially Paris, are not as healthy as they might be). Says Ardis Krainek, the admitted optimist who is both general director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and president of Opera America, “There are 100 companies in this country and they’re producing more performances of more productions and having better ticket sales than ever before. I am very bullish on opera in America. This is our decade.”

And while symphonic and recital series are pulling in their tentacles, many opera companies, including the Chicago Lyric, are expanding. Of course, they have farther to grow than their orchestral counterparts. According to Opera News Editor Patrick J. Smith, most companies in this country mount only 12 to 15 performances annually, and less than 10 percent of them have full-time orchestras. Most use AF of M ensembles, but they contract the musicians only on a per-opera basis, so they’re not tied up in pensions, benefits, and other costly commitments, nor are they locked into multiple-year contracts that obligate them to a specific number of services.

“What are you going to do when you have a contract that forces you to do 35 weeks of concerts, and your audience only wants 20 weeks?” asks Smith, making a comparison to the orchestral situation. In opera, if things don’t go well one season, the company has the option of cutting back the next. Furthermore, most of the opera choruses in this country—98 percent says Smith—are amateur.

All of this may explain why, in these recessionary times, none of America’s big opera companies is in serious financial trouble; indeed, a few of them are even running surpluses. But there are other reasons, too. First, opera is visually oriented; it’s the perfect medium for the TV generation. Second, surtitles have made opera accessible. Third, such blockbuster musicals as Les Misérables and Phantom of the Opera have paved the way for opera. “These kinds of musicals have developed an audience for a through-composed work of two-and-a-half to three hours,” says Smith, “which, by the way, we were told 20 years ago was a 19th-century relic.” Finally, opera is becoming increasingly prevalent on television, not to mention home video and cable.

“The fact that people can see opera on television and in their communities has helped change their perception of the art form,” says Smith. “And movies like Moonstruck portray opera as something yuppies really should do. The old idea that opera is something you attend in top hat and tails and then sleep through has really changed,” he adds.

The symphony, on the other hand, still has some image-updating to do. “People don’t want to sit and listen to a concert for two hours, because they have no connection with music,” continues Smith. “They can’t read it, they don’t know what’s going on; it’s just a way of dozing. At least in opera they can get into the story, get involved in the stage action, even if they don’t know or care what’s going on musically.”

Education rears its ugly head again. When you get right down to it, that’s where the sky really is falling. Certainly extant audiences must be educated in the ways of new repertoire and new artists, but all agree that it’s even more important to get to the unconverted, and to chip away more vehemently at the political and corporate leadership of this country. As Fogel points out, not only is their financial support needed, their thinking must be changed to make them understand that the arts are vital to the very survival of civilization.

Susan Elliott, a journalist who writes frequently on the arts, has served as managing editor of High Fidelity, public affairs director of RCA Records, and worked at the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, Connoisseur, Gramophone, Opera News, and Audio, among others. She is the chief classical-music critic of the New York Post.