Jim said: >Opera houses have felt the pinch of a weakened economy. A significant >number of them have canceled works with the explanation that they were >substituting obscure works with more popular ones to increase ticket >sales. I don't think that opera ticket revenue is actually counter >cyclical, but I still think the phenomenon is pretty funny. Imagine >Warner finding out the economy is bad so they greenlight more summer >blockbusters.
This isn't odd at all - artistic institutions subsidize less popular work all the time with profits made from "blockbusters." If the profits on blockbusters are not enough to cover these productions, then you might as well produce another blockbuster and not go into the red. Movie studios owners only care about profits, while opera owners consume both money and art. Fabio
