Letters: Opera Funding and The Arts Plan

Dear Editor,In his article ‘Funding for Opera and The Arts Plan’, Roger Doyle states that opera performances in this country are made up of ‘a rotating repertoire of ten or so favourites’. That’s simply not true. During the past...

Dear Editor,

In his article ‘Funding for Opera and The Arts Plan’, Roger Doyle states that opera performances in this country are made up of ‘a rotating repertoire of ten or so favourites’. That’s simply not true. During the past two decades, this company alone has mounted 38 productions of 35 different operas from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in Italian, French, German, Russian, Czech and English.

If, for the sake of argument, you take the three current Arts Council-subsidised companies and look on them as a single entity – let’s call it ‘Irish Opera Inc.’ – you find that the ‘entity’ puts on ten productions every year, with practically no repeats. That’s about the same number that an average European opera company puts on every year, with most of the productions being carried-over repertoire. As a rule, over 50% of the combined annual output of Irish Opera Inc. is either new to Ireland or has not been seen here in living memory. This is especially true in the case of Opera Theatre Company and Wexford Festival Opera.

Opera Ireland draws on the mainstream international repertoire for programming. Our policy is to mix the popular, i.e. box-office repertoire with operas new to Ireland, giving the best balance possible within the limitation of only four productions a year.

There is a perception that Opera Ireland is anti-contemporary opera. That is not so. It is merely a financial reality that, with rare exceptions, contemporary works presented in our current circumstances and environment are not commercially viable. Fully-staged opera, given with full vocal, choral and orchestral forces, comes with a very high price tag. Under current funding arrangements each performance requires at least 80 per cent occupancy to break even over at least four performances. In the Gaiety Theatre that means 3,700 people willing to pay opera prices. Our experience has been that operas new to Irish audiences, and not just contemporary works, do not yet carry sufficient demand to satisfy that criteria. Mark-Anthony Turnage’s The Silver Tassie, which Opera Ireland mounted last year within a year of its London premiere, was a succès d’estime. But, while it was encouraging that the work attracted 2,757 people, the demand was just not high enough to satisfy the box office criteria.

Roger Doyle’s example of the Genesis Foundation competition for composers is an interesting programme, but it still requires a producing company to take the project to fruition. It is worth noting that the two UK festivals, Aldeburgh and Almeida, where Genesis winners will be co-produced both specialise in contemporary music. In this country only Opera Theatre Company has been a consistent producer of new operas. And few if any of those have had a second outing. The answer purely from a financial perspective must be to produce contemporary work from a reduced cost base or eliminate the commercial risk for main-scale productions through subvention or dedicated philanthropic support. Easier said than done. However, maybe it’s time for all parties engaged in this segment of the art form to start talking to each other to see what can be achieved through common effort.

David Collopy
Chief Executive
Opera Ireland
Dublin 2

Published on 1 November 2002

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