No clowns in Detroit, no pops in Pasadena.
Michigan Opera Theater has canceled a production of Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci” because of the economy’s southward plunge. The Pasadena Symphony Orchestra has abandoned plans for three pops concerts.
As it has everywhere else these days, the economic crisis has hit classical music, a particularly fragile corner of the nonprofit world that depends as much on donations as on ticket sales. Most managers are only in the fretting stage, but the plunge in stock prices, the credit squeeze and feelings of diminished wealth among donors and ticket buyers have begun to have concrete effects in a few places.
Orchestras and opera companies are cutting costs, eliminating rehearsals and keeping a tighter rein on overtime. New York City Opera, already walloped by a canceled season because of renovations to its house, gave employees two days off this month because of a payroll crunch. The Metropolitan Opera is making cutbacks in its health insurance for administrative staff. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has been hit by increased borrowing costs. The Pasadena Symphony Orchestra has also canceled its next symphony concert, which was to have taken place next month.
“It hurts a lot,” said Tom O’Connor, the executive director of the Orchestras of Pasadena, which includes the symphony and the pops. “But I’ve been in the business almost 40 years. You just have to think imaginatively: how can we make sure music is always available to people in one form or another?”
In the opera world, some companies have reduced the draw on their endowment that helps pay for operations, said Marc A. Scorca, the president and chief executive of Opera America, an association of 114 companies. And at some houses, donors are asking for more time to fulfill multiyear pledges.
“These are facts which are just flowing in,” Mr. Scorca said. “Everyone is examining every expenditure to see if there’s a more economical way to move forward. It’s so hard to know how it’s going to play out, because it’s so early in season.”
The situation is particularly dire in Detroit, where each season Michigan Opera usually presents five productions, with five or six performances each.
In addition to canceling “Pagliacci” next spring, the company is letting three employees go, giving up on a big Wagner production next year in favor of the less financially taxing “Don Giovanni” and doing without the final performance in an April run of Donizetti’s “Elixir of Love.” That performance had been scheduled to take place at the same time as a Final Four game of the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament, at nearby Ford Field. Management thinks it can make more money renting out its parking lot to fans.
“The community is hurting so badly, particularly the corporations, and also a lot of our individuals,” said David DiChiera, the company’s general director. “They’re not even quite sure of the value of their portfolio. It makes giving worrisome on their part.”
Mr. DiChiera said that the only fiscally prudent thing to do to keep the budget balanced was to cancel next spring’s “Pagliacci,” for a saving of up to $500,000. “I’d rather just not do a production rather than jeopardize the standard and quality of the production itself,” he said. That is the mantra of music administrators: Do not damage the musical product.
Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, said in a memorandum to his staff that the company was looking at many ways to control costs “without affecting the quality of productions.” The measures could include cutting travel and entertainment expenses and overtime, he said.
For now, Mr. Gelb said, ticket sales are slightly up over last year. “It is likely that ticket sales will be affected” by the financial crisis, he said. “We anticipate that our fund-raising will also suffer.”
In an interview last week, Mr. Gelb said the Met was still expecting to break even this season, after an $11 million deficit last year. He said most of that deficit had been expected under a five-year-old economic plan.
He added that the Met was trying to save money by scheduling rehearsals more efficiently and cutting production costs in ways unnoticeable to the audience, like using less expensive costume material or outsourcing the making of costumes.
The full picture of the effects on fund-raising will become clearer toward the end of the year, when many donations are made for tax planning reasons and after bonuses are bestowed.
In Pasadena, where there are about eight concerts a year, matters were all too clear this month. The orchestra’s endowment had dipped below the original $5.8 million gift that established it, so according to its rules no money could be drawn off to finance operations, Mr. O’Connor of the Orchestras of Pasadena said. The endowment’s high point a few years ago was $8.3 million. Several donors also said they could not give as much because of hits to their portfolios, he said.
Some of the larger orchestras are holding their own for now. The Philadelphia Orchestra recently said it had surpassed by $5 million its goal of raising $125 million for the endowment. But the endowment’s overall market value dropped to $160 million at the end of September from a recent peak of $220 million, the orchestra said.
Subscription sales are slightly down, but single-ticket sales remain strong, said the orchestra’s president and chief executive, James Undercofler. He said the orchestra had reduced spending as much as possible. “There are further cuts you can make, but they start to injure the mission of the organization,” he said.
In July, Mr. Undercofler said the orchestra had canceled a European tour in the summer of 2009 because of high costs and weak corporate support.
The New York Philharmonic’s endowment has also dropped, to $178 million on Sept. 30 from $205 million on June 30, the orchestra said. The endowment value that is used to calculate the draw is generally based on the average performance over three years, so the impact of the recent downturn is blunted.
Zarin Mehta, the Philharmonic’s president, said on Monday that no concrete steps had yet been taken to deal with the crisis, which he said was sure to have an effect. “We’re looking to see how we’re going to tighten our belts,” he said.
The Chicago Symphony last week disclosed its financial results for last season, reporting a modest surplus, strong fund- raising and increased ticket sales, but cited higher costs for outstanding bonds issued for the renovation of Symphony Center.
In contrast to the grim economic times, the Chicago Symphony’s news release had an exultant tone. It cited the orchestra’s “extraordinary artistic and financial successes,” its “remarkable achievements” and a “new era in the history of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.”
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