keriluamox
Inscrit le: 24 Aoû 2017
Messages: 243
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 Posté le: Lun Avr 07, 2025 7:31 am Sujet du message: |
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| TAHbKA a écrit: |
I don't understand why POB is not running the same shows many more times.
In the 25-26 brouchure (keriluamox, thank you for the link!) they announce about 450 curtain opens(concerts, ballets, operas, rehearsals, special events and what not). Given there are 2 venues (and some of the things like open rehearsals are not even in the main halls) almost 1/3 of the time the places are not used.
If some of the shows can be ran twice a day (like Ek/Eyal), why not the others? Ok,not the operas where they sometimes have one cast, but surely classical ballets where there are 5-6 casts? Especially the crowd pleasers (not Ek/Eyal, obviously) that are sold out months before the cast is even enounced?
On the same note I don't get what would be the motivation of a dancer, especially a star dancer, to learn a whole new role and perform it 3-4 times at the most. How is even making the costumes worth it?
(someone with a degree in business, please enlighten, because it all makes no sense to me. Am looking at Mariinski schedule and they seem to have 2 shows a day in the weekdays and at least 3 in the weekends. How do they do it?) |
I don’t have a business degree, but as far as I understand, there is a high cost per performance regardless of what is performed. This is because most if not all of those present are paid extra (the famous feu for dancers), while rehearsals etc. are covered by their regular pay, and material production costs are not that high by comparison with salaries. So, maybe counter-intuitively, if they put on a series with twenty performances of the same programme and then add five, these won’t just be very profitable under the assumption that production costs have been paid for anyway.
In my opinion, the problem with the number of performances is artistic more than commercial: too often, soloists do not get to try and mature their interpretation of a role, to return to it, and to master the technicality enough that they just let go and let their artistry flourish. On the present series of Sleeping Beauty, if I’m not mistaken, just two of the leading performers (Albisson and Bourdon) had already danced the part. Some of them can pretty much give up on the hope of performing it again. Perhaps the most accomplished of them, Dorothée Gilbert, is making her debut as Aurore at an age I would be indelicate to specify. By comparison, most of their peers in London, Moscow or Saint Petersburg, where it is shown almost every year, will have already danced it many times over their career. (And may I add that ballet fan also get too few shots at seeing their favourites in these parts…)
However, you also need to note that while the leading and soloist parts alternate between several casts who get maybe just three performances or even less, the ensembles do not: when you’ve danced one of the swans or Harvester No. 7 for twenty performances, you may not be fully motivated to go for five more.
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keriluamox
Inscrit le: 24 Aoû 2017
Messages: 243
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| Posté le: Mer Avr 09, 2025 2:52 pm Sujet du message: |
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| TAHbKA a écrit: |
| At any rate, if I remember correctly during the strikes it appeared in the press every show that did not happen was about 1M euro loss for the opera. I would assume that having a show is still cheaper than not having it at all |
I’ll take their word for it.
For one thing, 1M€ seems excessive. (I don’t know which strikes you are referring to, for they are not a rare occurence in Paris.) The Paris Opera has an annual budget of about 240M€, with about 370 performances, so it is in fact more than all their expenses as distributed between performances.
For another, even if correcting the figure of 1M€, it is misleading to say that they’re losing that much for each cancelled performance, because they certainly don’t sell that much worth of tickets, which they would need to refund: most of this amount comes from the government and sponsors, and they’re getting it anyway. (Government and sponsporship grants are not, thank God, on a payment-for-service basis.) They certainly took into account that refunding tickets feels much more painful than not putting them on sale in the first place…
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