In Monday’s Sacramento Bee (California), Edward Ortiz reports, “The Sacramento Opera, whose top ticket prices are among the highest for any arts event in the city, is lowering some of its prices for the upcoming production of ‘La Traviata.’ … There are plans to institute a substantial change in the opera’s pricing structure for the 2010-11 season, said Rod Gideons, executive director of the Sacramento Opera. … A recent study by Americans for the Arts found that attendance at mainstream nonprofit arts events is in decline. … Some leaders of classical music organizations feel that adjusting ticket prices is part of a larger paradigm that needs to change to bring in new audiences. “There is a perception that the ‘arts’ are expensive and inaccessible to the public at large, and that if we all just lower our ticket prices we would get more people attending our performances,” said Marc Feldman, executive director of the Sacramento Philharmonic. “There is some truth to that; however, the problem for the arts runs much deeper than ticket prices—even in a recession. If people don’t want to attend, even free tickets won’t help.”
Posted January 27, 2010
