In Tuesday’s (10/11) New York Times, Daniel J. Wakin and Kevin Flynn write that, even as Metropolitan Opera audiences cheered for the opening-night performance of Anna Bolena last month, “the people who run one of the world’s busiest opera houses had something else to applaud: a record amount of contributions for the fiscal year that ended in July. According to preliminary figures released for the first time, the Met hauled in $182 million, an astonishing amount in a tough economic climate and 50 percent more than it raised just the year before. And there was other good news. For the first time in seven years, the Met had balanced its budget, thanks partly to $11 million in profits last year from its HD movie theater transmissions, which had been operating for only five years. … Donor contributions now support 43 percent of the Met’s whopping $325 million operating budget, up from 38 percent in 2005. … The Met’s televised broadcasts now reach 1,600 theaters in 54 countries. The HD audience is nearly 3 million a season, compared with 800,000 at the opera house.”
Posted October 11, 2011
