The U.S. airline industry — essentially an oligarchy — has come to love the word “discipline.” Abandoning its past practice of adding competitive routes and bigger planes on a whim, the likes of American and United now have figured out that in order to be profitable they must limit capacity. Better to charge more per seat than risk a half-empty plane.
Which is why you’ll be paying through the nose if you want to go to Florida the week after Christmas.
That’s exactly what the Lyric Opera of Chicago has been trying to do. Faced with falling demand for opera in Chicago (more about why in a minute), it has made some drastic changes. It hasn’t changed the number of operas produced in a season, which would involve the kind of systemic change that would upset its loyal subscribers and threaten its status as a world-class company, but it has reduced the number of performances of each opera. Instead of doing around 85 to 90 operatic performances a year as it did just a decade ago, the Lyric now stages just 55.
Economists would call that smart capacity control: Better to have 55 heavily attended performances than to play to half a house for 90. This is especially true since ticket buyers don’t pay the full costs of the opera; every performance requires subsidy by contributors. And while it’s great to stretch out on a half-empty 737, half a house at the Lyric actually spoils the communal experience. The Lyric’s approach has been a bit like an airline deciding to fly twice a day from Chicago to St. Louis instead of four times: The contribution to society is preserved but with greater cost-efficiency.
But if you’re a musician working at the Lyric, these changes do not work in your interests. And this is why we’ve seen the industrial action over the past days.
When the Chicago Federation of Musicians balks at the reduction in workweeks, and negotiates to offset those changes or prevent further erosion thereof, the Chicago Federation of Musicians is fulfilling its duty to fight against its members becoming, in essence, members of our pernicious, all-American gig economy.
Throughout the last decades, the Lyric essentially has provided full-time employment. But the wise heads at the union are rightly concerned that if they don’t fight back against these cuts, the faucet will keep dripping and the guaranteed security will go down the drain. And they are most certainly right. Arts and entertainment unions also know that marquee contracts like the one at the Lyric are the most crucial to protect. Most of their members work in less secure and less remunerative positions. If a gig at the Lyric is undermined, then others will feel increasingly emboldened to reduce the pay of even the very finest musicians.
This fight is, of course, reflective of broader trends in society that go far beyond an opera company: If you are a journalist, an adjunct professor in academia, a freelance writer, a recording artist or a member of any other sector roiled by changes in technology, decreasing public support and an ever-more-ruthless management philosophy, you’ll be familiar with the pain felt by the musicians.
In the case of the Lyric dispute, figures are being interpreted by each side in different ways. But the nub of the issue is pretty simple: The Lyric is saying that, given the givens, this is all we can afford. The union is saying that artistic excellence should come with fiscal guarantees and job security. Both sides are, in essence, arguing over the Lyric’s other income stream, the one that airlines don’t have: donations. If the union had its way, the deal with the musicians would be a line in the sand: If opera lovers and civic supporters want excellence, they will have to pony up. The Lyric, though, has to keep the lights on and cannot spend beyond what it sees as its means. And once an arts organization faces an existential threat, donors invariably get gun-shy. And some go away. The whole enterprise could collapse, meaning nothing for anyone.
So, can the audience for opera be grown? After all, back in the days of its marketing guru Danny Newman, the Lyric had huge demand for tickets. But subscriptions are no longer a panacea: They rely on people making plans months in advance, and require big upfront outlays of cash and the belief that no better discount will be forthcoming. In the digital age, people have found other ways to hedge their busy schedules and get their deals.
And opera is notoriously expensive to produce and thus to consume. And you have to switch off your phone for three hours or so, which people these days really do not enjoy. Opera is intimidating. However hard Lyric works to diversify and demystify what it does — and it works incredibly hard at that — that perception is incredibly hard to kill.
On the other hand, there is the counterargument that live events are on an upswing in our lonely digital world. And cities like Chicago are roaring back at the expense of the suburbs and the exurbs. Here is a paradox: Thanks to the growth of the West Loop, tens of thousands more people live close to the Civic Opera House than did at the apex of Lyric popularity. Yet audiences have declined. Why? An obvious reason is that opera audiences skew older and the neighborhood around the Opera House skews younger. Whether that constitutes a problem or an asset is a whole other column.
The arts just are really weird when it comes to the application of economic efficiency. Look at downtown Chicago. Both the Civic Opera House and the Auditorium Theatre are underused and are, in fact, fighting over the same income streams and customers — most obviously, the Joffrey Ballet, which is moving soon from the Auditorium to the Civic Opera House, helping one, hurting the other. If these were Starbucks locations, one would close and management would send out a sorrowful note to the laid-off workers, blaming forces beyond their control.
But you can’t close the Auditorium: It’s a historic building, and what citizen of Chicago could abide to see it languish? The problem has to be solved another way.
Does Chicago need a restored Uptown Theatre? If you’re asking the question of whether there is an overflow of events needing huge historic venues, the answer has to be no. The Uptown actually will take business from other rivals. But what choice was there but to restore the theater? None. It’s an icon. It had to be saved. And once saved, it has to be filled.
The arts, then, always struggle to limit their own capacity. Take theater in Chicago: There are about 200 theater companies here, even though there is probably a robust audience for only about half that many. If 50 percent of them went away, the other 50 percent would thrive. But who would deny all those young artists the chance to form their own company and give it a go? No citizen of Chicago with a conscience would ever do so. Culture is the lifeblood of the city.
So — at the end of the day — smaller planes and fewer flights never work in the arts. The only answer is to both compromise and grow the market, and suffer the mutual pain as we do.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
