According to the professional union Les Forces musicales, which brings together 51 opera houses and orchestras, “nearly 200,000 spectators were lost” last year.
Affected by budgetary restrictions, the performing arts will experience a “ghost season” in 2023-2024, with some 150,000 spectators deprived of opera or concerts due to deprogrammed or reduced productions, estimates a union in the sector. “It’s the equivalent (of the public, editor’s note) of two of our houses”, deplores Aline Sam-Giao, president of the professional union Les Forces musicales, which brings together 51 opera houses and orchestras. This organization considers that “nearly 200,000 spectators were lost” Last year. So that, “if nothing changes in the next few months”, it will be in total “500,000 spectators lost by 2025”, over three combined seasons.
“From Carmen to The Magic Flute via Debussy’s Les Nocturnes, the number of canceled shows is equivalent to the programming of an entire season for a leading opera or orchestra. Beyond the lost spectators, the fall of the “Artistic employment is just as important. A real setback for the territories, which rely on the activity of these establishments to promote their attractiveness”.
The musical forcesCommunicated
Jobs at risk
Besides, “2,000 artistic jobs (will) be cut” on the 2023-2024 season, says the union. These are not permanent full-time jobs, but “2,000 people (…) will not have a job for the planned duration of a show (period ranging from a week to a month and a half, Editor’s note)“, clarified Aline Sam-Giao. To support its alert, Les Forces musicales gave the example of around twenty productions suffering the effects of this crisis.
So the opera Don Giovanni by Mozart will only be presented in concert version, in an establishment in the north-west quarter of France and orchestral pieces by Rachmaninov and Stravinsky will be played on a single date, instead of two, in the north-east of the country . Other examples: the cancellation of an opera-oratorio by Handel (planned in the south-east) or the cancellation of a five-date UK tour by an orchestral ensemble.
“Structural Crisis”
Beyond the cyclical causes, health crisis, cost of energy, Aline Sam-Giao insists on the “structural crisis” that affects the sector, namely “the non-increasing of subsidies, for sometimes 20 years, in our homes”. “We no longer have the means to finance the missions that are asked of us.” Hence, according to her, “the need for public authorities to take strong medium-term decisions”. “That the State mobilize funding to leverage with local authorities”playing the role of “leader in land use planning”, she asks.