Opera management
Opera management is the management of the processes by which opera is delivered to audiences. It is carried out by an opera manager, also called a general manager, managing director, or intendant (UK English). A multifaceted task, it involves managing an opera company, primarily the singers and musicians who perform the operas, but in many cases also involves managing the opera house in which the company performs.
Background
Opera is a multi-faceted art form involving high fixed costs and requiring complex approaches to management. In addition to the singers and musicians who form the core of the company, its production requires scenery and costumes and sometimes dancers and non-singing actors. Fixed costs in today's opera organizations—keeping many of the singers and musicians on year-round contracts, and if managing their own theatre, the cost of workers needed to create and maintain the sets and costumes as well as the cost of maintaining and running the building—combined with the costs of individual productions, make opera the most expensive of the performing arts.
Venice and the development of opera as a business
The
Publicly performed operas first appeared in
See also
- Arts administration
- Theater manager, also called general manager, managing director, or intendant (UK English)
Notes and references
- ISBN 1848448872
- ^ The Reader (6 August 1864). "The Opera Season at Covent Garden", p. 175.
- ^ Hebert, D. G., Rykowski, M., Meucci, R., Odrobna-Gerardi, K., Rosato, P. & Zidaric, W. (2018). Italian opera as a glocalized profession. In David G. Hebert & Mikolaj Rykowski, eds., Music Glocalization: Heritage and Innovation in a Digital Age. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, p.342.
- ^ Dideriksen, Gabriella and Ringel, Matthew (1995). "Frederick Gye and 'The Dreadful Business of Opera Management'", 19th-Century Music, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1995), pp. 3–30. (subscription required)
- ISBN 0226316599
- ISBN 1574671103.
- ISBN 0195154169
Further reading
- Rosselli, John (1984). The Opera Industry in Italy from Cimarosa to Verdi: The Role of the Impresario. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521278678