Secco Recit

The Met announced their  2018-19  season yesterday. I did plug it into the  spreadsheet , and it popped out a score of 0.2481. Which is not only more daring than any of the remarkably close past four seasons, but also the most daring of any season in the past seven years, with the 2013-14 season being next at 0.2489. So it looks like what I found in my last post was just a neat coincidence. There are two major things bringing this number down. The first is the Ring Cycle. The Ring Cycle is always a special event, and draws in a crowd. The reason it scores so low is because it's difficult to pull off, and so companies don't attempt it that often. But when you do pull it of, it's not exactly an obscure thing that no one's going to see. This is a marked flaw that my algorithm doesn't account for. I expect that's also why Aida scores surprisingly low. It's just a technically difficult show, so it's done less often, but that doesn't mean it's any le...

We are right now in the middle of a wonderful holiday season. That is, of course, Season Season! 'Tis the time of year when opera companies around the world announce what operas they will be producing in the coming year, and audiences wait with bated breath to see if their local house will be performing their favorite Verdi for the umpteenth time, or if they're taking a chance on that obscure Auber opera you've been dying to see but never gets done. Season planning is a delicate balancing act. If you only perform operas no one's ever heard of, you're going to have a tough time turning a profit. At the same time, it's going to get awfully boring if you only perform the top ten highest-grossing operas year after year. Opera snobs like me take great joy in critcizing or kvelling at a company's choice of programming, and a word that's often thrown around this time of year is "safe." A season is "safe" if it has fifteen performances of...