I note that Radio 3 is to record the April 30th performance, for future broadcast. I think I will make do with that.

Thanks for the very helpful suggestions, Ruth. I think I'll be plumping for a good £65 seat; after all it'll be the first Birtwistle opera premiere I'll have attended! I might wear some tatty jeans and smelly trainers just to correct the balance though (actually that's true - I don't believe in dressing up for concerts/opera unless it's my own piece...)

I notice ENO's Punch and Judy is on some of the same nights as The Minotaur. That's a bit frustrating. In fact, that'll be quite a week for modern opera. I'm planning on going to Punch and Judy on the 23rd, Saariaho's Adriana Mater on the 24th and The Minotaur on the 25th, with a warm-up act of Neuwirth's Lost Highway on the 7th and Prometeo on 9th May! 

"Of all the NOISES known to Man, OPERA is the most expensive"
(Voltaire)


Sadly I shall be unable to join you as I'd hoped, as I shall be deeply mired in stuff of my own over those dates  

As I clarified in my last post here, I think £65 is an extortionate price to pay for a ticket to any event at all, and that certainly includes football matches, which by the way I wouldn't attend if I was paid £65 a time.

Or at musicals:

Chicago  £55
Billy Elliott  £50
Hairspray  £60
Lord of the Rings  £60
The Minotaur  £65
Mamma Mia   £55
We Will Rock You  £60
Wicked   £60

I can just spot which is the elitist one among the populist but it's a close call. They're just all bluddy expensive.

I'm going to court controversy and suggest that £65 is actually very cheap for what you get.

You have an orchestra of musicians whom we believe to be highly competent professionals at the top of their game.  I presume we don't suggest paying them even less than they get now?  There is a cast of professional soloists. They've had to learn all the music by heart (a task which roughly quadruples the amount of time that you might allow for singing from the dots), then rehearse it musically.  Then probably at least a month of stage rehearsals. There's a technical team who have lit the show.  There are the costumes (figure at least £200 per person on stage for basic costumes - god alone knows what the minotaur costume has cost but I'd figure on £850-1000 for this single cozzie alone).  There are props (presumably).  There is scenery, you can figure at least £20,000 for a basic set or £50,000 for a decent one...  double that if it moves, revolves has hydraulics etc.   If there is any flying of humans in it, add £5000 for the insurance policy alone, plus £500/nt for the flyman who runs it  (there are, I believe, only three flymen in the West End who are qualified and insured to fly actors). A conductor and a stage-director will both have been paid - plus a team of repetiteurs (for a month of rehearsals), a producer's assistant, the SM, DSM and probably at least two ASMs - more, if it's a heavy technical show.  The designers of the costumes and scenery also don't work for free.  Someone has written the program, someone else has designed it.  Someone has done the posters, publicity, marketing, promotion and advertising.  The crew also need to be paid. So do the make-up and running wardrobe. I'm guessing from the subject-matter that there'll be prosthetic make-up for at least the title-role character, so figure £100/nt for the materials and £200/nt for the make-up specialist who does it.  (When we did AKHNATEN the prosthetic make-up for Chris Robson took FOUR HOURS each performance - he had to be naked on stage, so there was nowhere to hide anything at all, and every cm of his body had to be done).

Many of us here live and work in the professions mentioned above.  I think probably all of us who do so earn less than our school or college classmates who took "straight" jobs.  So I doubt I am going to hear a chorus of "let's all take pay cuts because this is ART!"??  I dunno about you, but any project offer that comes my way these days has terms like "7:3" attached to it (there will be seven rehearsals but you'll be paid for only three of them).

Sorry, but £65 is peanuts.

edit: Oh, and Harry will probably expect to get paid something too

Said the pieman unto Simon,
"Show me first your penny!"
Then said Simon to the pieman...

In principle I agree with you, Richard, of course. But a lot of professional people (including the composer) will have put a great deal of time into such a project, and none of them will have earned from it what they might have made by giving contemporary music the bum's rush and going to work for Cameron Macintosh instead  (where, incidentally, you will find most of the former ENO stage staff, who also didn't have £65 quid to go to anything, because they worked in the "Arts").

I'm fortunate in that many shows are still cheap where I live, and for those that aren't I can often wangle a standing-pass and take any seat that might come free.  But even though I agree they are worth the £80 they go for, I can't afford the Stalls seats at the Bolshoi either, far less the £150 seats at the Mariinsky (foreigners are obliged to pay double at the Mariinsky, in a so-called "fairness tax").   I have friends who don't work in the Arts, and when they suggest I come along to some £120/tkt event,  I do my best Stanislavskian facial expression of telling the truth, and claim to have "rehearsals of my new show"    It is, in fact, a malaise in the classical music biz in Russia - everyone invites their friends for free, because none of us could possibly pay the ticket prices.  Dmitry Bertmann told me that for his Christmas run of DIE FLEDERMAUS (which is put on as a "money-spinner") he can sell only around 35% of the tickets - the rest are all given-away to the Fire Officer, the Insurance Company, the Local Councillors, potential sponsors, the staff of newspapers, etc.... because "they dare not be refused because of the trouble it would bring down on our heads".

On these occasions I always reach-out to my hero, Chekhov. Born the son of a freedman who became a bankrupt, he lived in a garret (where he contracted typhus that would later claim his life) and had to write under an assumed name.  When delivering his work to publishers he claimed to be a messenger-boy, because of his ragged clothes.

Well, up to a point it would be nice, but it cuts both ways.

As it is, at least a part of the cost of my ticket for The Minotaur is being subsidised by people who probably earn less than I do. And they don't get to hear it while I do. It's asking quite a lot of such people to subsidise my ticket even more than they do already.