SFO draws over $1M in ticket donation campaign
Opera to use funds to stay afloat, give financial lifeline to seasonal employees
The 2020 summer season of the Santa Fe Opera got off to a rousing start in what promised to be a record-breaking year in ticket sales at one of the city’s premier cultural attractions.
Buoyed by more than $140,000 in purchases on Feb. 29 alone — the single biggest day ever for online sales — the opera was breezing into March with about $4.9 million in total tickets sold. Then the world changed.
“We were ahead of any previous year in terms of ticket sales, so we were feeling pretty optimistic about the coming season,” Robert K. Meya, the opera’s general director, said in a wide-ranging interview with The New
Mexican. “Obviously, things changed pretty quickly.”
The novel coronavirus pandemic that has sickened millions, killed hundreds of thousands, shuttered scores of businesses and crippled economies around the globe also dealt a devastating blow to the city’s world-famous opera house, which announced May 11 that it was canceling the summer season. Though sparse on details, the opera has launched a number of efforts to keep the organization solvent and provide hundreds of seasonal employees a financial lifeline.
Donations pour in
With the announcement of the season being canceled, the opera simultaneously rolled out a matching challenge campaign not only to keep the organization afloat but to provide financial assistance to the more than 600 seasonal employees who were poised to work at the opera over the summer but found themselves out of a job, though Meya declined to say what the level of compensation will be.
“I wish I could give you those exact levels, but we’re still in some conversations about those levels,” he said. “We’re absolutely going to be and are being as generous as we can.”
About 80 of the more than 600 seasonal employees, including members of the orchestra, singers, stage managers and choreographers, are represented by the American Guild of Musical Artists. Its representatives
could not be reached Thursday.
“This is financial assistance that really, for the most part, is something that we are doing on a voluntary basis because we want to take care of our employees,” Meya said. “We want to take care of our seasonal staff. We want to take care of our singers and our musicians. Many of them are like family, and they come back year after year after year, so we are going to do our very, very best to do what we can to help them through this very difficult time.”
As part of the matching challenge campaign, the opera has asked patrons to donate the value of their tickets.
“We were very fortunate to line up some very significant contributions to match those donated tickets dollar for dollar [up to $3 million],” Meya said. “Right now, we are about two weeks into that campaign, and we have achieved about $1.3 million in donated tickets.”
In addition to donating the value of their tickets, patrons may also get refunds or credits for either the 2021 or 2022 season, or any combination of all three.
“In broad brush strokes, what we’re seeing is about 50 percent is coming into us in donations, about 10 percent of it is credits for future years and about 40 percent of it is refunds,” he said, adding that he’s “very happy” with the results so far.
“We are hoping to achieve about 50 percent of that total $4.9 million in sold tickets … as donations,” he said.
Meya said the opera sold tickets to about 7,000 households and that members of his box office and development staff have personally spoken with about half of those households.
“That will continue until we’ve basically reached everyone,” he said, adding that he hopes to contact the remaining households over the next couple of weeks.
“The outpouring of support for the Santa Fe Opera has never been stronger,” he said.
Opera takes $10M hit
The opera isn’t relying on donations alone.
It also secured a loan through the federal CARES Act. Though Meya declined to disclose the amount, he said 75 percent of the loan needs to be used for payroll.
“We intend to use that money to maintain our current staffing level [of 100 full-time employees] and also to be able to provide some financial compensation to all of our seasonal staff members,” he said.
Asked how the other funding sources would be used, including the donations and matching challenge campaign, Meya said they’re all going toward the opera’s “basic general operating funds.”
“The important thing to remember when looking at the finances, particularly of a nonprofit performing arts organization, is to look at the overall budget picture,” he said.
The opera was projecting a $25 million operating budget but is now grappling with a $10 million loss in ticket sales.
“We are losing $10 million in earned revenue, so our operating budget will fall to about $15 million,” he said.
Whether the opera’s revenue streams will be enough to meet all of its needs is “exactly the question that I’m facing every day,” Meya said.
“In our 64-year history, we have never had an operating deficit with one exception, and that was in 1967 and 1968, when the theater burned down,” he said. “It was a result of that fire that we did have an operating deficit in that year. But in all of the remaining 60 some years of being in existence, the Santa Fe Opera has never had an operating deficit. So our hope and our every effort day to day as we move through this summer is to make sure that we can close our books with a balanced budget.”
An uncertain future
Even as Meya works to balance the books by Sept. 30, the end of the opera’s fiscal year, the future of the opera — a close-quarter operation — remains unknown amid restrictions on mass gatherings and social-distancing requirements.
“I think it’s too soon to hypothesize or prognosticate about the future with regard to the pandemic,” he said. “But that having been said, I do think that time is somewhat on our side now that we’ve crossed this terrible hurdle of having to face this tragedy of canceling the 2020 season. But the fact that we are over a year off from our next season, God willing, I hope that either a vaccine or some kind of medical treatment is readily available so that we will be able to have a fullfledged 2021 season.”
Meya said sanitation measures and requiring face coverings if such an order is still in effect, among other precautions, will be “absolutely essential.”
“But one of the things that is in our favor is that we are an outdoor venue,” he said. “For other theaters that are in closed quarters, the perception and the reality of one’s safety is very different from being in an open air theater with open sides and fresh air and the advantages that come with that.”
The opera’s summer season, which was scheduled to run July 3 to Aug. 29, featured five main stage productions and 37 performances, including the world premiere of an operatic version of David Henry Hwang’s play M. Butterfly.
Meya said the opera had bought all the materials and started building three of the five productions.
“Those sets were nearing 90 percent completion, so we already made a significant investment in the productions that were supposed to be on our stage this year,” he said, adding that construction on two of the sets will be completed this year while the third will be stored in a trailer.