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Ben Rosen, former Board Member of the Met, has a fascinating post at his blog about the Met’s turnaround under the leadership of Peter Gelb. (Thanks to Alex Ross for pointing it out.) The whole essay is worth reading if you have any interest in the future of the classical music business or in the fortunes of the Met, but I want to highlight one passage in particular, concerning the marketing of Philip Glass’s opera “Satyagraha.” Apparently, prior to Gelb’s arrival the Met had no marketing team–marketing wasn’t seen as necessary with the number of sold-out performances they were playing. But in 2002, after years of steadily running at around 92% box office capacity, box office collapsed to 82% and began a steady decline to 77% in 2006. Rosen says that in the 90s the Met was selling out most nights, but in 2006 they sold out only 10% of performances.

As the 2007-08 season began, here’s what happened: Seven performances of Satyagraha was scheduled for the spring of 2008. Many subscribers who found Satyagraha included in their series decided to opt out of the Glass opera — they traded in their seats for other operas. And single-ticker buyers turned out to be equally cool to the prospect of watching a Sanskrit work. Normally, as a season progresses, single-ticket sales start out filling up the house. But a funny thing happened in this case. The forecasted box office of Satyagraha started declining, and at an alarming rate. The more time that passed, the worse the box office ahead looked. If this continued, there was a chance the opera would play to near-empty houses.

So a marketing task force was put together. For a modest budget, aided by contributions from a board member, the team was able to create dozens of different marketing initiatives designed to attract specialized audiences. New-age magazines yoga groups, anti-apartheid organizations, India groups, South African organizations, et al.

It worked. By the end of its run, Satyagraha had sold out its run. (By the way, it was a terrific production. I like to quip that Satyagraha is now my favorite Sanskrit opera.) Next year, the same team will have an opportunity to apply its narrow-focus marketing techniques to selling the John Adams opera, Doctor Atomic — a contemporary work about the creation of the atomic bomb.

Classical music organizations often fear that contemporary music scares away subscribers, and in this case it was true. The solution, usually, is either to program less new music or to essentially subsidise the new music performances with revenue (ticket sales and fundraising) from other more “audience-friendly” performances. But in this case all that was needed was an intelligent marketing campaign. Too few organizations do any real marketing efforts, and many of the ones that do focus on existing audiences. Note that the advertising strategy for Satyagraha wasn’t to push the opera harder to the existing audience base or to try to find an existing base of new-music fans–they targeted their advertising to people interested in the themes of the opera. Note also that the advertising matched a specific program with specific groups of people rather than trying to sell the organization or classical music in general to specific groups or to a general audience, or worrying about selling the specific program to a general audience. We don’t think of new age magazines or anti-apartheid groups as full of classical music lovers or potential classical music converts, and so we don’t advertise to them, but it turns out that when the program has direct relevance to their affinity advertising pays off handsomely. We shouldn’t be surprised–this is how modern marketing works–and yet I see very little of it in classical music.

My secondary point is that the success of the Satyagraha marketing campaign illustrates an important feature of industry trends. The subscription model of ticket sales is failing, and the main reason is simply that people have many options for entertainment and prefer to diversify. Attempts to salvage the subscription model may show short-term success (in fact, Met subscriptions are back up do to the fact that subscribers get first dibs on shows that are likely to sell out) but are doomed to failure over the long term. The solution, however, isn’t to appeal to the mythical “general audience,” it’s to use modern marketing strategies to pitch specific events to specific populations. I look forward to seeing how the marketing stratgy for “Doctor Atomic” plays out.

The Metropolitan Opera announced that its co-production of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha with the English National Opera will debut next season on April 11, 2008.   The ENO is doing nine performances of Satyagraha this April.  Written in 1980, Satyagraha is based on Gandhi’s formative years in South Africa, as he developed his philosophy of nonviolent protest as a powerful force for change. It is the second work in the ”portrait” trilogy by Glass, which also includes Einstein on the Beach (1975) and Akhnaten (1983-84).  Satyagraha involves the director Phelim McDermott and the designer Julian Crouch, two of the three artistic directors of the visionary British theater company Improbable.

On the bad news front, the Met has dumped a scheduled revival of Tobias Picker’s honorable An American Tragedy in favor of Tan Dun’s terminally lame The First Emperor, apparently because it has a chance to take the production on the road to China. 

It’s great to see that Peter Gelb is going with artistic merit and not being tempted by the possibility of big crowds and big bucks.

Reader Bill Westfall passes along this link to a story about a new research study that reports more than one quarter of classical music fans use cannabis and 12.3 per cent of opera buffs have tried magic mushrooms.  This, I suppose, is as opposed to the 100 per cent of Grateful Dead fans who do and have. 

The finding suggests an interesting topic:  Great Composers Who Were Stoners.  Discuss.

And speaking of discussion, get on over to the new, spiffed up Composers Forum page and weigh in on Rob Deemer’s question about how important a web presence is for an active composer’s career.

Meant to mention this a couple of days ago but the WaPo has a profile of William Friedkin, director of Sorcerer, indisputedly the worst movie ever made, who is directing Duke Bluebeard’s Castle at the Washington National Opera.

I am told by a reliable source that new Met manager Peter Gelb was once punched on the grounds of Tanglewood by Michael Steinberg, who was then the Boston Symphny’s program book annotator.  Anybody got details?  Pictures?

If there were ever any doubt that Peter Gelb, the new director of the Metropolitan Opera, had big plans to turn the venerable company into a glitzier, more populist experience, there isn’t any more. 

The New York Times reports this morning that the Met will simulcast the opening night “Madama Butterfly” gala on September 25 on the Panasonic jumbo screen in Times Square. Traffic will be closed between Broadway between 42nd and 45th Streets to make room for 650 cushioned seats and standing room for the performance, which will be blared to the large tin can that is Times Square on giant speakers.  Goodbye amplification purists; hello power chords.

The Met also plans to broadcast the performance on a large screen in the Lincoln Center Plaza. Tickets are free but you will need one.  You’ll also get a look at another Gelb innovation–the celebrity red carpet where news personality Daljit Dhaliwal will conduct Joan Rivers-style interviews with such well-known opera lovers as Goldie Hawn, Sean Connery, Al Roker, the formerly fat weather man from the Today show, and Tony Soprano.   

The news comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that the Met will begin broadcasting live performances into movie theaters across the United States, Canada and Europe.

Gelb calls these initiatives “building bridges to the broader public.”  Color me skeptical but (snarky tone aside) I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.  The folks in the family circle (myself included) are beginning to look a little long in the tooth.