LONDON – It’s an evening of drinking and partying at Cafe Momus. A group of young men chats when a femme fatale tries to get their attention by jumping on tables and throwing underwear. But the nightclub isn’t as crowded as usual. There are only a few waiters and three guests are dining alone by the windows in the background.
It is the second act of a reduced production of Puccini’s “La Bohème” at the Royal Opera House. Given the pandemic restrictions, the orchestra has 47 players, up from the usual 74. The act starts with only 18 out of 60 choir members on stage, the rest singing from the grand piano and 10 (not 20) children on stage. There are four, not ten, waiters in the cafe.
“The café scene at the moment feels less like a ‘busy Belle Epoque café’ and more like a ‘lonely heart establishment’, simply because we can only have a limited number of people at Cafe Momus,” Oliver Mears, the opera director of the house said a few days before the premiere on June 19th. “It just adapts to the circumstances we faced.”
Mr Mears said opera is an art form that breaks any social distancing rule and focuses on “overcrowded pits,” large and dense crowds on stage, moments of intimacy between performers, singing (which can spread viral particles) and a sold-out audience leaves. “All of these things really work against us,” he said.
“If you were someone who hated opera and wanted to invent a disease that hits opera particularly hard, you would probably have something like Covid,” he added.
The global coronavirus outbreak has had a drastic impact on the performing arts and expensive opera has suffered badly. Many of the big houses in Europe have – in addition to the annual subsidies from taxpayers’ money – received government aid to avoid bankruptcy.
Closed for 14 months, the Royal Opera House received a government loan of £ 21.7 million (about $ 29 million) in December as part of a rehabilitation package for arts organizations. The house attracts an average of 650,000 people annually and has films and screenings in the UK and 42 countries around the world.
Last October, it sold a 1971 portrait by David Hockney of its former general manager David Webster for £ 12.8 million (about $ 18 million). But even that was not enough to avoid cuts, 218 employees were laid off.
Since the house reopened May 17, it’s been operating at roughly a third of capacity to provide socially detached seating – just over 800 spectators versus 2,225, Mr Mears said. He described the atmosphere in the house as “enthusiasm that was carefully subdued”. (Pandemic restrictions apply until at least July 19)
The Paris Opera, which also includes a world-famous ballet company, faced similar threats during the pandemic. In an interview, the director Alexander Neef said the opera house had received 41 million euros (about 47 million US dollars) in aid for 2020, leaving a deficit of 4 million euros.
This year, the Paris Opera is to receive a further 15 million euros in state aid to offset the projected annual loss of 45 million euros.
Updated
July 3, 2021, 2:56 p.m. ET
“Everyone is exhausted from more than a year of crisis,” said Neef. The Paris Opera reopened on May 19 and since the beginning of June has required all viewers to show a “Pass sanitaire” (health passport) confirming vaccination, a negative test or an immunity test according to Covid.
There was “a big appetite when we reopened,” he said on June 22, but “it’s a bit flat now,” be it because of the mandatory health passport or the good weather and the reopening of café terraces.
“There is still no perspective on how this can actually end,” he said. The hope was that “by autumn we will return to whatever this new normal will be. But there is currently no guarantee of that. We have no visibility. “
Opera houses in the United States, whose survival depends largely on private philanthropy and ticket sales, suffer even more. The Metropolitan Opera in New York, slated to reopen in September, announced on its website that it has lost $ 150 million in revenue as a result of the pandemic.
For the cast of “La Bohème,” which will end live on Tuesday but can be streamed online until July 25, the pandemic has only made the art form’s challenges worse.
Danielle de Niese, who plays Musetta, the femme fatale, said in an interview during rehearsals that without a pandemic it would be hard enough to do “the drunken table top” – hopping from one table top to another in a long, heavy dress to have to sing at the top of my throat. The coronavirus also means that we “have to do all of our samples with a mask, and that is a killer”.
“It’s incredibly challenging to sing in a material mask,” she said. “It basically kills your sound and it feels like you’re singing into a pillow.”
Ms. de Niese, a soprano, pulled out her special opera singer’s mask: a protruding face covering with an additional wire that made sure that she didn’t “go up my nose” with every breath. Masks were worn during the entire rehearsal period, and instead of the “natural camaraderie between colleagues” and between the acts, the performers had to sit on strictly distant chairs.
Ms. de Niese said she was concerned about “singers who are just starting out, who are not yet making the big bucks” and those who struggled financially during the pandemic had to take “a box packing job at Amazon.”
“We have to make sure that the next generation is still bringing their skin into play,” she said.
The next big show of the Royal Opera will be staged by Mr. Mears himself: a new production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto”, which will open this autumn. In his favor during a pandemic? It doesn’t have a choir, he emphasized.
Despite the prolonged downtime and logistical and financial problems, Mears said there was a silver lining: a regained appreciation for opera.
“We always thought this was something that would always exist, and now I think there is tremendous gratitude for the work we can do,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll ever take opera for granted again, and that can only be good.”
