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igenlodeI turned up some of my old research about the running costs/ticket prices etc at the Opera Garnier (weirdly, this appears to have been a totally *different* set of research from the additional values cited in my existing post of assorted opera research!)
While trying to find out which operas were actually produced at the Palais Garnier during the early 1880s (in order to give Raoul and Philippe a plausible production to attend for the third chapter of my Christmas story!), I came across a very useful book mentioning various facts about opera in Paris, for example https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KSQGZOTQKmwC&pg=PA2
The Opera might take 20,000F in ticket sales from a single performance, which puts Erik's 'salary' into perspective -- on the other hand, it cost 16-17,000F per night to stage an opera at all.
Fourteen performances constituted a disastrously short run (modern operas rarely seem to put on more than five or six performances of a given work in a season, mainly I think because they can no longer sell enough tickets to fill more evenings... and because their stars are always off in jet-planes to the next engagement.)
The Opera Garnier staged 200 shows per year, and the Opera-Comique even more; main performances were on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with Saturday peformances for the unfashionable.
The Opera Garnier was *obliged* by the terms of its funding from the French government to put on six new productions every year, although a slightly rewritten version of an old opera could be made to count ;-p
On the other hand it was famous for mainly staging productions of operas over 30 years old.
A composer would receive at least 3-400F in royalties daily if his opera were produced there.
A box cost about 9,000F to purchase for one *season*, which would entitle you to use it for only one performance a week, while it could be hired out to other subscribers on the other days; to reserve it for your exclusive use would cost more. This gives an idea of how much money Erik was costing the management by refusing to let them hire box 5!
40% of the seats were taken by 'subscribers' (abonnés) of various levels, i.e. were sold for the whole season rather than nightly. But this provided 60% of the Opera's income.
I did some calculations to try to work out just how much money 20,000F was in the 1880s. Erik's blackmail income was the lifetime fortune of a wealthy high-society surgeon in London, or the yearly yield from the greatest of English estates -- he very probably has more cash at his disposal than Philippe de Chagny :-p
In modern-day terms it would definitely make him one of the "1%".
All stolen from the takings of the Opera which he supposedly loves so ardently...
While trying to find out which operas were actually produced at the Palais Garnier during the early 1880s (in order to give Raoul and Philippe a plausible production to attend for the third chapter of my Christmas story!), I came across a very useful book mentioning various facts about opera in Paris, for example https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KSQGZOTQKmwC&pg=PA2
The Opera might take 20,000F in ticket sales from a single performance, which puts Erik's 'salary' into perspective -- on the other hand, it cost 16-17,000F per night to stage an opera at all.
Fourteen performances constituted a disastrously short run (modern operas rarely seem to put on more than five or six performances of a given work in a season, mainly I think because they can no longer sell enough tickets to fill more evenings... and because their stars are always off in jet-planes to the next engagement.)
The Opera Garnier staged 200 shows per year, and the Opera-Comique even more; main performances were on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with Saturday peformances for the unfashionable.
The Opera Garnier was *obliged* by the terms of its funding from the French government to put on six new productions every year, although a slightly rewritten version of an old opera could be made to count ;-p
On the other hand it was famous for mainly staging productions of operas over 30 years old.
A composer would receive at least 3-400F in royalties daily if his opera were produced there.
A box cost about 9,000F to purchase for one *season*, which would entitle you to use it for only one performance a week, while it could be hired out to other subscribers on the other days; to reserve it for your exclusive use would cost more. This gives an idea of how much money Erik was costing the management by refusing to let them hire box 5!
40% of the seats were taken by 'subscribers' (abonnés) of various levels, i.e. were sold for the whole season rather than nightly. But this provided 60% of the Opera's income.
I did some calculations to try to work out just how much money 20,000F was in the 1880s. Erik's blackmail income was the lifetime fortune of a wealthy high-society surgeon in London, or the yearly yield from the greatest of English estates -- he very probably has more cash at his disposal than Philippe de Chagny :-p
In modern-day terms it would definitely make him one of the "1%".
All stolen from the takings of the Opera which he supposedly loves so ardently...