Seattle Opera Cuts Jobs And Close Off A Shop

The Seattle Opera is recognized internationally for the quality of its productions with many achievements under their belt. But the Seattle Opera will cut six full-time jobs and close its Renton scene shop after persistent and substantial deficits.

According to Arts Journal, the Seattle Opera's operational expenses are bigger than their income for more than a decade resulting in the financial deficits. The company also decided to close the 5th Avenue Theatre and Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center.

The company's spokesperson, Kristina Murti, said that the company conducted a deep dive into their expenses and decided to reorganize the company with layoffs, by combining the art and music departments into one area of the company, according to The Seattle Times. While other American opera companies do not operate their own scene shops but rely on others to build their new productions, the company decided that this is the best way.

Aside from that, Seattle Opera is also coming up with an idea of increasing its number of co-productions, to share expenses among partner organizations. Earlier this year, the company sold their Mercer Street property to a company owned by real estate developer Washington Holdings.

The company is not the only one that suffers profitably both locally and nationally. But some organizations have managed to escape bankruptcy like the ACT Theater and the Intiman Theater that radically transformed itself but others simply just collapsed like the Empty Space Theater.

The opera employs more than 600 people now and over the past year, the jobs have declined to fill nine jobs when they became available. This time, two percent of the opera's production department and 12 percent of its technical department, including the director of the production and technical director, were sacrificed. Murti added that during the 2008 recession, the opera was fortunate to have donations to help the maintenance of balancing the budget but the reserved money won't last.

TagsThe Seattle Opera, Washington National Opera, Kennedy Center, 5th Avenue Theatre, Kristina Murti, American Opera Companies, Mercer Street Property