Expensive Vienna Opera Concert Frustrates Fans
By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter
Korean classical music fans were delighted when it was announced that the Vienna State Opera (Wiener Staatsoper), one of the world's most reputed opera companies with a 138-year-old history, would come to Seoul for the first time Sept. 19-20. However, jaws dropped when the price for VIP tickets became known: 450,000 won.
The price matched that of the Berlin Philharmonic's performance in Seoul two years ago. At that time, too, the debate on expensive classical music concerts flared up among classical music fans.
While it is the first time for the world-class opera to visit Seoul, their staging of Mozart's ``The Marriage of Figaro'' will not be presented in a full-fledged style, but in the form of an opera concertante _ which means the costumes, stage settings as well as acting of the singers will be minimized _ to ``focus purely on music.''
Nevertheless, the VIP seats and the next class, R seats priced at 350,000 won, take up more than half of the total seats. Seats in the S, A and B class are priced at 250,000, 150,000 and 80,000 won, respectively. Student chair seats are available at 30,000 won.
As one anonymous classical music fan complained in an online forum, if a couple plans to go to the concert with VIP seats, with dinner and transportation it will easily reach one million won ($1000). ``Why not just book a plane ticket to Austria with that sum of money?'' the fan complained. ``With less than 200 euros (250,000 won) we can buy a fine seat at the Vienna State Opera House itself.''
As criticism mounted, Credia, a local performing arts company organizing the Vienna State Opera's concerts here, made an unusual move by making public the balance sheet of the scheduled performance.
According to the company, it costs about 1.1 billion won to organize the concerts, with 900 million alone going to the Vienna State Opera, including tax. In addition, about 80 million won is necessary to cover the expenses of about 110 orchestra and opera members, who come to Korea for four days. Then there is 30 million won to pay to the Seoul Arts Center for renting the concert hall, and 80 million won for advertisements.
Without corporate sponsors, at least 1.3 billion won of ticket sales must be achieved, considering about 15-20 percent deduction of credit card fees, reservation fees or value added tax. That would mean selling out 4,800 seats at the concert hall of Seoul Arts Center with an average price of 270,000 won, which is impossible to do, the company said.
``This is not a popular big-scale opera held at an Olympic stadium or outdoors,'' Credia said in a statement. ``We decided to invite the Vienna State Opera because it's worth introducing its appeal to domestic audiences despite possible losses on our side.''
While classical music fans express anger at skyrocketing ticket prices, industry insiders largely agree that it is a helpless situation.
South Korea is different from Japan, which has a bigger classical music market and where renowned European classical orchestras can tour several cities holding as many concerts as possible to make up the cost, they say.
In Korea, due to relatively small audiences interested in classical music, it is hard to hold the same concert more than twice. According to a survey by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, people who go to a classical concert or opera dwindled over the years, from 6.7 percent in 2000 to 6.3 percent in 2003 and to 3.6 percent last year.
In addition, the more expensive the tickets are, the more people tend to regard it as a prestigious performance worth going to watch, in line with the ``Veblen effect'' meaning conspicuous consumption. Sales actually go up when the ticket price is expensive, many industry analysts believe.