Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic You might think that managing a football team is the ultimate challenge. After the past few years of financial strife, being in charge of an opera house or symphony orchestra is running it close.The big issue is funding, though that impacts differently across Europe and the US. In the UK, where some arts organisations enjoy public-sector grants, English National Opera’s funding has been slashed and the company potentially uprooted from London. Throughout the EU, tensions are rising as pressures mount on the public purse. Across the Atlantic, where arts bodies rely more on private funding, the San Francisco Symphony has parted company from its highly regarded music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, in a public showdown over money. Talking to three leading music organisations — representing the UK, US and Germany — makes it clear there are stresses in all financial models.In the UK, earlier this year Wigmore Hall, the UK’s most important chamber-music venue, announced the creation of the Director’s Fund, like an American endowment. It has already raised £8.5mn towards the initial goal of £10mn and John Gilhooly, Wigmore Hall’s artistic and executive director, has set his sights on £20mn or more by the 2030s. This looks like a declaration of independence from state support.The underlying problem is that Arts Council England seems to have lost its way, at least as far as music and opera are concerned. Despite its protestations, funding for music in the regions has been slashed and the focus of “Let’s Create” strategy is more on social responsibility than the arts themselves.“It’s very hard to take the finger-wagging from the Arts Council,” Gilhooly says. “They very generously fund our outreach work, but not a penny goes to what’s happening on the stage and they still need to know the mix of diversity there. I can confidently say we have the most diverse classical music programme in the UK, but why should we pander to all of their criteria and spend so much time reporting back? If you added up the number of hours it takes, I suspect a third of the grant is probably spent on reporting. In economic terms it doesn’t make sense.” Gilhooly says he has been working towards financial independence for years. Since he took over as artistic director in 2005, he has raised funds generated by ticket sales, donations and legacies from 60 per cent of annual income to 97 per cent, leaving only a small gap to be closed by public funding. Fundraising has been boosted, he says, by the international support that Wigmore Hall built up through its online concerts during the pandemic. Legacies have become an important source of income, and a recent Director’s Fund gala netted £2mn instead of the £200,000 usual in the past. Donors have even come out of Wigmore Hall’s under-35s scheme with gifts of up to £50,000.By contrast, endowments tend to be the rule rather than the exception in the US. Stories abound of opera houses and orchestras there dipping ever deeper into theirs, but even San Francisco Opera, with its $270mn fund, has been reducing the number of operas each season, down from 11 productions in 2000 to six in 2024-25, in an effort to stem annual losses.The good news is that audience figures in San Francisco are now comparable to before the pandemic and special promotions such as the Dolby ticket programme, offering cut-price tickets to those who have not been to the opera in the previous three years, are bringing in new people.“The nub of the dilemma is that we have both huge excitement and a huge challenge,” says Matthew Shilvock, the company’s general director. “There’s a wonderful loyalty building among new audiences and support for the new operas we have commissioned. I haven’t seen positive energy like this in 20 years and we don’t want to lose it. Then, on the flip side, it feels as if the financial structure of the performing arts in the US is approaching breaking point.”He says ticket sales as a percentage of total revenue have fallen from 60 per cent to 16 per cent over a 60-year period, even as costs have grown at a faster rate than revenue. “Philanthropy has to pick up that shortfall . . . It would cost $15mn-$18mn more to do the 2019 season now, which is staggering.”The big plus for San Francisco is that its donors continue to stand by the company, providing support of around $57mn this year, and they really want to get involved. “We’ve had donors sign the back of the scenery so that they are still part of it in 40 years’ time,” says Shilvock. “Coming from the UK and understanding how the philanthropic model can be perceived, I think it’s a wonderful moment to embrace it not as a one-way relationship, but a life-enhancing two-way benefit.”By contrast, philanthropy has historically had a low profile in Germany, where state support for the arts is at a level envied elsewhere. German press reports put subsidy per seat sold last year at €200 or more at some of the top opera houses. Given the country’s strict rules on the national debt and increasing demands on the budget, the talk is of how long this cultural support can continue.With four-way public funding coming from state, city and two radio partners, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (DSO) is in a privileged place. Managing director Thomas Schmidt-Ott says that 85 per cent of the orchestra’s funding comes from these sources, leaving just 15 per cent to be earned by the orchestra itself.He describes the situation as stable, but there have been high-level comments recently that Germany does not need 11 radio orchestras. Schmidt-Ott has, therefore, adopted a strategy for both financial and artistic strength, based on his experience in business. “I came from the tourism sector, working for Tui, where we had to fill ships 100 per cent and the stakeholders of Tui wouldn’t accept any excuse. I think the state has a right to expect that we fill the hall when they pay the money.”Importing American ideas from his time at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he has started dynamic pricing for tickets and “trying to create products we can sell to other orchestras, like our ‘Symphonic Mob’, where anybody can come and play an instrument with the DSO. We have licensed that brand across Europe and it brought in around €100,000 last year.”The wider picture, though, is mixed. “There are 138 orchestras in Germany,” says Schmidt-Ott, “and it is not uncommon to find concert halls in smaller towns at less than 50 per cent capacity. I am optimistic because I don’t think cultural funding will stop, but it will certainly decrease. We have multilevel challenges and the industry has to change, become leaner, more transparent and more flexible.”Through all these three conversations, a single message came across loud and clear: resourcefulness is needed to meet today’s financial challenges. If the band is to play on, classical music will have to break the mould.
