Analysis: Fine arts centers face the music

NEW YORK, June 5 (UPI) -- Announcement of the New York Philharmonic's plans to abandon Lincoln Center and return to its old home at Carnegie Hall is the latest fall-out of the weak economy's effect on the performing arts.

The Philharmonic, the nation's oldest symphony orchestra, was the first component of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, moving there from Carnegie Hall in 1962. The center has since grown to become America's largest performing arts center with 11 components including opera, theater, ballet, classical music, and jazz.

But time has not been kind to Lincoln Center and other arts centers, such as Washington's Kennedy Center. As they near middle age, they need facelifts and even more serious renovations than they cannot afford in the face of numerous problems including declining ticket sales, particularly for symphonic concerts. Lincoln Center's $1.5 billion renovation plan has been scaled down to a $350 million plan.

Rather than trying to raise $260 million to reconstruct its acoustically defective home at Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall, the Philharmonic - which has a deficit of just under $1 million this year - has decided to defect to Carnegie Hall, renowned for its perfect acoustics. It also will become a managing partner of Carnegie Hall, not a renter as it has been at Fisher Hall, and take part in planning the future of the historic edifice.

That leaves Lincoln Center without a resident symphony orchestra beginning in 2006 and possibly without one of its resident opera companies. The situation has left Lincoln Center's management nonplussed, with Martin E. Segal, chairman emeritus of the center, describing the Philharmonic's deal with Carnegie Hall as "a form of cultural cannibalism."

The New York City Opera has announced the intention of leaving the center's New York State Theater for a new home in the cultural center planned for the Ground Zero site in lower Manhattan. It has long chafed at sharing the theater with the New York City Ballet for which it was built, claiming its acoustics were never designed for operatic performances in the first place.

Jazz at Lincoln Center is also moving away from the center's campus to new quarters in the new AOL-Time Warner building on Columbus Circle, although it is not severing its ties with Lincoln Center. But the move does represent a defection of sorts from the original concept of a performing arts center anchored to one central plaza where adjacent box offices would feed each other just as the theaters in the Broadway district do.

No one can blame the Philharmonic for moving back to the hall it called home from 1891 to 1965. Fisher Hall has undergone three renovations to improve its acoustics and is still defective. But it is bad news for visiting orchestras from all over the United States and Europe who are used to booking into Carnegie and will now have to perform elsewhere - probably at Fisher Hall, which will be wide open for outside bookings.

It is also bad news for Lincoln Center's management, which is going to have to find new attractions for both Fisher Hall and the New York State Theater in the near future.

The American Symphony Orchestra already plays at Fisher Hall but there is a possibility that the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, which often performs outside the Met's opera house at Lincoln Center, might move its concerts to Fisher Hall from Carnegie Hall where it has been performing for several seasons. Negotiations to attract other orchestras already are underway.

Beverly Sills, recently retired as chairwoman of Lincoln Center's board, told UPI it was a matter of "Close the door, open a window." She said the vacancy the Philharmonic's departure will leave at Fisher Hall would make it possible for longer residencies by out-of-town symphony orchestras that are popular with New York audiences and for collaboration with the adjacent Juilliard School in presenting concerts.

Sills may be right or just optimistic. It remains to be seen if defections from Lincoln Center mean anything more than a need to find new tenants for its buildings or whether it spells the beginning of the breakup of such giant arts complexes at a time when the public can no longer afford expensive tickets or is losing its taste for classical music.

On recent visits by this critic to symphony, ballet, and opera performances at Lincoln Center, the aging of audiences for these events has been noticeable and there are often many empty seats, particularly at the current performances of New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater, which obviously should not be competing against each other with concurrent seasons.

On the other hand Broadway theater, which has more popular appeal for the general public, is doing better than ever. It just closed its 2002-2003 season with whopping gross ticket sales of $721 million, up 12 percent from the previous season, and 11.4 million paid admissions, up 4.3 percent. These record figures were established despite the economy, a decline in tourism during the Iraq war, and a brief musicians' strike.