Beyond the “Paint Jobs” in Opera production.

Let me begin with a statement that will likely unsettle some of my colleagues:

I don't consider that the recently published guide, "Producing for Opera's New Audiences," is a solution to our field's complex challenges. Rather, it is a symptom of them. [1]

I say this with enormous respect for the individuals who created it and the companies featured within it. Their intentions are good. Their creativity is genuine. Their passion for opera is real. But good intentions do not change the data. And the data tells a story that our field is refusing to confront.

The Numbers We Cannot Ignore

According to the National Endowment for the Arts 2022 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts [2], a catastrophe is unfolding in slow motion:

Year	% of U.S. adults attending opera
2012	3.2%
2017	2.2%
2022	0.7%

In a single decade, opera's reach has fallen by nearly 80%. We have lost three out of every four audience members.

This is not a "challenge." This is not a "marketing problem." This is an existential crisis.

And yet, the guide proceeds as if the fundamental model is sound—as if we simply need to make our existing product slightly more appealing to the tiny sliver of the population that might, with enough coaxing, buy a ticket.

The Paint Job Problem

The guide offers strategies, all operating within what I call the "Product-Based, Transactional, Top-Down Model."

• Product-Based: The opera is a finished product—usually a work from the European canon—to be delivered to consumers. Repertoire is the goal rather than the tool.

• Transactional: The relationship between institution and community is one of exchange. Money flows one way; entertainment flows the other. Success is measured in "butts in seats" rather than change in the full society.

• Top-Down: Artistic decisions flow from a very few professionals to the public. The community's role is to receive—and, if we are progressive, to feel "represented" by choices made on their behalf.

  
  

This model has brought us to 0.7%. Continuing to refine it will not reverse the trend. It will only slow the decline.

This guide, if analyzed through a cultural commons framework, is a catalog of how to produce paint jobs:

• Want to make Bohème feel local? Paint it Bronzeville.

• Want to make Carmen feel modern? Paint it with a new ending.

• Want to make Butterfly feel authentic? Paint it bilingual.

• Want to make Traviata feel social? Paint it with a party.

  
  

These are not sustainable solutions. They are retouches that ignore two fundamental truths:

First: Opera is FOR EVERYONE. But the way opera truly achieves this lies in how librettists have designed their librettos and how composers have carefully designed their music to connect deeply with communities [3]. We cannot simply "change the stage production" and expect everyone to connect equally to a tarantella that an Italian audience instinctively feels, or to a waltz that a Viennese audience recognizes as part of its cultural identity.

Every society has its own music, cultures, sonorities, and popular or folkloric aesthetics [4]. The great opera composers understood this—and strategically incorporated these elements into their works, creating strong connections with the communities they belonged to or sought to engage.

Second: Paint jobs leave the fundamental power structure intact. Institutions still decide what stories matter. Very few people still control creation. Communities still just watch—without any real decision-making power.

Enter Chalamet

Into this landscape came Timothée Chalamet. When he said opera is a "dying" art form that "nobody really cares about anymore,"[5] he gave voice to what millions believe. The sad part for me as a professional and as a lover of this art is that the data actually backs him up.

But here is what the controversy revealed: institutions reported up to 30% first-time ticket buyersin the days following. Curiosity is not the problem. When people are invited in, they come.

The question is whether we have anything substantial to offer when they arrive. A painted-over Bohème? Or something that actually belongs to them?

A Cautionary Tale from My Homeland

In 2022, Ópera de Colombia produced El Elíxir de Amor by Donizetti [6]—a beloved Italian opera—set in La Guajira, home to the Indigenous Wayuu people with their extraordinarily rich cultural traditions. They painted an Italian opera with Colombian colors, using Wayuu culture as scenery.

The Wayuu have their own stories. Their own music. Their own languages. Their own culture. The Caribbean region has multiple stories and musical traditions that deserve to be broadcast to the world. We have composers capable of creating new works. We have librettists who could craft stories rooted in these places.

Instead, we produced Donizetti. Again.

Don't get me wrong: I love L'elisir d'amore. I have conducted it. I love to party with its tarantellas. I love Una Furtiva Lagrima.

But when 0.7% of the population engages with opera, when public money supports our work, when communities are rich with their own cultural heritage—can we afford to keep making these choices?

Understanding the "Club Framing"

To understand why we keep applying paint jobs instead of rebuilding the structure, we need to look at our field through the lens of political economy.

Opera as a field currently operates with a framework called a "Club". Applying James M. Buchanan's framework from "An Economic Theory of Clubs" [7], a club can be interpreted as a closed system where a relatively small group of stakeholders hold decision-making power. Such a system does not meaningfully interact with the full socio-economic realities of society as a whole; rather, it interacts only with the realities within its own membership and according to its own internal logics. In the case of the Opera, operating as a "Club" creates governance structures that encourage very very few people to determine what repertoire is produced, who gets to produce it, what constitutes "quality," and who belongs.

Within this Club framing, "innovation" means finding new ways to keep the Club viable—new audiences to recruit to think like the club, new revenue streams to tap. But the fundamental structure—who holds power, who makes decisions, whose stories matter—remains unchanged.

The guide is, from this perspective, a Club sustainability manual. It never questions whether the Club itself is the right structure for the 21st century.

The Cultural Commons Paradigm

Now imagine an alternative: the performing arts as a cultural commons [8].

Imagine a lake. Multiple stakeholders benefit: tourists, fishers, companies, farmers, municipalities. Each has responsibilities to maintain the lake's health. The tourist leaves no garbage. The commercial fisher fishes sustainably. The utility company ensures its operations don't degrade water quality for everyone downstream. This is called a Natural Commons [9].

A commons is not "owned" by any single stakeholder. It is shared. It requires collaborative governance. It demands that all stakeholders have a voice in decisions that affect it.

Now imagine the opera experience as a commons a Cultural Commons:

• Professional companies benefit from a rich cultural ecosystem while sharing benefits with stakeholders.

• Community members participate as creators, not just consumers.

• Educational institutions develop future artists and audiences within a holistic understanding of the field.

• Donors and funders invest in shared cultural wealth and benefit from a thriving society.

• Artists at all levels find opportunities to grow and contribute.

Each has responsibilities. Each has voice. Each contributes to the health of the whole.

This is not a metaphor. This is an operational framework that not only secures its full sustainability (artistically, financially, socially, and ecologically), but also ensure EVERYONE is represented.

What This Looks Like in Practice

[The following section describes real projects that operationalize the Performing Arts as Cultural Commons model. This is not an advertisement but an offer of evidence. Skip to the invitation if you prefer to stay in the theoretical.]

A recent orchestra concert designed under this framework—with community co-curation, diverse Latin American repertoire, live improvisation, and direct audience participation—saw a +70% increase in ticket sales and engaged 45+ community partners. First-time attendees came from immigrant communities across multiple countries. The board, musicians, and subscribers all praised the result. [10].

An opera creation model operating since 2018 brings together participants aged 7 to 70+, beginners to professionals, to create original works over a two-week immersion. Repertoire emerges from community pre-production meetings—not from a single artistic director's canon. Works have been created in English, Spanish, and Indigenous languages, reflecting the actual cultural makeup of their communities. [11]

A catalog of symphonic scores that broadcast in a professional way the cultures, values, and aesthetics of underrepresented cultures in the symphonic world. [12]

A catalog of Opera scores commissioned specifically for multilevel, multilingual, multigenerational casts enables this model to scale. These scores are designed for the Cultural Commons—not for the Club. [13]

An Invitation to My Colleagues

Should we keep making the same product marginally more appealing?

The data is clear: that paradigm has brought us to 0.7%. Continuing to refine it will not reverse the trend.

The Cultural Commons model offers a different path. It is proven. It is replicable. It addresses not just the symptoms of our crisis but its causes. Review more information in depth and see for yourself. Talk with a ten-year-old who painted her first set, or a sixty-year-old who sang his first solo. Then ask:

Is our goal to sell tickets—or to ensure opera belongs to everyone?

The answer changes everything.

A Final Thought

When only 0.7% of the population engages with opera, we have to ask: Whose art form is this? Who does it serve? Who gets to decide?

The product-based model has given us centuries of magnificent works. I am grateful for every one of them. But it has also given us a field in crisis—a field that reaches fewer people every year, that struggles to justify its place in public life, that too often feels like a club for the initiated rather than a commons for all.

The cultural commons model asks us to share power, not just programming. It asks us to trust communities, not just professionals. It asks us to measure success not by tickets sold, but by lives transformed.

The tools exist. The research is done. The model is proven.

Now we need the courage to use it!

References

[1] OPERA America. Producing for Opera's New Audiences: How Companies are Leveraging Inherited Repertoire to Build Audiences. 2 Feb. 2026, www.operaamerica.org/r/business-research/16968/producing-for-operas-new-audiences-how-compan.

[2] National Endowment for the Arts. Arts Participation Patterns in 2022: Highlights from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. 2023, www.arts.gov/impact/research/publications/arts-participation-patterns-2022-highlights-survey-public-participation-arts.

[3] Barbosa Vásquez. "Folkloric or Popular Music in Opera." Barbosa Vásquez, 9 July 2022, www.barbosavasquez.com/single-post/folkloric-or-popular-music-in-opera.

[4] Barbosa Vásquez. "Need for Broader Analytic Frameworks for Real Diversity Development." Barbosa Vásquez, 4 Dec. 2022, www.barbosavasquez.com/single-post/need-for-broader-analytic-frameworks-for-real-diversity-development

[5]Chalamet, Timothée. "I don't want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it's like, 'Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this anymore.'" CNN and Variety Town Hall, moderated by Matthew McConaughey, University of Texas, Feb. 2026. Quoted in David Marcus, "DAVID MARCUS: Timothée Chalamet's right, the Left ruined ballet and opera," Fox News, 8 Mar. 2026, noticias.foxnews.com/opinion/david-marcus-timothee-chalamets-right-left-ruined-ballet-opera.print.

[6] Ópera de Colombia. "El elíxir de amor." Ópera de Colombia, 2022, www.operadecolombia.com/el-el%C3%ADxir-de-amor/.

[7] Buchanan, James M. "An Economic Theory of Clubs." Economica, vol. 32, no. 125, 1965, pp. 1–14.

[8] Barbosa-Vásquez, Diego. "Performing Arts Sustainability - Artistic, Financial, Social, and Ecological Dimensions." Barbosa Vásquez, 9 Sept. 2021, www.barbosavasquez.com/single-post/opera-sustainability-by-diego-barbosa-vasquez.

[9] 8 Ostrom, Elinor. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Project Documentation (Real-world implementations of the Cultural Commons framework)

Disclosure: The author is the founder of Performing Arts Laboratory and the creator of the Cultural Commons framework applied to performing arts. These projects are cited as primary evidence of the framework in practice.

• Greeley Philharmonic concert (data, press, testimonials): [10]

• Opera Camp™ model: [11]

• LatinAmericanScores™ catalog: [12]

• CommunityOperaScores™ catalog: [13]

[10] Full concert documentation: www.barbosavasquez.com/event-details/barbosa-vasquez-with-the-greeley-philharmonic-orchestra

[11] Opera Camp™ model: www.performingartslab.com/oc

[12] LatinAmericanScores™: www.performingartslab.com/latamscores

[13] CommunityOperaScores™: www.performingartslab.com/communityoperascores

Disclaimer

This article reflects the personal opinions, interpretations, and academic perspectives of the author, Diego Barbosa-Vásquez, and is intended for informational and discussion purposes only. It does not constitute factual assertions about any organization, including OPERA America or Ópera de Colombia, nor does it represent official final positions of the author or the Performing Arts Laboratory. All data referenced are drawn from publicly available sources and are interpreted by the author.