Opus Arte

Well, well, well, the Royal Opera House has announced its acquisition of the DVD producer and distributor Opus Arte, for £5.7 million. This figure apparently includes £2 million of debt, which has been refinanced through venture capital. The Arts Council approves the deal and, presumably the city financiers will have done fairly exhaustive due diligence, given the volatility of this market, so we must presume that the enterprise will be glorious and profitable.

The profitability so far as the ROH is concerned doesn't, however, seem destined to fund much in the way of new productions. A figure of $593,000 is quoted by the New York Times as being Opus Arte's latest and Tony Hall, boss of the ROH is signalling that this is the level that he expects to continue. Its not going to go all that far given the squillions that are currently spent at Floral Street, even allowing for the fact that, again presumably, the income per disc will be set for the ROH at a rather higher level than for other third party producers.

This begs the question of why buy into Opus Arte? Hans Petri runs the label efficiently and deserves to be rewarded for his success. But wouldn't it have been easier and a lot more transparent for the ROH simply to start its own label, in the same way that the London Symphony Orchestra did? The LSO and many other organisations such as The Sixteen, have had a good deal of success with these own label ventures - The ROH brand is surely strong enough to be self supporting. Or maybe in this great cacophony of corporate media - speak, (and precious little about the artistic ramifications), I've missed something?