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The Overture Center for the Arts will be cutting several jobs by the end of the year due to the current financial situation.
“The place we started was looking to find expenses to cut that didn’t involve cutting staff,” said Rob Chappell, spokesperson for the Overture Center. “None of those options was enough to balance the budget.”
Details regarding the number of employees have not been released. Currently, 160 people are employed at the Overture Center and were informed of the layoff Wednesday.
Chappell said the layoffs have no link to the trust fund they dissolved last month after its value began to sink. The fund was primarily used to pay the mortgage on the building.
“We’ve faced a difficult financial future, just like every other government agency and business,” Chappell said.
The Overture administration will make layoff decisions in the next three or four weeks, but until then it is unclear as to which positions will be cut.
Overture’s personnel costs went up 8 percent since last year and are currently 44 percent of its total yearly budget, Chappell said. The cuts will not affect Overture resident organizations such as the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and Madison Repertory Theater, he added.
The 2009 season will not see any significant cuts or sacrifices in service, Chappell added.
“It depends on who gets cut, but I would be very surprised if the public saw any cuts in our season,” Chappell said. “It’s going to be the kind of offerings our patrons want.”
The management will be considering a number of recommendations to increase revenue that were made by a volunteer group last month.
The city of Madison currently provides the Overture Center with partial funding, and there have been talks of asking for more funding from both the city and Dane County.
Revenue from ticket sales has also decreased significantly in the bad economy.
“Ticket sales are soft,” Chappell said. “People in this economy aren’t buying cars, and they aren’t buying tickets to musicals either.”
The Overture Center opened in 2004 after a large donation from philanthropist W. Jerome Frautschi.
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Maybe if the overture would book some shows that people want to see, the ticket sales would go up.
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Perhaps I am merely an uncultured visigoth, but if they would ever book something worth attending they’d have had more of my sales over the the years. “The Drums of Lichtenstein” and numerous Pan Floutists just ain”t cutting it factoring into this troll’s entertaiment budget.
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“Maybe if the overture would book some shows that people want to see, the ticket sales would go up.”
Like what? Any suggestions?
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Similar to the Big Three, the business model of the Overture Center is fundamentally broken. Although Madison is a wonderfully vibrant city that embraces the arts, the population of the city and its surrounding areas is not nearly large enough to support so many live events venues. Since the city and its surrounding areas never truly had to embrace the idea of the Overture Center since all of the construction funds were donated by only one person, this wonderful gift has proven to be both a blessing and a curse.