The Royal Opera House has long wanted to consolidate its transmission of productions to a wider audience by releasing more recordings by the Royal Ballet and Opera companies, so it ought to come as little surprise that the House has today announced the purchase of the leading DVD label, Opus Arte UK Ltd, in order to do just that.
At last year's press conference announcing the 2006-7 ROH season, Chief Executive Tony Hall spoke of the company's commitment to the proper archiving and dissemination of its activities, particularly in the face of the marginalisation of arts coverage on British television. The first stage of the strategy was the installation of state of the art audiovisual recording equipment in a partnership with Sony, which was successfully completed last year.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the ROH would pursue a similar route to the London Symphony Orchestra, whose budget-priced LSO Live label has been both commercially and critically successful. However, few could have expected so tactically ingenious a manoeuvre as the takeover of Opus Arte. The marriage of the world class performance standards of the Royal Opera and Ballet companies with Opus Arte's already-established and acclaimed packaging and presentation capabilities and the Sony recording system promises great success.
Tony Hall said, 'In acquiring Opus Arte we have achieved a multiple win. We have over 40 wonderful recordings of productions by The Royal Opera and The Royal Ballet available for distribution, Opus Arte has a catalogue of some 140 titles. This gives us a substantial entry into the global DVD and digital marketplace. As a significant part of our digital strategy it also hugely increases what we have to offer our audiences both in and beyond the opera house, with new material for our website, and for education purposes. Opus Arte also possesses enviable production and post production skills that would prove a significant accelerator for our own big digital ambitions. '
The purchase has cost the opera house £5.7 million, which was funded through special accumulated reserves held by the Trustees of the ROH intended for infrastructure and capital projects. The new Opus Arte Company will be served by a new board consisting of Sarah Kemp and Tony Hall of the ROH Executive, Sir David Lees and Simon Robey of the Trustees, and Hans Petri, who remains the Managing Director of Opus Arte.
Acquiring Opus Arte has further positive ramifications for the Royal Opera House, including easier broadcasting facilities, collaborations with other opera and ballet companies, VOD (Video on Demand) and Pay Per View, in addition to the sales of DVDs.
Most significantly, this will allow the company to broadcast their productions in cinemas at home and abroad, building on the success of the New York Metropolitan Opera's broadcasts of selected productions to cinemas worldwide in the 2006-7 season. The ROH has now become the world's first opera company to own its own DVD label.
The importance of this purchase to the company cannot be overestimated: if the ROH and other UK arts institutions are to justify - and maintain - their continued receipt of grants from the Arts Council, they must reach out to a much greater number of people. The Royal Opera House receives more public funding than any other UK arts institution and could not manage without it. The move is doubly shrewd because it will not only consolidate their public funding but also expand their commercial arm quite considerably, especially if the (currently undisclosed) pricing structure for the releases under the new label is sensible.
The success of the company's purchase of Opus Arte remains to be seen, of course, but it certainly has the potential to consolidate the Royal Opera House as - in a phrase that adorns its new-look website - a world stage.