Empirical Evidence of a Decline in Repertory Diversity among American Opera Companies 1991/92 to 1997/98

Using data published by Opera America, this paperexamines the aggregate repertory of U.S.companies by calculating the total numberof companies and productions at six dates; thenumber of 20th century operas produced; theDiMaggio–Stenberg Index of conformity; andthe Herfindahl index of concentration. It is shownthat opera is a growth industry, butchanges in the character of repertory over timesuggest that since the early 1990s U.S.companies have been shifting their programming towarda more popular, less demandingrepertory. Presumably, this is done to ward offfinancial pressure.