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The old seats at the War Memorial had become vintage relics, thick with faded cushioning and challenging to climb out of, a particular concern to the opera crowd, which tends to skew older. While most of the seats in its old hall were 20 inches wide or less, more than three-quarters of the new seats will be 21 inches wide or wider. Many of the seats in the New York Philharmonic’s Lincoln Center home, David Geffen Hall, will be a bit wider as well when its current renovation is complete. “You want it to be comfortable so they’ll be here again.” ![]() “To put it bluntly, it takes a lot more effort to sell a ticket these days,” Smallwood said. “Now you can sit at home and watch Netflix. “We are doing the opposite of airlines,” said Michael Smallwood, the technical director at the Lyric Opera, referring to the practice of cramming more narrow seats onto planes. The number of seats on its main floor was reduced from 2,564 to 2,274. The widths of Lyric seats ranged from 18 to 22 inches before the renovation now they range from 19 to 23 inches. The situation in Chicago was not quite as dire as in San Francisco - its seats were at least renovated in 1993 - but they were decidedly in need of replacement. San Francisco put in its new seats just in time for the reopening of the opera and the San Francisco Ballet, which share the stage of the War Memorial.Ĭomfort comes at a cost: This will mean a loss of 114 seats, and the revenue they bring. We had springs coming through some of the seats.” “The seats have historically been patrons’ No. “If someone is having an uncomfortable evening at the opera that is an experience they should not be having.” ![]() “I think anything we can do to break down barriers and improve the experience we should be doing,” said Matthew Shilvock, the general director of the San Francisco Opera. #War memorial opera house view from rear dress circle movieWhy pay as much as 20 times the cost of a movie - tickets at the San Francisco Opera go for up to $398 a seat - to be scrunched up in a cramped holdover from the last century? And when people did go out, many had seen the what-could-be potential in movie theaters that had installed wide, comfortable stadium-style seats, which recline and have slots for drinks and, sometimes, trays for snacks. The seats in the new Yankee Stadium are wider than those in the old one, and venues including the Daytona Speedway and Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore added wider seats during recent renovations.Įven before the shutdown, audience members of all sizes were growing accustomed to ever-larger, ever-sharper television screens with an ever-broader array of streaming options. On Broadway, where older theaters have been notorious for cramped quarters, the Hudson Theater added wider seats during a recent renovation. The Lyric Opera of Chicago put in wider seats in the summer of 2020, following the example of the Music Hall in Cincinnati and the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.
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