It started as a hobby. Then it grew. When Mike Gibb started a database of opera performances in 1996, he can hardly have imagined that a quarter of a century later, Operabase would have become the definitive archive of opera performances and artists with their capabilities and schedules, used by hundreds of opera houses around the world. Eventually, in 2018, it was time for Gibb to step back and sell the business.
Operabase’s purchase and further development has been funded by three investors via a Copenhagen-based company, Arts Consolidated. CEO Ulrike Köstinger explains to me that “All of them are opera aficionados and they really want to engage with the performing arts world and also to create innovative tech platforms that make the lives of performing arts professionals more efficient. The Operabase platform was originally founded with a very, very small team, and our role is to help it to get to the next level. Also, of course, we want to develop the platform from a tech perspective.”
Köstinger doesn’t remember exactly when she saw her first opera, but that’s pretty forgivable since she was probably four or five years old at the time. What she does remember unequivocally is the occasion – Die Fledermaus at the Volksoper in her home town of Vienna – and the fact that she was completely smitten. At 12 years old, a week’s work experience at the city’s Burgtheater enthralled her with the whole process of managing a theatre: a career in the arts became inevitable, leading to her appointment as Arts Consolidated CEO in January this year.
90% of Operabase’s three million annual visitors are audience members, who use the site to find upcoming and recent performances, search extensive archives and view artist profiles. That usage is free based on a fair use policy and there are currently no plans to monetise it. The business’s main income comes from users in the industry, such as casting directors who use the Operabase casting tool for season planning and for last minute jump-ins: if, at short notice, an opera house needs a singer to perform a particular role in a particular place at a particular time, the database contains all the information needed to create a short list of what singers might be available and capable of performing the role. It’s a casting director’s godsend.
Capturing the data in the database is the essential first step, but the next requirement is to make it easily searchable, and Köstinger’s team have been steadily working on improvements to that process. “There are many new filters. For example, you can search for an artist and see who has worked with this conductor and this stage director together. You can choose artists only in certain cities. Or you can search for Così fan tutte sung in German, not the usual Italian.” The team are also working on improvements for the audience members who view the website, for example a new calendar view to make searching by date easier, and ticketing links to the presenting company's box office.
She is optimistic about the current health of the opera industry. “After the pandemic, there have been two difficult years for many arts organisations, in terms of filling the house and engaging with audiences. We know that decisions are not being made by audiences rather spontaneously; the subscription model is being challenged. However, personally, I love opera as well and I’m the chairwoman of the young patrons club of the Salzburg Festival – these are the supporters of tomorrow – and this community is growing. I have been to events in the same category in the United States, and from my perspective, the next generation of the audience is there.”
Still, the opera market will eventually reach its limits. Other institutions have also asked to use Operabase’s casting tool and archive, and they are more than happy to expand: “there’s classical music, there’s musical theatre, there are a lot of other performing arts verticals. We just started with onboarding orchestras and concert halls.” The starting point has been choral works which, just like opera, need casting of a conductor and singers. “Of course, it’s interesting for the orchestras to have an overview about all the Mahler 8s that have been performed worldwide in the last couple of years. Same for the Beethoven symphonies. And our database has all the conductors, so orchestras use us for conductor search and they realise that having a company profile on Operabase gets them a big reach. So we’ve recently expanded Operabase with symphonic data as well.”
Businesses like Operabase (or, for that matter, Bachtrack) live or die by the quality of their data, so I’m keen to learn about how Operabase goes about bringing all that performance information into their database. “It’s in three ways. One way, of course, is that we get loads of information from the arts organisations, the artists and their agencies – they all have an account and they very often add data themselves. We have our own crawling system that gathers information from websites and inputs it. And yes, we do have a manual team: we call them information specialists. The key thing is that this is a team that verifies information. So, for example, if an artist puts in information that he or she has sung that role and we don’t have that on the platform, we need to verify that with the arts organisation. If our data is not accurate, then we lose the trust of the professionals who use our platform to cast.”
When data is input at the time of a season launch, she explains, it’s generally very accurate, with data collected from 3,000 organisations. The challenge is when things change in mid-season: when there is jump-in, the artist jumping in has a good incentive to ensure that the system states correctly that it’s they who have performed; the artist who has been replaced will inevitably be less diligent.
The ten information specialists are part of an overall team of 40 people. There is a small head office in Copenhagen, which houses just six people, and the vast majority work remotely. The team is multinational, with 14 countries represented, and is young. “The team’s average age is around 30 – and this is in an industry which is very often seen as being more conservative or older. As a tech company, we’re stepping in as the young ones, and showing that we’re all of us very passionate about opera and the performing arts.”
Köstinger herself is one of the remote workers, based at her home in Vienna, although she visits Copenhagen monthly. But she spends a great deal of time on the road, meeting clients or attending conferences and music competitions. “So I haven’t been in my apartment in Vienna for the whole summer, and tomorrow, for example, I’m flying to New York. As a tech platform, people very often don’t know who is the face behind the platform. I’m a people person, and from my previous experience, where I was basically responsible for developing relationships and partnerships, I know how important it is to show my face to gain trust in what we do.”
Anyone who runs a business has things that keep them awake at night, so I ask Köstinger what are the concerns that do this to her. She deflects the question deftly: “I’m a sports person, so I run marathons. Running is my balance, so that at night, I can sleep.”
This article was sponsored by Arts Consolidated on behalf of Operabase
