andrew markworthy
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Sep 30, 1999
- Messages
- 4,762
Please can anyone explain to me why opera discs are so expensive? E.g. here in the UK, I've seen versions of The Marriage of Figaro or The Trojans costing more than 30 pounds sterling (versus ten or twelve pounds for a run of the mill movie). As far as I can see, the same price ratio more or less applies in the USA. At first I thought it was small edition sizes, but these opera discs are generally region free worldwide releases and must have bigger production runs than e.g. a lot of arthouse movies like the British Film Institute's Ozu series, which cost about fifteen pounds each. I cannot believe that it's a case of recouping production costs either, since a high proportion of these discs are straightforward recordings of television broadcasts of stage productions, and the stage productions themselves are more often than not heavily subsidised by public funds and/or corporate sponsors. The same argument applies to a lot of classical music discs as well, which again are stupidly expensive. I'm just baffled.