Features
Bravo! Brava! Classical Music In The Live Experience
Getty Images – Leonard Bernstein
conducts the climax of Mahler’s Resurrection symphony performed by the Boston Symphony in Lenox, Mass., July 8, 1970, as one of the earliest and most prominent to bridge the gap between classical and commercial music.
The world of classical music is a broad one, multifaceted and far-reaching with styles that stretch from sacred music written centuries ago all the way to modern-day interpretations of the most recent blockbuster film score. In the live entertainment experience, the classical influence may be as simple as including a string player in a band, yet many artists take it to the next level. High-profile musicians often perform with a complete orchestra – whether they are an opera giant, a virtuoso instrumentalist or a pop star.
Although classical music may have a more prominent presence in symphony halls, opera houses and performing arts centers, larger concert destinations also play host to some of the genre’s premier touring acts. Throughout the years, arenas, outdoor amphitheaters and stadiums have staged performances by great contemporary classical artists of the time. During the 1990s and early 2000s, The Three Tenors – Plácido Domingo, José Carreras and the late Luciano Pavarotti – were a huge draw in stadiums and arenas worldwide. At one sold-out, New York-area performance at Giants Stadium on July 20, 1996, the number of tickets to see the three singers reached 58,491 with a gross of $13.4 million ($21.5 million in 2018 dollars).
Pavarotti himself was an arena mainstay for years with his solo recitals. Among his highlighted arena appearances was a sold-out show on April 10, 1999 in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay Events Center – the inaugural concert at the 12,000-seat venue that opened just days earlier. He racked up $3.1 million from 11,634 tickets at the show and also returned to the venue the following year for a Three Tenors performance with Domingo and Carreras.
Jumping ahead to today’s concert scene, Andrea Bocelli is another tenor of renown who maintains a presence in the live entertainment world with regular touring. The famed Italian singer has a box office history at Pollstar that stretches as far back as the late 1990s, and he is still going strong today, although he generally has a limited schedule of booked performances. In 2018, for example, he only scheduled 43 concerts. They were set in different types of venues – primarily arenas, but there were also stadiums, amphitheaters and a festival date in the mix.
Like his fellow tenor greats from earlier eras, Bocelli also makes his mark at the box office. Last year he set a new personal gross record of $5 million earned from two shows at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 13-14.
Attendance hit 28,479 during the New York City engagement that marked the end of his 2017 concert schedule. Then back in June he logged his highest 2018 gross among shows reported to Pollstar – at a sold-out amphitheater event in the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. The concert generated more than $3 million in sales from 16,959 tickets sold on June 20.
In 2018 he has played nine arenas in North America through mid-November, and his show ranks as the highest-grossing concert of the year so far in five of those venues: Charlotte, N.C.’s Spectrum Center; AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami; Moda Center in Portland, Ore.; San Diego’s Valley View Casino Center; and Amalie Arena in Tampa, Fla. For two of them – Montreal’s Bell Centre and SAP Center in San Jose, Calif. – Bocelli lands among their top five concert grosses of the year.
But of all the classical artists on the concert touring landscape, none have made more of an impact at the box office than Dutch violinist and orchestra conductor André Rieu. He is the highest-grossing classical act on Pollstar’s Global Concert Pulse, an artist ranking based on gross averages per city during the most recent three-month time frame. Rieu lands at No. 21 with an average gross of $1.4 million from 13 cities worldwide, averaging 17,255 sold seats per market.
From the sheer number of shows he books at arenas, stadiums and large outdoor concert sites during any given year, Rieu maintains a solid presence among top touring artists around the globe. He has ranked among Pollstar’s Top 100 Tours worldwide every year since 2005, usually in the top 50. His best year in the worldwide tour rankings came in 2008 when he had the eighth highest-grossing tour with $76.9 million in sales from 714,617 tickets at 71 performances.
Overall Boxoffice results for Rieu show a staggering gross of $688,699,199 from 1,311 reported concerts with his Johann Strauss Orchestra. The total number of tickets sold for his performances amounts to 7,851,153 based on his Pollstar Boxoffice history that dates back to November 1997.
One of the highlights of the André Rieu tour every year is a summertime appearance at Vrijthof, an outdoor square in his hometown of Maastricht in the Netherlands. This year he presented the 14th edition of the multiple-night engagement that included 13 performances from July 4-22. The ticket count hit 103,324 for the entire run that generated $9.7 million in box office revenue.
Historically, the combined gross from all 14 years (2005-18) totals $61.2 million from 88 performances at the Maastricht town square. The overall number of tickets sold totals 681,828. Next year’s event has already been scheduled with nine performances to mark the 15th anniversary of Rieu’s annual appearance for his hometown fans. The residency will run July 5-21.