The answer is yes!
This series looks under the surface of key opera statistics.
First of all: the most popular operas by number of productions:
The first chart presents the top 10 operas by number of productions since 1996. These are all classic operas that one would expect to the most popular.
Interestingly, if the same ten operas are listed by number of performances, the order of popularity changes as shown in chart 2.
It appears that The Magic Flute (the inspiration behind this blogs appellation), is indeed the second most popular opera by number of performances.
On average, the operas in the top 10 are performed 4.87 times per production. Chart 3 below compares number of performances against number of productions.
It can be seen that in general the top ten operas exhibit typical performance:production ratios of around 4.87. The clear outlier is The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote), which exhibits an atypically high number of performances per production.
One could easily speculate on reasons for this. "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" aka The Queen of the Night aria is notoriously difficult to sing covering two octaves and requiring high tessitura (vocal range) as is the other famous aria by the Queen of the Night "O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn". These two arias alone would require significant soprano investment. Coupled with the magical set there may be that cost seldom permits one-off Magic Flute performances.
Next time we will continue to dig deeper into the data behind the opera
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