Donald Satz:

>Of course, organizations want "name" conductors for prestige purposes
>and to increase their audience.  In professional sports, we tend to think
>that the "name" athletes paid many millions of dollars per year are a drag
>on the economic viabilty of the organization and an abomination to boot.
>However, many of these athletes bring to the organization more money than
>the amount of their large salaries.  This can happen with conductors as
>well.

True.  A lot of that money for athletes comes from broadcasting revenue,
which orchestras cannot command, though.  All of this brings out my most
radical instincts, not to mention personal resentment at being asked
constantly to subsidize conductors who make such a disproportionately
greater income than the highly skilled musicians they conduct, just because
they have "prestige." Mostly, I just ignore organized sports, but it is
worth noting that besides the broadcast audience the live audience for
sports events is generally quite large.

In the case of classical music the live audience has to be relatively
small because even orchestral music cannout "sound" properly in too
large a hall.  As a consumer of the arts, I don't mind helping to pay the
salaries of the players, which are relatively modest.  But there is a sense
of being suckered, and a sense of injustice, when there are constant calls
for people who are only moderately well-off to subsidize a seven figure
salary--or whatever it is--just because the conductors' agents have been
able to bid up the price beyond the real means of the purchaser.

Jim Tobin