Slow Ticket Sales Threaten ‘Aida’ at Coliseum

What has been billed as “the breathtaking, world renowned production” of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida” is having some trouble filling the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on June 29 and 30. The first performance was canceled last week, according to a spokesman for the Coliseum.

The highly publicized $7-million production has so far sold only about 6,000 tickets, said Robbie Williams, production manager for Montreal-based International Opera Festival, which has been producing the event around the world.

Reached by telephone in Toronto, Williams, said: “At this point we have not reached a final decision. Ticket sales have been slightly disappointing to date and we obviously are reviewing the situation.”

He said productions scheduled for June 1 and 2 in New York and July 13 in San Francisco are going ahead as planned.

While Williams denied that a decision had yet been made, William Hall, music director of the Master Chorale of Orange County, said he received a call from producers’ Montreal offices Monday morning saying the Los Angeles production had been canceled. Hall said he was hired to assemble choruses for Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Williams would only say that the June 29 performance “has been put on hold and we are concentrating our resources on getting a good crowd in there for Saturday night. Because the Los Angeles Coliseum is such a large venue, we could open up more seats and put 45,000 people in there. It seemed not a lot of good sense to do two shows if we could put everybody together there for one night.”