Top positions for Switzerland in the opera business
Opera is primarily a thing of the German-speaking countries. Newsweek magazine confirms this with reference to Operabase statistics. Switzerland is among the leaders.
According to the German Stage Association, Germany has 83 publicly financed opera houses, 130 orchestras, 200 privately run theaters and 70 opera festivals. Austria has 67 theaters and Switzerland 30, while France and the UK have just a dozen publicly financed opera houses.
According to statistics from Operbase, 7230 opera performances were staged in Germany last year, a third of the entire world production. The USA counted 1730 performances, Russia 1441, France 1288. Austria is in sixth place with 1252 performances, Switzerland in ninth place with 795.
If the number of performances is measured in relation to the size of the population, Switzerland is in second place with 102.1 performances per million inhabitants. The figure is only higher in Austria (149.8). Germany is in fourth place with 88.14 and Estonia in third place with 95.5.
