Autumn 2024-25 Royal Ballet & Opera pricing

[Blossom]

Pricing for Autumn also in the Friends email. Balking at the top price for Alice and Cinderella and foresee tough times sales wise. £190.

15% off for booking 3+ Orchestra Stalls performances but excludes Alice and only brings top price down to £160. Somehow I don’t think this will be so successful. 
£145 for top price for Maddaddam, a lot for McGregor.

Definitely some oddities in the lower tiers of pricing but I am not an expert in working out what refers to what…

 

 

[Bluebird]

1 minute ago, Blossom said:

 

Definitely some oddities in the lower tiers of pricing but I am not an expert in working out what refers to what…

Unless they’ve made another ‘misstep’ (or missed out one of the price bands) it looks as if SCS will be £22 for Alice and Cinderella.

[San Perregrino]

21 minutes ago, Bluebird said:

Unless they’ve made another ‘misstep’ (or missed out one of the price bands) it looks as if SCS will be £22 for Alice and Cinderella.

Assuming SCS is the lowest price in the section, I read the table as being £14 for Alice & Cinderella, £12 for Maddaddam and £8 for Encounters. Whilst identical for ballets, Opera productions seem to have two price bands for SCS depending on if it’s Stalls Circle or Stalls Circle Side. 
 

https://content.app-us1.com/vz2oy/2024/05/03/65752ff0-0d57-4a8a-baea-8137db4caa09.pdf?id=31830593&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Friends ENews%3A New Season announced!&utm_campaign=240503_membership_enews_friends

Edited May 3 by San Perregrino

[Emeralds]

Hopefully the £22 for SCS is a typo!

Edited May 3 by Emeralds

[Bluebird]

1 minute ago, San Perregrino said:

Assuming SCS is the lowest price in the section, I read the table as being £14 for Alice & Cinderella, £12 for Maddaddam and £8 for Encounters. Whilst identical for ballets, Opera productions seem to have two price bands for SCS depending on if it’s Stalls Circle or Stalls Circle Side. 

The lowest price is for amphi standing and the slips nearest the stage

[art_enthusiast]

10 minutes ago, Blossom said:

Pricing for Autumn also in the Friends email. Balking at the top price for Alice and Cinderella and foresee tough times sales wise. £190.

190??? That is wild. Basically 200.

 

And 145 for dystopian Maddaddam? Is it really that good?

[San Perregrino]

14 minutes ago, Bluebird said:

The lowest price is for amphi standing and the slips nearest the stage

I wonder if we’re looking at the same information, have posted a link to the table I was looking at above. 

[Bluebird]

2 minutes ago, San Perregrino said:

I wonder if we’re looking at the same information, have posted a link to the table I was looking at above. 

I think you must be right. For some reason, the table was a bit distorted on my phone. When I follow the link above, it looks completely different!

[San Perregrino]

17 minutes ago, art_enthusiast said:

190??? That is wild. Basically 200.

 

And 145 for dystopian Maddaddam? Is it really that good?

Although not directly comparable, the middle section of the front two rows of the Royal Circle at the Noel Coward Theatre went on sale today for the upcoming Jamie Lloyd production of Romeo & Juliet. £254

[Dawnstar]

I'm gazing at that pricing table in horror. If I'm reading it correctly then the side stalls circle benches are £73 for both Cinderella & Alice. I was expecting Cinderella to be expensive but I did not expect Alice to be anything like that costly. I thought it would be nearer Winter's Tale, which is £49. It looks like the price for all the operas is £53. When I started seeing ballet 6 years ago it was cheaper than opera, now it's more expensive! Which considering the view restriction is generally more problematic for ballet than opera I find extremely depressing. It doesn't look like I'll be seeing much ballet this coming autumn & I can only start praying that R&J and Onegin will be slightly more affordable.

[Geoff]

On 30/04/2024 at 12:45, Sim said:

This was in the small print in the Friends email:

 

Pricing will be supplied separately, and ballet casting before booking closes. 

 

1 hour ago, Mary said:

We understand that there is concern regarding when ballet casting will be released. We always aim to share this in advance of Friends' booking opening and plan to do so for the Autumn Season. However, as you know there are sometimes unavoidable circumstances which occasionally means some casting is delayed. We will continue to share ballet casting as soon as possible via the E-Newsletter.

 

Message just received in a Friends' email.

 

So, what’s going on? Left hand/right hand? Confusion? Misunderstanding? Change of plan? Or, something I keep noticing to my disappointment, some people at least at the ROH just don’t know how to use the English language? 
 

In any case the latest Friends news is a great relief. Let’s hope it’s not wrong. 

[OnePigeon]

Just as well I don’t plan on seeing any of them at those prices!  It’s a good deal more than Nutcracker was last year, and that was bad enough.
 

I am imagining the prices for Onegin and R&J might be at least as high as MaddAdam (the stalls prices look similar to Manon), but let’s just pray they aren’t as high as Alice as I was going to save up for a stalls seat, but there’s no way I can,or would, pay such prices.

Edited May 3 by OnePigeon

[Linnzi5]

I got the email and it took me ages to find where the pricing was!  🤔

 

Well, I do normally book multiple performances when booking opens for me, so if there are performances I want to see AND casting is announced before I book AND I'm pleased with some of the casts, then tickets for me, with 15% off could actually be cheaper this next season when compared to similar ballets this season, though Alice is excluded (and others may be later in the season, apparently - though that had not better be R&J!!). What happens if I needed to cancel a ticket and rebook? I'm presuming I would not get 15% off the ticket for the new performance?  I will wait to see how this pans out. I was expecting a price hike so am not surprised. I think tickets where I like to sit have gone up by about 9.2%, if my maths is correct and it may well not be! 

[Fonty]

53 minutes ago, San Perregrino said:

Although not directly comparable, the middle section of the front two rows of the Royal Circle at the Noel Coward Theatre went on sale today for the upcoming Jamie Lloyd production of Romeo & Juliet. £254

 

I think there was advanced booking for that, and I know there are (or were) standing tickets for £25.  But having said that, the show is virtually sold out. 

[art_enthusiast]

38 minutes ago, Fonty said:

 

I think there was advanced booking for that, and I know there are (or were) standing tickets for £25.  But having said that, the show is virtually sold out. 

Yes, assuming it’s partly because of Tom Holland being cast 

[Lizbie1]

There's something a bit odd about some of the pricing - for example:

 

Figaro top price £245, slips £51 £24 £12

Tales of Hoffmann top price £300(!), slips £39 £22 £13

 

But very good to have that clarification about ballet casting, well done all who questioned their wording!

[JNC]

Thanks for sharing pricing.

 

It’s difficult to know exactly what is going on without the seat map but looks like they’ve increased pricing in the amphi quite significantly for Cinderella.

 

all I can say is, I hope Onegin and Balanchine pricing is more like Maddaddam and the encounters bill respectively…

 

At least it looks like I’ll only be booking one or two performances each season! 

[art_enthusiast]

3 hours ago, OnePigeon said:

Just as well I don’t plan on seeing any of them at those prices!  It’s a good deal more than Nutcracker was last year, and that was bad enough.

Yes indeed. I feel like I might have to see Alice once though if Stephen McRae is back as the Mad Hatter (I’ve never seen him perform it live).

 

I wonder what the prices will be like for the National Ballet of Japan…

[zxDaveM]

4 hours ago, Dawnstar said:

 I can only start praying that R&J and Onegin will be slightly more affordable.

 

I think that prayer will be in vain I'm afraid - R&J always top dollar, and the anticipation for Onegin (virtually the only production being anticipated by the fans at least) won't keep the prices down

[art_enthusiast]

14 minutes ago, zxDaveM said:

 

I think that prayer will be in vain I'm afraid - R&J always top dollar, and the anticipation for Onegin (virtually the only production being anticipated by the fans at least) won't keep the prices down

Hopefully the 15% discount will help here though

[Dawnstar]

2 hours ago, art_enthusiast said:

Hopefully the 15% discount will help here though

 

I've not seen the email, not being a Friend, but given the references above say the discount is for stalls only then by my reckoning that would mean the cheapest stalls seats for e.g. Cinderella would still be nearly £140 even with discount. That still puts them way above my budget. Unfortunately ticket prices have risen so much in the 3 seasons since package booking was abolished that it would take a discount of getting on for 50% to bring them down to the sort of price that the 18% package booking discount used to.

[JNC]

15 hours ago, Blossom said:

15% off for booking 3+ Orchestra Stalls performances but excludes Alice and only brings top price down to £160. Somehow I don’t think this will be so successful. 

The package discount back in the day of “all ballet” used to apply to amphi as well - not the cheapest tickets admittedly but the mid range ones, which while they used to be cheaper than nowadays were still a little out of my budget at the time, but with the package discount even if I was paying a little more it was a bit of a treat. And it certainly swayed me to book things I hadn’t considered before, so it did work! 

I suppose they can’t really do packages anymore with such a reduced repertoire - for some booking periods there is only 2 main stage ballets programmed…

 

I wonder why Alice is the one they’ve excluded from the deal not Cinderella? I’d expect Cinderella to be more of a guaranteed easy sell (even at these prices unfortunately) given the name + Christmas period. 
 

Given they’ve priced Alice the same as Cinderella, are they so confident it will sell well? It’s got 17 performances in autumn, and from the page on the website people will know it’s back in summer so people keen to see both Alice/Cinderella but not flush with cash are likely to spread them out and delay it until the summer? 
 

The Encounters bill is priced quite “low” in comparison, maybe they’re already predicting it won’t be a good seller! It’s less than half the price of Cinderella/Alice! 

[JohnS]

Good to see Autumn 2024-25 pricing information published but the seat maps are not on the web and those are needed for any detailed analysis. There are several seat maps and areas of the house are divided in different ways. For example in the Stalls different productions have 3, 4 or 5 prices.
 

And it looks highly likely to me that there are errors in the grid. Fidelio has £152 as the most expensive Amphitheatre seat but other operas with the same top price (£245) show £101 as the most expensive Amphitheatre seat. Almost certainly the £152 is an error and should have been included as the lowest price in the Stalls which would then be in line with other operas with the same top price. But I’m afraid such errors don’t inspire much confidence.

 

I think it would make a much easier read if operas had been grouped together: Hoffman £300 top price; Onegin, Tosca, Boheme all £270 top price; Figaro, Traviata, Fidelio all £245 top price; and Hansel & Gretel £175 top price. So four sets of prices rather than 8 rows which doubles the risk of transposition errors (which I’m sure has happened for Fidelio).

 

For the four ballets, three groups would be better: Alice and Cinderella both £190 top price; Maddaddam £145 top price; and Encounters £75 top price.

 

I’ll make some enquiries as to when we’ll see seat maps and the errors in the grid before looking in detail at prices but I think there may well be concerns as to Amphitheatre prices for ballet compared to opera: top price £114 for Alice and Cinderella which is more than for all operas bar Hoffman (assuming Fidelio is incorrectly shown). But I think Stalls Circle sides look more sympathetically priced compared to opera: top price £73 for Alice and Cinderella compared to more than £80 for all operas bar Hansel & Gretel although we need the seat maps to be definitive.

 

I’m hoping the pricing grid is uploaded below.

Royal Ballet & Opera pricing Autumn 2024-25.pdf

[Jan McNulty]

Thanks @JohnS.  The attached grid, very depressingly, does work.

[Geoff]

1 hour ago, JohnS said:

Fidelio has £152 as the most expensive Amphitheatre seat

Are they having a laugh? (To coin a phrase)

 

Many thanks for your work on this  @JohnS Let’s hope they get back to you soon with some clarification and (hopefully) corrections. 

[Paco]

Prices for next season are ridiculously too high. It is obvious it will be a disaster in terms of box office. £ 245 for a revival of le Nozze without any star in the cast is a much anticipated failure.

 

Even the Alice prices are much too expensive. The last run sold out quickly, it was a triumph, but at half that price!

 

It is the first time my European friends hesitate to cross the Channel. At first they had scheduled to come and see almost the whole RB season, but now that they look at the prices they hesitate a lot.

 

I don't know how marketing teams build their pricing strategy, but wouldn't it be more profitable to have a sold out house at reasonable prices than a 60% filled theatre at such ridiculously expensive prices?

Edited May 4 by Paco

[Paco]

4 hours ago, JNC said:

Given they’ve priced Alice the same as Cinderella, are they so confident it will sell well? It’s got 17 performances in autumn, and from the page on the website people will know it’s back in summer so people keen to see both Alice/Cinderella but not flush with cash are likely to spread them out and delay it until the summer?

Last revival of Alice sold out very quickly, it was difficult to find a seat. But prices were half of what is scheduled for next season, so I doubt there will be the same rush to the box office this time...

[ElliB]

I nipped back on this forum as I thought I might be able to get advanced notice of autumn pricing, so appreciate the sharing very much. 
 

I planned I would treat my 9 year old nephew to Alice as he loves dance, tap and acting, and from what I can see from clips online it is still recognisably as Alice with a storyline that he knows and could follow. 
 

The prices are insane!! With deals I can get the both us to a well-known musical for much less than one adult to the ballet. I naively thought I’d treat us to seats near the front of the amphi, as 20 years ago I used to go a couple of times each run to most of the RoH ballets, sit in decentish seats, and I was earning a fraction of what I am now.  Now, seats with a decent view are not remotely affordable and I am not sure the restricted view seats are worth it as they are over-priced too. Working out what my 2003 income would be today to buy todays tickets, I would probably never have bothered going to the ballet. I’ve been out of UK a long time, only occasionally seeing shows on flying visits, but in other places I’ve lived the main ballet companies are not so disproportionally expensive vs average incomes. 

 

It’s very strange there are no matinees during October half-term too. Seems like an obvious miss! 

 

And I assume I am their “target audience” - some disposable income, would take kids, not going to ballet often - so, if not regulars, or people like me, then who???

Edited May 4 by ElliB

[art_enthusiast]

33 minutes ago, Paco said:

I don't know how marketing teams build their pricing strategy, but wouldn't it be more profitable to have a sold out house at reasonable prices than a 60% filled theatre at such ridiculously expensive prices?

 

Yes exactly. What tends to happen, as people on this forum have noticed, is that there's difficulty selling out seats to the point where, usually right before it opens or during the run, they will release some discount code (happened with the Macmillan triple I believe). Or they'll give away some seats to ballet students or NHS workers/charities, something like that, so the auditorium is full.

 

So they would never sell out fully at those prices anyway... might as well just admit that from the beginning but clearly they seem to think they can. But in a cost of living crisis I'd be a bit surprised if they manage it.

[Geoff]

2 hours ago, ElliB said:

I planned I would treat my 9 year old nephew to Alice as he loves dance, tap and acting, and from what I can see from clips online it is still recognisably as Alice with a storyline that he knows and could follow. 
 

The prices are insane!! With deals I can get the both us to a well-known musical for much less than one adult to the ballet. I naively thought I’d treat us to seats near the front of the amphi, as 20 years ago I used to go a couple of times each run to most of the RoH ballets, sit in decentish seats, and I was earning a fraction of what I am now.  Now, seats with a decent view are not remotely affordable and I am not sure the restricted view seats are worth it as they are over-priced too. Working out what my 2003 income would be today to buy todays tickets, I would probably never have bothered going to the ballet. I’ve been out of UK a long time, only occasionally seeing shows on flying visits, but in other places I’ve lived the main ballet companies are not so disproportionally expensive vs average incomes. 

 

It’s very strange there are no matinees during October half-term too. Seems like an obvious miss! 

 

And I assume I am their “target audience” - some disposable income, would take kids, not going to ballet often - so, if not regulars, or people like me, then who???

@ElliB we have had a lot of discussions here about ticket prices after COVID and I have probably read most of the posts. But yours has somehow touched me more deeply than most. It is a disgrace that Covent Garden is driving people like you and your nephew away, in favour of Arts Council pleasing “new” audiences who come once and tick that box, or panicky last minute free giveaways. 
 

Perhaps someone could send what @ElliB writes to Alex Beard (I would do it but one letter in a week is enough)? He should be held to account: does the avoidance of classicism (represented by the season just announced) combined with pricing aimed at novelty buyers rather than  lovers of the art form mean that although the Arts Council may be pleased by that gender fluid loo (if it’s still there) we can no longer expect this company to protect and promote its traditions, or work to build an audience of ballet lovers for the future? 
 

[Dawnstar]

12 hours ago, JohnS said:

But I think Stalls Circle sides look more sympathetically priced compared to opera: top price £73 for Alice and Cinderella compared to more than £80 for all operas bar Hansel & Gretel although we need the seat maps to be definitive.

 

Crikey, I thought the £51-57 price for most of the operas was the equivalent of the £73 for Alice & Cinderella. Is that actually the price for the small number of behind pillar seats with a terrible view? If so then that is ludicrous.

[JohnS]

I’m afraid without the seat maps @Dawnstar, it’s not possible to give an answer. I don’t recall the ROH giving separate columns for Stalls Circle and Stalls Circle Sides so it will be illuminating to find out what seats are actually available in the Stalls Circles Sides column. If they’re the same seats for ballet and opera, then ballet seats are a little less expensive than for opera. But we’ll have to see the detail.

 

The Box Office agreed the Fidelio front Amphitheatre price looked an error. I was told seats maps should be published well before booking opens so hopefully before the end of the month.

 

Apologies - in setting up this thread I hadn’t appreciated there were already a number of pricing comments on the 2024-25 season thread: if I have chance (depending on train IT and my limited skills), I’ll try and move across all the pricing comments to this thread.

[alison]

Good luck with that, JohnS!