COUNTING HEADS

More folks than ever went to the opera in the United States last year. The Central Opera Service, a research department of the Metropolitan Opera, says that 1988-89 attendance was up 21% over 1987-88, with a record 21.4 million people attending a performance. That figure continued a growth that’s been going on for 30 years, but it broke the pattern by doubling any earlier one-year increase. The report lists 1,285 opera-producing organizations in the United States (same as 1987-88) but performances rose from 21,197, to 24,923. The most performed works: Seymour Barab’s “Little Red Riding Hood” (733 performances) and Gian Carlo Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors” (563 performances). Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” was the most frequent standard with 279 performances.