A New York Times critic examines how the weak economy and declining donations have affected programming as well as operations at major American opera organizations.

Companies such as the Seattle Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago have cut back on staff, shifted resources into marketing and development, and are mounting shorter and more conservative seasons, eschewing new and rare works in favor of popular ones like Aida and Madama Butterfly, the Times’s Zachary Woolfe writes.