It is also crucial to discuss sustainability efforts with creative teams early, even before they sign their contracts to take on a production. To help them reuse materials, Fuchs has worked to create a database of props, costumes and more that the Dutch National Opera keeps in storage.
The Green Deal also provides artists with a pyramid-shaped diagram of building materials. At the top is the worst sustainability offender: aluminum. (One suggested replacement is steel, which is less harmfully extracted and can also be recycled.) Near the bottom is wood, a renewable resource, and even better is something generic from another production that can simply be used again.
De Lint said the Green Deal has also affected how a season is planned, with a move toward what she called “short-term programming.” If a project doesn’t seem to be working out, if artistic vision and sustainability goals appear irreconcilable, “we can be a bit radical and say ‘No, we are not doing this anymore.’”
“It’s tough,” she said, “but it’s important.”
There is no exact template for how the house’s policies work. Approaches are as varied as the repertoire, from a new chamber opera to Puccini’s enormous “Il Trittico,” directed by Barrie Kosky last season. At any rate, the company learns more with each production. “Basically,” Brandsen said, “we’re making prototypes every time.”
A notable case was Ellen Reid’s “The Shell Trial,” which premiered at the Opera Forward Festival last year. As a work about climate change, it also aspired to be as close to carbon-neutral as possible. But it hit a snag when the creative team decided it wanted fire and ice in the production.
Fuchs said a simple solution would have been to say no. Instead, she began to research the carbon footprint of using gas to light a fire onstage. The company could purchase “green” gas, but it would have to be shipped from Belgium. Then she found that it would not be much of a problem to use the local gas, but to minimize emissions the amount would have to be reduced. The artists agreed to cut it by 50 percent, which satisfied them as well as Fuchs’s goals.
