Not your Grandma's cheapseats

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The discounts, underwritten for the most part by corporate donors, are an effort to compete for leisure time with an increasing array of multimedia offerings and, in an era when patrons of the theater, opera and classical music are aging rapidly, to reach a younger, more diverse population.

“We’ve watched audiences decline in a rather alarming way and we have to do something to bring people back in,” said Paul Kellogg, the general and artistic director of City Opera. “The competition across generational lines is Netflix and pretty much anything on the Web, and we need to be active in getting people out of their houses and into a theater.”

Cheap tickets are one of the major weapons in the arsenal. The approach arrives at a time when arts institutions — from museums, where admission can go as high as $20, to the opera, to Broadway theaters, where $100 is now the benchmark — have been criticized for increasing prices even though their costs keep going up. Ticket sales declined precipitously after 9/11 and have never been as dependable since. Subscription sales have also fallen as more people forgo advance purchases for last-minute plans.

The Met’s $20 ticket program is part of a larger effort by the new general manager, Peter Gelb, to throw wide the doors of the opera house. A free open dress rehearsal with brown-bag lunch last month was followed by a populist opening night — with the gala performance of “Madama Butterfly” simulcast free on large screens on the Lincoln Center Plaza and in Times Square.

“The goal is to broaden our audience and to fill the house,” Mr. Gelb said. “The average age was 65 when I arrived.”

At all of these institutions, box office response has been overwhelming. The Signature’s $15 tickets — which normally go for $55 — sold out within the first 48 hours for August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running,” which begins on Nov. 7. City Center’s six-day dance festival sold out in three days last year, so the program was extended to 10 days this year; more than half of the 2006 festival’s 27,530 tickets sold in a single day.

“We were all amazed that out of the woodwork these people came roaring up,” said Norman Peck, the president of the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, one of the festival’s sponsors, “and they’re just the kind of people you want to get.”

“If you don’t do something, you’ll be left with guys who have false teeth and white hair,” added Mr. Peck, whose foundation also supports Opera-for-All. “Eventually, they’ll all die and you’ll have nothing.”

In the first year of City Opera’s Opera-for-All — which includes introductory videos before the performance — 71 percent of the audience had never been to City Opera before, and the two performances sold out. Of those who attended, 11 percent came back to the series this year, Mr. Kellogg said, a significant return, given that direct mail efforts typically average 0.1 percent to 3 percent response.

This season, City Opera obtained e-mail addresses and other contact information from everyone who bought a $25 ticket; 90 percent had never been in the data base before, something that Mr. Kellogg called “one of the most encouraging and astounding statistics I’ve seen at City Opera in a long, long time.”