How to Save Your Local Opera Take a cue from New York City Opera's demise and don't use your endowment to make ends meet; never let your operating costs exceed your basso profundo's calorie count. Start a fund-raising newsletter written by out-of-work donkeys who have appeared onstage in past productions; freight their prose with heavy pathos and muffled braying. Flaunt the "Ring" cycle's appeal to all "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" fans by tweeting "Nibelungen = Oompa Loompa + candy made of gold." Have Iago, Mephistopheles, the Duke of Mantua and other famous opera villains introduce a Kickstarter whose reward premiums include actual kicking. Start a reality show on PBS about the torrid, complicated personal lives of mezzo-sopranos who perform at "the people's opera"; escalate reality television's trope of throwing a glass of wine in someone's face to throwing a goblet of wine in someone's face. Celebrate opera's foundational eminence by reminding the masses that singspiel begat Rex Harrison begat rap. Remind the world that opera folk have a sense of irony by acknowledging that the world's loudest idiom (Wagnerian opera) features a character named Mime. Assure well-heeled benefactors that even though the servants triumph over their master in "The Marriage of Figaro," this worldview will not inform the benefactors" relationship with your theater's seating chart. Antagonize all competing arts in an effort to thin the herd: start a rumor that the reason ballet dancers walk on point is so they won't wake the audience. Take out a full-page ad in Dance News that bears the slogan "I'd take a ballet for you." Start a Twitter account called Violins = Kitsch. Exclaim that, in a year with telemovies devoted to both Liberace and Donatella Versace, "who needs Schnittke?" Bury the fact that the titles of so many works in the German canon, from "Die Zauberflöte" to "Die Meistersinger," seem to be written in the imperative and thus to presage extinction. Create a promotional event called Opera Ops in which singers parachute into congested urban areas and, while singing at full voice, begin death throes but seem unwilling to die. Tell Donald Trump that the company would be willing to name a coming production "The Donald Giovanni." Change the company's name to "[Your city's name] Oprah." Henry Alford writes for Vanity Fair and is the author, most recently, of "Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That? A Modern Guide to Manners.