They've gone about as far as they can go

“Last year, Freud sold 80 percent of available seats during the 2012-13 Lyric Opera season. That represented 264,000 tickets purchased, a 15 percent increase over the previous year. But much of that ticket sales increase was attributable to last season’s addition of the musical Oklahoma! at the end of the opera season. Lyric wound up in the black for the year, but only with the addition of $4.8 million in reserve monies from its Campaign for Excellence Fund.” [Chicago Business Journal]