PARIS L. GRAY/Courier-Post The New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark has the financial backing to hire high-priced talent. Video: Watch a clip from the Ritz Theatre's performance of `A Midsummer Night's Dream' Related stories: State has shortchanged South Jersey $2.1 million over 4 years Four from South Jersey serve on arts council Program helped arts before funds dried up Despite success, Ritz loses state funding Related Links: New Jersey State Council on the Arts Appel Farm Arts and Music Center National Endowment for the Arts

By ROBERT BAXTER
Courier-Post Staff

The New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark hires the best artists and pays them well. Some of those artists' fees could fund the entire budget for some South Jersey arts groups.

Soprano Jessye Norman commands a huge fee when she drives in her limousine through the Lincoln Tunnel from Manhattan to the Newark arts center. For singing a recital that lasts barely two hours, Norman earned $85,000 from the arts center last season.

For $85,000, the Ritz Theatre in Oaklyn mounts six main- stage shows and performs each 17 times or more.

During the Ritz's 20-performance run of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Scott Alan Reynolds earned $ 225 singing the title role. The chorus members in Joseph earned $100 for the run.

"The Ritz is committed to offering a financial stipend to honor the performers' work," said the Ritz's Producing Artistic Director Bruce Curless. "It in no way represents the value of their artistic contribution to the theater."

The New York Philharmonic charges the New Jersey Performing Arts Center $109,000 when it crosses the Hudson to perform in Newark. That's $1,000 less than the center pays the Boston Symphony.

For $180,000 in artists' fees, the South Jersey Performing Arts Center on Camden's Waterfront is presenting 30 events this season. That's about two nights worth of artist fees in Newark.

The budget for artists at the Mainstage Center for the Arts in Gloucester Township amounted to $31,500 last season. Mainstage presents more than 80 performances.

The New Jersey Performing Arts Center has an operating budget of about $23 million. It received $1.5 million from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts this year.

That money helps pay fees like the $60,000 soprano Kathleen Battle commanded for a performance last season.

At the same time it's helping to subsidize these high fees for the Newark center, the arts council complains that Mainstage's fees are too low. But the council refuses to give a penny to Mainstage to help it increase the low fees it now pays to South Jersey artists.