In this paper we try to explain opera houses performances in terms of financial autonomy and occupancy rate. In order to do that, we propose quantifications of variables representing artistic policy, production policy and main environmental components such as theater size, intensity of competition, economic conditions and strength and duration of local lyric tradition. The statistical analysis is done on a sample of 62 opera houses. It shows that environmental factors play the central role in the explanation of performances. In particular, houses that are the less constraint by local lyric tradition display the best performances.