“The new normal?” Speight Jenkins, the general director of the Seattle Opera, repeated the question I had just asked him over the telephone. He paused for a moment.


“No, I won’t accept that,” he said. “As an American and as a general director I can’t accept that.”


The question was whether the current state of the economy is serious but temporary, or whether it represents a permanent change in the ambitions and expectations of American opera companies. Opera moves slowly, with programs mapped out years in advance, so the coming season may be the first planned entirely amid economic uncertainty. And if you look around the country, much of the landscape is saddening.


Seattle’s situation is among the most acute, though troubles face almost every company in the country. But Mr. Jenkins has a longer perspective on it than most, having led the company since 1983.


In 2003 he signed a 10-year contract extension, and the company knew that it would be undergoing a difficult transition to a new director around this time. What it couldn’t have known then was that its shift in leadership would occur in the worst economic environment for arts organizations in decades.


It became clear over the last year that Seattle’s financial situation, which had worsened since 2008, was serious, and that the company would end the 2011-12 season with a rare shortfall: approximately $1 million in a budget of about $20 million.


In the language of the news release that the company issued on June 26, it is “reshaping for a leaner economy.” Translated into English, it is desperate.


The Seattle Opera — which, reflecting Mr. Jenkins’s interests, has made a specialty of Wagner — has worked hard to ensure that next summer’s “Ring” cycles will go on as scheduled. But during the 2013-14 season the company will mount just three productions, rather than its standard five, and in the summer of 2014 it will present an iteration of its International Wagner Competition instead of a previously announced production of Wagner’s “Meistersinger von Nürnberg.” In 2014-15, and for the foreseeable future, the plan is for four-production seasons.


Perhaps most ominous, the company’s well-regarded young artists program will produce a concert rather than a full opera production during the coming season. Led by the singer and director Peter Kazaras, who has been mentioned as a potential replacement for Mr. Jenkins, the program will then go on hiatus in 2013-14.


Its long-term future is uncertain. “Assuming economic recovery and community support,” the news release says, “the Young Artists Program may re-emerge in future seasons.”


These changes are all on top of the usual cuts in salaries, artist fees and staff, though two new positions will be added to focus on fund-raising and major gifts, part of the depressing nationwide shift of resources from artistic matters to marketing and development.


Even though a meeting of the company’s board on Tuesday yielded word that the budget shortfall would be somewhat smaller than anticipated, those new development officers may well be necessary. Mr. Jenkins said a drop in large donations was the main source of the crisis, along with the shedding of the subscriber rolls and increased difficulty in selling more expensive seats. This is the same situation that is affecting every arts institution, but in a company the size of Seattle’s, there is a smaller cushion when the money dries up.


Even in companies that have not had — or have not yet announced — such an overt crisis, the operative word is caution. Next season at the Los Angeles Opera, which has presented some truly daring projects over the years, is about as disheartening as it gets: Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” Wagner’s “Flying Dutchman” and Rossini’s “Cenerentola.” The only rarity — Verdi’s “Due Foscari” — has clearly been scheduled only because of the involvement of the company’s general director, Plácido Domingo, who will sing the baritone role of the Doge.


The Lyric Opera of Chicago, historically one of the most important companies in America, has a 2012-13 season of astounding conservatism: a tour through the standards. The only opera from the last century, the Renée Fleming vehicle “A Streetcar Named Desire,” by André Previn, hardly pushes boundaries. Worse, tickets for “Streetcar” are available only to subscribers, in an anxious ploy to retain the company’s traditional base.