Denver has never been what you would call a great opera city. But it hasn’t been this lousy for decades.

The financial stumble of Opera Colorado this month — resulting in the abrupt cancellation of the company’s highly touted premiere of “The Scarlet Letter” — leaves the city with just two major productions for the entire year. Next year, too.

The company is still labeling its offerings a “season,” but that’s a stretch.

For opera fans, who love a good tragedy, a real one has arrived. It’s bad news for the local arts economy, too. Restaurants, hotels, musicians, taxi drivers — everyone suffers when major productions tank.

For Denver’s fine arts image, it’s an embarrassment. Look around the region — it’s easy to see opera thriving in other cities, soaring even.

The major companies in St. Louis, Kansas City, Mo., Dallas and Sante Fe are all producing vibrant seasons this year, collectively combining treasured Verdi, Mozart and Puccini warhorses with a stream of new works that challenge audiences, prove artistic credibility and prevent opera from being just history repeating itself.

In Denver, we get almost none of it. The adaptation of “The Scarlet Letter” was to be the first new composition produced by Opera Colorado in its entire 30-year history, but now that is off for seasons to come. Nathaniel Hawthorne isn’t exactly a risky name in American culture; no one thought it would be so hard.

Not the company, that’s for sure. It hung oversized banners promoting the work and brought in an outside public-relations firm to nationally trumpet Denver’s arrival. The company had no clue it was hitting the financial skids even just a few weeks before it crashed, according to managers and board members. But then its fundraising campaign at the end 2012 bombed.

The company fell short of its $2 million goal by about $500,000. Combined with other misfortunes, it ended the year $690,000 in the red.

The problem? According to general director Greg Carpenter, people were reluctant to give, the economy was down, the election a distraction. Congress was arguing loudly about tax codes, and write-offs for charitable gifts were in jeopardy.

But the same factors did not hurt Denver’s other institutions. The Denver Art Museum and the Colorado Ballet ended 2012 with record ticket sales and healthy donations. Even the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, struggling valiantly to convince contributors it is viable, took in the donations it was expecting.

That makes this an opera problem — specifically, an Opera Colorado problem. People may give less overall here, but the other arts aren’t falling back. They commission new sculptors and choreographers as a matter of course.

Our opera lags behind. Ticket sales could be stronger, although they’re not the real problem. There’s no lack of enthusiasm for the form.

But there is a failure to communicate the importance of the work beyond the flash of individual performances; the evidence for that comes when people don’t give money to support the organization. Opera Colorado has major donors, and they’re generous, but friends are too few right now.

The company is, no doubt, examining the reasons for that. Did it capitalize well enough on the momentum of a new opera house, the shiny Ellie Caulkins, which the city grandly rehabbed five years ago? Does it do relevant work? Does it have enough of a community presence (in a good year, it only does three productions over three months)?

Last season, the company dropped the Colorado Symphony as its pit orchestra after 28 years. Did that irk patrons of both institutions?

The company does not seem to lack confidence in itself. It sold tickets to “The Scarlet Letter,” right up to the day it announced the cancellation, even though it probably knew more than a week in advance that the show would not go on.

Instead of apologizing for aborting a production it hyped wildly and sold tens of thousands of dollars in tickets for, it positioned the cancellation as an act of fiscal responsibility; the house must be put in order, its official announcement proclaimed. To be fair, Carpenter did describe the demise of “Scarlet” as “unfortunate”; to be balanced, he didn’t get to it until the seventh paragraph.

Opera Colorado offered refunds but also suggested people just donate the money they lost in the deal to the company.

No doubt, patrons will want a good reason to be so generous, some incentive to give more to a company that will do more, rather than bragging it is doing less. Just four operas over 24 months — that’s not a big carrot.

The company has embarked on a new fundraising campaign called “Stories That Sing.” It is asking for $1.2 million in 70 days, and its board, again generous, has delivered a head start, promising to match the first $350,000.

The community will need to step up, of course. A city only gets to have one opera company, and Opera Colorado is ours. Checks must be written, and soon. But it will be interesting to see if its sophisticated patrons demand in return what all those cities around us have: genuine seasons, ambitious programs, bragging rights for art well done.

Opera, when robust and embraced, is important. The form can seem silly, overblown, old. But it is thriving in this country; close to seven million people attend in a year, according to the industry group Opera America.

There’s good reason. Opera does a lot to connect us to our past — not just our European past, but a millennia of human interaction at its truest. Puccini can make you cry over who we are, lovers, fighters, brothers, murderers, optimists, loyalists, traitors, adventurers.

Cities need to maintain those reflections on themselves, through the triumphs and the tragedies.

Ray Mark Rinaldi: 303-954-1540, rrinaldi@denverpost.com or twitter.com/rayrinaldi