"I think it's an extremely stupid decision. They're antagonizing the very people that they want," said Lynne Finney or Park City, a symphony regular for 10 years who prefers seats on Abravanel Hall's fourth-floor third tier.

But those seats and others in the downtown Salt Lake City hall - 1,100 in all, or 40 percent of the hall's 2,800-seat capacity - are not being offered because orchestra officials say unfilled seats aren't good for business. The idea, says Utah Symphony & Opera marketing director Sean Toomey, is to concentrate patrons at concerts so empty seats are less visible. A partially filled hall, Toomey says, contributes to a "psychological phenomenon" that the organization is faltering.

"All of the reviewers seem to care, all of the donors seem to care and all of the patrons seem to care," he said.

"On the day folllowing the ['Elijah'] concert, there was a headline in The Salt Lake Tribune, 'Sparse crowd for grand Elijah,' which is fair . . . but you know how people are," Toomey says. "They want to go to something that is successful. Someone reading that on a Saturday is saying 'Well, that's not where I want to be.' "

Beginning next season, the orchestra will close four or six seats on the edges of each row of the main floor; the last 10 rows of the main floor; portions of tiers one and two; and all of tier three. Toomey said the configuration will be flexible, with additional seats opened according to demand.

Patrons who are being relocated will pay the same amount ($12 for a $40 seat on the floor, for example), but price doesn't seem to matter. Some third-tier patrons circulated a protest petition at the March 3 concert, Finney said.

Karen Perkins, of Holladay, is a longtime season-ticket holder who doesn't want to move.

"What I like about the third tier is . . . you can be hanging right over the orchestra and see everything from above. You don't pay as much and you're not smashed in with other people." (Seats are in single file along the sides of tier three.) Restricting the sale of certain seats for appearance sake, she says, is "silly."

US&O has been in a financial restructuring mode since 2005, trying to erase a multimillion-dollar deficit caused by economic factors, faltering donations and weak ticket sales, which began declining in the 2000-01 season. That year, there were 1,547 paying patrons per event, a number that fell to 1,280 in the 2004-05 season but rebounded to 1,487 in 2005-06. Some remaining seats were filled by people with free tickets, but a full hall is rare, a phenomenon that other orchestras are dealing with by building smaller venues, Toomey says. The relatively new Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, where the metro area population is more than nine times that of Salt Lake City, seats 2,265.

"Everybody is making halls smaller," Toomey said.