Bigger may not be better...

Yes, I'm a stage director who conducts, a conductor who writes libretti, a blogger who teaches at a big university, an opera vocal coach who is passionate about the benefits of singing musical theatre. Yes, the musical scores are the absolute reason why I love theatre. I want everyone to ornament as much and as often as possible, from Monteverdi right up to late Verdi. I'm an opera nerd, former dancer, editor, and a sometime piano guy who plays in public now and again.

But mostly, nowadays, I'm known primarily as a stage director.

I've spent the majority of my stage directing career at smaller opera companies: TriCities Opera, Ash Lawn Highland (now Charlottesville Opera), Opera Memphis, Fargo-Moorhead Opera, Amarillo Opera, Opera on the James, Eugene Opera, Wichita Grand Opera, Opera 5, Brott Opera - to name the most recent ones. Yes, I've directed some things at the Kennedy Center (semi-staged operas and concerts of scenes), directed/produced 100 operas at Opera McGill (if we were a company, we'd most likely be the 5th largest opera company in Canada), as well as a few other shows at companies like Pittsburgh Opera and Opéra de Montreal (for their young artists shows).

But my directing career has been very different from my conducting and music director career, which started back when I was 17 years old in Omaha with a Trouble in Tahiti production. Getting hired right off the bat in my twenties to be on the musical staffs of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Juilliard Opera Center, Tulsa Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, and running young artist programs at Glimmerglass Opera, Florida Grand Opera, and Pittsburgh Opera, taught me so very much. Especially how different it is to be on the non-musical side of things, how different I'm treated as a director than as a conductor, and how very different the larger companies work from the smaller ones. And there's a ton of variance between the smaller companies as well.

I've noticed some things. Allow me to overgeneralize in order to make a point.

Everywhere, the staff are overworked and underpaid. That's part of the non-profit arts organizations' problem. It's impossible to retain people. The up and coming (read: the young) are kinda maybe okay working massive hours for bad wages and bad benefits because they're climbing a ladder of some sort (sorry, doesn't exist; it's a myth). Then they move onto the next company, hopefully bigger with better pay and benefits. Or they get out of the business and transfer into academia (or get completely out and go into another business entirely).

Everywhere, many (not all) of the staff do not really care about opera as an art form. They do not listen to it, they don't know much of anything about opera history, they are not passionate about Joyce's latest role at the Met, nor are they that interested. They do not care what edition might be used, if someone is ornamenting somewhere, or what artistic decisions are being made affecting the details of the musical scores. Things that keep us artists up all night, or in practice rooms for days and days, are not in their lines of sight.

But – They are annoyed at opera singers who are divas, they are very annoyed at needy opera singers who can't read housing emails and show up with a furry pet or show up at a house with furry pets that they're allergic to. They are annoyed at guest directors who throw tantrums because the color of the pillows is off, or guest conductors who whine and obsess about not enough orchestra time ("When I was at Hamburger Staats...")

So what do they care about? I believe they care - and care passionately - about their company's full-time staff, their community (including their choristers, orchestra players, their tech staff), and their audiences. Everyone else who shows up for a month to get a show up are hired guns who will come and go, hopefully doing good work, but not upsetting the apple cart. The people who work at these organizations also need to care that their patrons are happy and donating. They have grants to write and meetings with their boards to focus on so they can report how everything is going great!

They do care. Just not about the things us opera folk usually care about, nerd out about, or train young singers and pianists about. Read that sentence again please, especially the last six words.

Full disclosure, I've had some nightmares as a guest. I've been difficult in certain circumstances and regretted feeling the need to be difficult. A paragraph about my own experience follows...

Patron housing in an ancient Southern bedroom filled with cat pee on the carpets and drapes so bad that I couldn't breathe upon entering the room. General directors who demanded crazy - I mean bat shit crazy - things: from asking me to fire a member of their staff because they were scared of them, to yelling at me in a public space at the top of their lungs over and over again till I thought they might hemorrhage, "You changed the ending! How dare you change the ending!" (I didn't, they just had never cared to find out how the opera actually ended.) I sat by while a conductor vented at me in front of the cast, storming out saying "good luck without me" all because I had told the conductor that they were wrong about not allowing a soprano to take some ornaments in a bel canto opera. "Come scritto" he kept yelling as he walked out. I took over and conducted that day until he came back (seriously, had he not googled me?!). Actually, three of those four incidents all occurred at the same company, on the same show.

Memories light the corners of my mind...

But mostly, I've been quite charmed by hundreds of people across the US and Canada who I've seen open their hearts, minds, talents, and skills to me in the hopes that I wasn't a monster. They've told me stories about directors yelling at choristers so much that no one in the community wants to sing with the company. About conductors badmouthing orchestra players. About singers not showing up at patron's dinners (as requested in their contracts even) because that was "beneath them" and then the patron getting pissed and walking away from the company. Lots of stories of difficult stage managers who alienated local backstage crew, singers being inappropriate at costume fittings, and generalized stories about "difficult" directors. Often the "difficult" isn't ever really defined. Sometimes, the local staff are given the feeling that the director is unhappy with <insert whatever stupid thing they're obsessing about is> and so just seemed to hate everything and everyone, becoming a curmudgeon until opening night.

Why do guests do this? I have my ideas. I chalk it up to that they're never taught how to be a guest. We don't talk about this as a sector. But some simply are not nice people to begin with, or are pretentious and don't know they're not at the Met. It must also be said, in guests' defence, that many are also underpaid and overworked, have difficult careers, and are on the road way too much away from family and friends. To be out and about without our touchstones, without the comforts of home (I travel with my pillow now), without our Indian spices, is hard on most. It gets harder as you age, if I am perfectly frank.

So where are things going well? I can't speak for today's Met or SFO or WNO. I can speak about two smaller companies I've recently had the pleasure of seeing their work from the inside out. My experiences with them leave me quite heartened that opera still has a future.

I just left one of them a month ago after guest directing their 75th anniversary production of Rigoletto: TriCities Opera!

What a great company. Filled with people who care. Who care deeply about their company, their staff members, their patrons and audiences, and their community (that includes the local chorus, orchestra members, production and music staff). They also care about the people they bring in to create opera - who waltz into town to make a show, like carnival people of old.

TCO is an old company with a long history in the southern tier of New York, most of it overshadowed by their founders who were there at that company for decades and decades. It was a training opera company with a very large number of singers who went on to great successes: Richard Leech, Jake Gardner, Cynthia Clarey, Marietta Simpson, Raul Melo, and our Rigoletto Timothy Lefebvre (to name but a tiny portion of their alumni). Also included in that bunch is the TCO current general director, John Rozzoni.

Full disclosure, John was a student of mine at Ithaca College during my last few years there. He went on to TCO and sang tons of roles with them before moving into administration and now running the show. You can tell he loves opera and opera singers (one would hope that would be the case with former singers who stop singing, but let me tell you it is often not the case!). He's joined at TCO by a small full-time staff and part-time staff. And these people are nice - actually nice people - who are there to support not just their company, but support the artists striving to make the art. This includes four ridiculously talented resident artist singers and a young stage manager originally from India. Leading the musical side of things is a veritable genius himself - an ex-waterpolo player from Florence - Giovanni Reggioli.

Their community is vast - the local union crew at the Forum Theatre, the music staff, the full orchestra playing in the pit, the choristers, supers, and backstage crew for wardrobe, hair, and makeup, plus a few others who really - in my humble opinion - make TCO shine as a place where I love to create opera.

Not to call anyone out, but AmarA and her wife Jaelin are the props/sets/weapons experts there. They're kinda remarkable people who will work to make sure things that I've asked for actually happen. Last year, I wanted to do a freeze onstage during Figaro's Largo, right at the moment Berta sneezes with a basket of flowers. I asked if the flowers could fly out of the basket and then freeze in midair - a very cinematic special effect. I got a quizzical look initially, then a "okay, we'll work something up". A few days later, there was a basket of flowers that could freeze mid-air, along with her being frozen mid-sneeze.

For their diamond year, TCO wanted to create a "new" production from an old production, namely a Don Giovanni set that the Director of Production, Jennifer Minor, thought might work with some tweaks. Along with A&J's input, John's thoughts, and my ideas, the five of us created a re-purposed set that now can easily be rented out as either a Don Giovanni or a Rigoletto set! The entire process was so easy, so collaborative, with only a few bumps and surprises along the way. And those bumps, at other companies, might have created trauma and drama, might have made people get upset or even mad. But because there was an environment of mutual respect at the company and between all of us, no one went there. We solved the problems instead of making others feel bad.

I've often thought that many in opera think that the only way ART can happen is under dramatic, excited, exaggerated, pretentious circumstances. This is not true! Often - not always but often - opera companies hire dramatic, excited, exaggerated and pretentious people to direct their shows. This is a mistake in my experience. Companies, especially smaller ones, need cool heads, pragmatic decision makers, community-minded collaborators, who can see the forest through the trees. Sometimes, these companies are left with shit on the stage that's artistic in someone's eyes, but can leave audiences scratching their heads, leave important board members upset, or worse, come at a cost where staff are abused, budgets get overrun ("I must have a five foot chaise, not a four foot one!"), and community chorus members walk away 'cause it ain't fun anymore.

I'm looking forward to more collaborations there next season, including a Gianni Schicchi and La Traviata.

Another company that continues to defy definition and exceed all expectations is the Toronto-based Opera 5. Going on a decade now, it was founded by a group of young people fresh from their university degrees who were seeking performance opportunities. One of the founders still there is general director, Rachel Krehm, (Rachel got her BMus and MMus in voice from McGill). I've blogged about Opera 5 and what makes it so special on my other blog: https://patricksoperablog.blogspot.com/2016/06/torontos-opera-scene.html

The company has survived the Covid shutdown crisis and has come out on top - way on top - upon its return to producing live opera. Just this year, they won an Opera America Excellence in Digital Award and were named Canadian Opera Company's Resident Opera Company for the next two seasons. Additionally, Opera 5 and Opera McGill created a special summer paid internship program that's going on its second year giving Opera McGill students their professional operatic debuts with Equity wage contracts, providing amazing mentorships for each of them, and helping them explore their other interests (like directing, stage management, administration, music direction, etc.) to build a portfolio career.

Opera 5 is a company comprised of four extremely caring people - Rachel, Jessica Derventzis (AD), Evan Mitchell (MD), and Jacklyn Grossman (administration and mentorships) - who each time they put together a production focus on the community of people who are gathered to create their shows. Yes, the shows are important but the community of people is more important. If they are cared for, then the shows will reflect that. Last summer's The Turn of the Screw was one of the best opera productions I've seen anywhere in my 40 years in the business. This summer they're launching a new opera festival in Toronto, presenting a world premiere (Come Closer by Ryan Trew and Rachel Krehm), and their first musical, Elegies by William Finn (performed by a cast of Opera McGill student interns.)

Of course there are other wonderful companies out there led by great people, staffed by outstandingly talented people, making fantastic shows. I think we're in a great moment for opera. Just this week, Brian DeMaris was named President and General Director of Arizona Opera. Now there's someone filled with both art and empathy. I'm sure he will bring a great positive environment to that sunny company.

A great time for art is never really a reality. Today the moment feels more like a chance to change the conversation. I'll take a big breath now and write the next paragraph.

I think we should no longer be looking at the Met or Chicago Lyric to lead the operatic community or especially to set operatic standards that our academic programs teach to the next generation.

I think it's time to renovate the curriculum and teach entrepreneurship and collaboration as an integral philosophy and process to creating opera. As integral as knowing when to take an appoggiatura in a Mozart recitative (answer: whenever possible!) or how to sing arias out of context in auditions. Collaboration and Entrepreneurship skills are essential to changing our sector, and to giving young singers, conductors, and directors a leg up in succeeding in this crazy business.

Our art form is sitting on a precipice: an aging audience, uncertain markets, difficulty bringing in new audiences, and the rise of online culture that includes streaming and binge-watching from the comforts of our recliners.

But we still expect our audiences to sit in small uncomfortable seats in rapt silence in darkened theatres without their glass of chardonnay or popcorn or oreos to keep them company. We need opera theatres to more resemble modern-day cinemas complete with nachos and big gulps with an audience that can recline in seats. We need the sound to be mic'd if the acoustics are crap. We need better lighting designs that keep the visuals onstage not just illuminated but moving. Our audiences are medicated (look up those statistics!), tired, stressed, addicted to social media, and not used to focusing on eleven minute arias. The direction, the costumes, the musical and vocal choices all need to reflect these issues. I love opera, but it is in danger of an untimely death unless we come to the rescue.

And I gotta say, Indie companies and smaller organizations that don't have the budgets of a San Fran or a Dallas company are leading the way. They're innovating, they're caring about their own communities and people. It's not about an international diva no one has ever heard of outside of us in the biz, it's a focus on the local. It's being out in the pubs, local flower shows, and zoos performing their hearts out. The leaders and soloists are in jeans, they're trying to get people to realize that opera is fun and heart-wrenching and amazing and tragic and funny. You don't have to own a tux. Our tickets are super cheap compared to the sports events and especially concerts by the real famous singers of our day.

These companies need our help. The Met basically gets more funding than all the rest of the opera companies in the US put together because its budget is massive. I think that funding should be going out to the smaller companies who are making sure the local is as alive as the national and international scene. We need to stop dissing an opera company by the size of its budget and start loving it for what it does with that budget.

And if we nurture that kind of caring, we will nurture opera to breathe again, grow, evolve, and hopefully bring future generations the joy of seeing their first Boheme or Carmen or Akhnaten or Ainadamar or Fire Shut Up In My Bones.