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Making the Best of It: Piedmont Opera's coming season is scaled back in scope, but its leaders upbeat about company's state and its choices
UNCSA School of Design and Production Photo
Piedmont Opera’s first show for the 2009-10 season will be a production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s popular Hansel and Gretel.
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Published: June 21, 2009
Opera, that grandest of spectacles, prides itself on embracing just about anything and everything that go on a stage. It is not only terribly expensive to produce, but it can also be especially vulnerable in an economic environment such as the current one.
But the two key members of Piedmont Opera's leadership team -- executive director Frank Dickerson and artistic director James Allbritten -- sounded reasonably upbeat and hopeful as they talked about the state of the company and the shows it will present next season.
The season will include two productions at the Stevens Center. The first, a company premiere that will open Oct. 2, will be a family-friendly production of Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel. The small cast of Hansel, along with a set, rented from UNC School of the Arts for a bargain price, will help the company economize. The second show, opening April 9, 2010, will be a relatively inexpensive, semi-staged concert version of Puccini's Turandot.
Along the way, singers will team up not with an orchestra but with a pianist to present a Valentine's Day program in Brendle Recital Hall at Wake Forest University; this presentation, which will feature famous love songs from opera and "lighter" repertoire, will replace Amahl and the Night Visitors, a Christmas show that was losing money.
The lineup is a far cry from the three fully staged shows a season that Piedmont Opera's fans have come to expect over the past few years. But Allbritten will take it.
"When faced with the potential for this season, it was clear that there would have to be significant cuts," he said. "It could have gotten bad enough that we might have only produced one title this year."
And Dickerson said that the company will end its current fiscal year on June 30 "with some money in the bank" and not have to use a line of credit to cover costs. He said that the company had offset a loss of between $70,000 and $80,000 with money in the Con Brio Fund, which was established to provide rainy-day funds and to offset the extra costs involved in mounting a new production in October of The Light in the Piazza.
The Con Brio Fund now has about $80,000. Dickerson said that he wants it to have between $300,000 and $500,000. He said that Piedmont Opera has also reduced its full-time administrative staff from three positions to two.
The company's budget is now $740,000, down 15 percent from the 2007-08 levels and down about 30 percent from this year's levels. The budget for this fiscal year was unusually high because of Piazza, a contemporary work for which, unusually, Piedmont Opera made its own sets and costumes, instead of going to the less-expensive route of renting them from another company.
"We are doing everything we can to be fiscally responsible for our donors and our patrons while still keeping a two-major-production season, which is our goal," Dickerson said. He also said that Piedmont Opera's educational programs, which include everything from a summer opera camp to Opera 101-type courses, have not been cut.
Dickerson sounded some cautionary notes about the future.
"We need our donors to be generous," he said. "We could not continue to do the quality that we've done this year and will do next year, at the budget we have for next year. We pulled out of our bag of tricks those things that we could do relatively cheaply but also fit into our mission and our quality."
What are the prospects of mounting another contemporary work?
"I don't think we'll be doing that sort of thing until the economy recovers substantially and that we're able to restore (money) to the Con Brio Fund," Dickerson said. "But we do want to occasionally mount a different type of new production, so that we can bring that kind of thing to Winston-Salem."
Allbritten mentioned several possibilities, including Carlyle Floyd's Susanna; Robert Ward's The Crucible (which would renew the composer's ties with UNC School of the Arts, at which he once served as chancellor); and Britten's Peter Grimes.
Grimes would introduce local audiences to Anthony Dean Griffey, a tenor from High Point who played the title role in a recent Metropolitan Opera production.
As for next season's works, Allbritten seemed particularly excited about Turandot.
"What's a title that people in this community would love to hear, that we could put in the theater?" Allbritten said. "Turandot came to mind. Several factors galvanized that."
One of them was Luciano Pavarotti, the late tenor who helped popularize Turandot among nonopera fans with a recording of "Nessun Dorma," which became a kind of theme song for the 1990 World Cup.
Turandot, one of Puccini's most famous operas, tells the story of the coldhearted Mandarin princess who declares that she will marry the man who can answer three riddles. Countless suitors compete for her hand in this manner, despite the fact that those who fail are mercilessly beheaded. Things come to a head when a mysterious stranger, the exiled Prince Calaf in disguise, answers each riddle correctly.
Patrons of the April production can expect a story "told in a very compelling and very operatic fashion," with a staging complemented by evocative costumes and by projected images "that have a setting implication or a psychological implications to what's being told," Allbritten said.
"We need to create ancient China in concert," he said. "We're going to do that."
Allbritten expressed disappointment that Amahl didn't do better -- but acknowledged that it got some stiff competition from other attractions in a crowded Christmas-season calendar.
"Our goal with Amahl was never to make money," he said. "It was to break even. We lost money again. We offered Winston-Salem another Christmas tradition, and they politely said thank you but no."
Allbritten said it was time to try something different, namely the Valentine's Day concert. But he held out hope of reviving Amahl again.
"(Children) always were engaged exactly in the way that opera can engage you," Allbritten said. "It was a difficult decision to make because as I said to the board, ‘Yes, we lost money, but we fulfilled our mission.' However small a number they were, there were kids that came to see this and it was their first opera and it moved to them and it spoke to them."
■ Ken Keuffel can be reached at 727-7337 or at kkeuffel@wsjournal.com.
PO Schedule
The presentations for Piedmont Opera's 2009-10 season have been announced.
Season tickets for two opera productions are on sale now; they're $28 to $130. Single tickets will go on sale July 1; they're $15 to $70.
Tickets for the Valentine's Day concert are $25 and $35.
To order tickets, call 724-3202 or go to www.piedmontopera.org.
Here's the lineup of presentations.
• HANSEL AND GRETEL will be presented three times beginning Oct. 2 in the Stevens Center. Shows will be at 7 p.m. Oct. 2; 2 p.m. Oct. 4 and 7:30 p.m. Oct. 6. Note: An opening-night gala at the Millennium Center will follow the Oct. 2 show.
• VALENTINE'S DAY CONCERT will be presented at 3 p.m. Feb. 14 in Brendle Recital Hall at Wake Forest University.
• TURANDOT will be presented three times beginning April 9 at the Stevens Center. Shows will be at 8 p.m. April 9, 2 p.m. April 11 and 7:30 p.m. April 13.
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