L.A. Opera’s Ex-Director Gets 5 Years of Probation

Huey R. Weathersby, former general director of the defunct Los Angeles Metropolitan Opera Co., was sentenced Wednesday to five years’ probation and ordered to make $56,000 in restitution to financial backers of his ill-fated production of “Aida.”

Weathersby pleaded guilty in July to selling securities after being forbidden to do so by the state Department of Corporations and to 11 counts of failing to tell the investors of that edict.

Municipal Judge Michael Tynan also ordered Weathersby to perform 250 hours of community service as part of his sentence and prohibited him from becoming involved in any theatrical production or entrepreneurial work without permission of the court. Weathersby had faced a maximum of six years in prison on the charges.

The two opera performances, which were to be staged at the Shrine Auditorium during the 1984 Olympics, were canceled because of financial problems. The opera company was short by about $160,000, or roughly 40% of the budget, Weathersby said at the time. As many as 33 investors lost money in the production; some have been repaid.

The state had ordered the opera executive to stop selling the securities after investors in a 1983 Seattle production of “Treemonisha” complained that they had been repaid with opera company checks that bounced, according to court papers. Weathersby, however, continued to sell the securities to raise money for “Aida.” The investors, who put up sums ranging from $1,000 to $20,000, said they had been promised a 30% return on their money.

Weathersby, 44, studied voice at USC and California State University, Northridge. In 1973 he was instrumental in forming the Southern California Lyric Opera Company, which mounted a production of “Madame Butterfly.” Weathersby, who is employed as a clerk in a plumbing supply business, had five other attempted productions to his credit, several of them clouded by financial problems.

In rendering sentence, Tynan said there apparently was no criminal intent on Weathersby’s part, and that while he was a talented opera singer, he was a bad business administrator.

Assistant Public Defender Mitchell Grossman said afterwards that his client was “extremely remorseful about the problems he had caused those involved.

“He just wanted to put on a good opera.”