OPERA PACIFIC TO SEEK EARLY NEA FINANCING

The Los Angeles Music Center Opera Assn. and Orange County’s Opera Pacific, both just a year old, plan to ask the National Endowment for the Arts to waive its rule requiring opera companies to wait two years before applying for funding.

Although the NEA has not waived the eligibility rule since the program began in 1978, the two Southern California opera companies will argue that they deserve a waiver because of their size and first-year success.

The companies won’t be eligible for much money--probably no more than $10,000 to $15,000 each--but receiving the grants would symbolize national status that could attract significant funding from corporations and foundations.

“It would give us recognition as a national company, and that is very important to us,” said David DiChiera, general director of Opera Pacific.

“A grant from the endowment is the artistic equivalent of a Good Housekeeping seal,” said John Howlett, public relations director for the Los Angeles company, who spoke for general director Peter Hemmings, who is in Europe.

“Often that money (from the NEA) will engender other monies that make the endowment’s grant much more valuable than just the amount you receive,” Howlett said.

Patrick J. Smith, director of the

NEA’s Opera-Musical Theater Program, which has given grants to 100 opera and musical theater companies in the current fiscal year, said the two companies approached the NEA at the start of their respective seasons. Smith said he told them the agency would consider their applications, which must be submitted before May 22.

“They said that they would like to come in because of their size and the fact that they are so important locally,” Smith said.

“We must ask ourselves if they are a national company. That is the important factor . . . and that is based on a lot of factors. Budget, subscriptions, the quality of their presentations.

“If they come in for support, they will be technically ineligible. The application will be taken to our panel, and the panel will make a determination about whether to waive the eligibility requirement.”

Smith was referring to the Professional Companies Panel, an advisory group of 13 theater and opera professionals that will convene Aug. 11-14 in Washington to review the more than 100 applications that Smith expects. The panel makes recommendations on grants, but the final decision is made by Frank Hodsoll, NEA’s chairman. Smith said the companies wouldn’t know the outcome of their applications until January, 1988.

Smith said he sends “evaluators,” various arts managers and other professionals, to attend performances presented by prospective grant applicants and give him feedback. He said both the Los Angeles company and Opera Pacific have been evaluated but offered no details about the reactions.

There are signs that Smith is impressed by the companies. In congressional testimony last week on behalf of President Reagan’s 1988 budget proposal for the NEA, Smith called the Music Center Opera a “major, major opera company” and said the 16,000 subscriptions that Opera Pacific sold showed its potential to become “a very large company.”

Still, Smith said funding for the companies will depend on the Professional Companies Panel’s response to detailed information about their first-season operations. That information will show that the companies’ first seasons differed greatly in scope and economic circumstances.

In its opening season, the Los Angeles company presented 22 performances of five traditional or modern operas, including Verdi’s “Otello” and Richard Strauss’ “Salome.” The company, with a budget of $5 million, offers performances at the Music Center and the newly renovated Wiltern Theatre.

It receives annual operating assistance from a Music Center fund that supports its resident companies. The company got $1.4 million for the 1986-87 season. Another $1.5 million came from corporate and private contributions; the rest came from box office receipts, Howlett said. The company also started the season with a $1-million endowment.

Subscriber totals are key indicators of a company’s public appeal. In contrast with Opera Pacific’s claim to 16,000 subscribers, the Los Angeles company claimed 5,200 subscribers and sold about 26,000 tickets on subscription. Meanwhile, Opera Pacific presented 30 performances of three productions: Puccini’s “La Boheme,” Bernstein’s “West Side Story” and Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess.”

The company had a budget of $3.6 million, two-thirds of which came from the box office, while the rest came from private and corporate donations.

Opera Pacific said that it sold about 32,000 tickets to its 16,000 first-season subscribers and that it has the sixth-largest “subscriber base” of all opera companies in America. Opera Pacific has no endowment, receives no operating subsidy and its managers say they worry about its financial backing.

In politically conservative Orange County, arts managers have been known to worry that taking public money, such as from the NEA, could endanger contributions from private local donors to whom such government arts funding is anathema. A major point of pride among many supporters of the Orange County Performing Arts Center is that public grants weren’t used to build it.

But DiChiera said he does not believe looking to Washington for help will endanger the local funding that Opera Pacific is pursuing.

“I don’t think that will be a problem,” he said. “People know we need the money.”