OPERA GROUP ASKS FUND RULE WAIVER

The Los Angeles Music Center Opera intends 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 hasn’t waived the eligibility rule since the program began in 1978, the opera company will argue that it deserves a waiver because of its size and first-year success.

“A grant from the endowment is the artistic equivalent of a Good Housekeeping seal,” said John Howlett, public affairs 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.”

In a separate action, Orange County’s Opera Pacific is making the same request.

While both companies have produced operas for only one year (which is a key to the endowment’s funding criteria), they have operated for many years for other purposes.

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,” said Smith. “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.”

Smith said the request will be reviewed by the NEA’s Professional Companies Panel, an advisory group of 13 theater and opera professionals that will convene Aug. 11-14 in Washington to consider some 100 applications. 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 that he sends “evaluators,” various arts managers and other professionals, to anonymously attend performances presented by prospective grant applicants and give him feedback. He said that both the Los Angeles company and Opera Pacific have been evaluated but offered no details about the reactions.

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.”