Classical Music

The tune is not one San Diego arts patrons are eager to hear played again. Last week the general director of the Pacific Chamber Opera, Gar Hildenbrand, sent out a dire SOS to the press claiming that his company was dangerously close to insolvency. He cited cash-flow difficulties that were threatening to disrupt its current season, which had opened only a month earlier with a less-than-critically heralded production of Victor Herbert’s “Naughty Marietta” at the Lyceum Theatre.

Hildenbrand described the company’s plight as a best-of-times, worst-of-times scenario. While ticket and subscription income is strong--he claims a 1,075-subscriber base--contributed income is a mere 10% of what the opera had budgeted. Faced with an ineffectual 15-member board that had dwindled to a mere six active members, Hildenbrand and the other two Pacific Chamber staff members took on the bulk of fund-raising responsibilities after the end of the “Naughty Marietta” run.

“I’m not trying to put the blame on the members of the board,” Hildenbrand said. “I’m just trying to survive at this point.”

One thing is clear: Unless Hildenbrand can raise the $4,000 that Pacific Chamber Opera owes Musicians’ Union Local 325 to complete payment of the “Naughty Marietta” orchestra, and unless the company can post the necessary bond for the next production’s orchestral contract, Oscar Straus’s operetta, “The Chocolate Soldier,” will not open as planned on March 3.

And those are only a few critical bills. The company needs $90,000 by late May to put on the remainder of its season. “We don’t consider that job undoable,” he said.