His Vision for O.C. Opera: Clear Voice, Sound Finances

Patrick L. Veitch updated marketing at the Metropolitan Opera and took the Australian Opera to the people. What will he do as the new general director of Orange County’s Opera Pacific?

“The immediate priority is to fix the financial problems,” he answered over lunch recently. “The $700,000 deficit from last season [brings] the accumulated deficit to about a million dollars. It’s not crippling, but it’s not good either, and it just has to be addressed.

“How am I going to fix it? I don’t know. But we’ll fix it.”

Veitch, 52, was named by Opera Pacific late last month, succeeding founding director David DiChiera, who becomes artistic director although he will devote most of his time to running the Michigan Opera Theatre and the Detroit Opera House.

“No. 2 priority,” Veitch said, “is to work with David DiChiera to build a collaborative relationship that will allow the artistic product to mature in certain ways--for instance, to extend the audience’s understanding of what the standard repertory is.” Until now, audiences here have regarded “standard” in a fairly narrow sense, favoring tried-and-true works over less familiar and more experimental ones.

“The other thing,” Veitch continued, “is to move toward a production style unique to Orange County.

“I haven’t the slightest idea what the Orange County performing style would look like, but once we start to identify the direction we’re headed in, that will determine how we’re going to make this special and give our audiences something to be proud of--and the nation something to watch out for, even visit.”

Opera long has been a love of Veitch’s, who was born in Beaumont, Texas, and who grew up listening to the Saturday afternoon broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

“I was a shy kid, without outstanding abilities at things like sports or any other group activity. Somebody put a clarinet in my hand at about age 11 and music just opened up a world for me. It meant a social life. It meant kindred spirits. And it was something I could do well.”

But--he found out when he went to North Texas University--not well enough for him to have a virtuoso career. “It’s one thing to be the star of Beaumont, Texas, and then go somewhere where the stars of all these other little towns have come, and your medals don’t mean very much. I started looking at alternatives, and when you don’t know what to do, you become an English major.”

Still, he wanted music to be in his life somehow, and after graduation he left for New York “to seek fame and stardom and all that. And lo and behold, that English degree and all my enthusiasm and all my talent qualified me to be a key punch operator at Columbia University.”

Soon he was working at an advertising agency, where he learned about marketing. When the Met reorganized after the resignation of general manager Rudolf Bing in 1972, Veitch “just happened to be the guy who walked in at the right time.” He landed a job as its first marketing director, a post he kept until 1981.

“A quick picture of what the Met was like before I walked in: It didn’t take credit cards. You had to take the full series of 12 performances. Once a year they would mail off to the subscribers a notice saying: ‘Send us a check for this amount of money and reserve these dates.’ You didn’t get the [names of the] operas, the cast, anything. It was chutzpah of the first order.”

Veitch instituted a telemarketing campaign, let people buy tickets with credit cards and took what was then considered a radical step by publishing a two-page ad in the New York Times announcing the full season.

“That first ad brought in nearly half a million dollars, and I think everybody thought I was a wonder worker,” he recalls. “So I got all kinds of freedom.

“People talk about ‘marketing.’ To me, it’s not trying to paint something a color it isn’t. It’s trying to make it easy for the customer. There are some things that will work in every community. If you’re nicer to the customer, you’re going to have a better relationship and the customer is more likely to spend money with you. Period.”

Soon Veitch was being invited to consult with other companies, including the Australian Opera, which he ended up running (succeeding Peter Hemmings, who had gone to direct the Los Angeles Music Center Opera). Veitch stayed in Australia until 1989.

“I inherited a company that was in very good artistic shape. Financially it had problems. But the major problem was that opera was limited to a small crowd that had the financial wherewithal to support it. The Australian public had a very strong attitude that this is an elitist art form. They felt, ‘My tax dollars are being used to support it and it’s just serving “the silver tails of the Eastern Suburbs” ’ is their phrase.

“So, tackling that head on, I threw Joan Sutherland out into the parks to sing a free performance of ‘La Traviata.’ Seventy-five thousand people showed up and sort of overnight, something was different. Joan Sutherland is not [just an opera star]. . . . In Australia, she’s more like Babe Ruth. They may have hated opera, but she was ‘Our Joan.’ ”

Is he concerned that he will have to face charges of elitism here in Orange County? “Yep,” he answered, “and I’ve only been here 4 1/2 days. Just getting people who could afford it on an occasional basis is one thing, and then an entirely different thing is dealing with people who cannot afford it, and how we can make it accessible to them. These will be at or near the top of my priority list.”

He hopes the key will be in creating new productions that reflect a special Orange County style.

“To carve out our little place under the sun, we have to be doing new productions ourselves--productions we conceive, produce, design and plan. They are the lifeblood of a company. I would hope as soon as possible that we can do one new production a year that is ours. Then you add and then it goes to two and meanwhile you’re building up a repertory. It takes a while. . . . “Is it going to be a Glyndebourne? Is it going to be a St. Louis? Hopefully, none of the above. Hopefully, it’s Orange County, and some years down the road, people will say Orange County opera and it will mean something right away.”