Veitch Defends Opera Pacific Tenure

Opera Pacific General Director Patrick L. Veitch’s sudden exit from the company last week ended a rocky 15 months of board restructuring, staff layoffs and other belt-tightening moves designed to whittle down a $1.1-million deficit accrued before his arrival.

With an impressive background and a charming veneer, Veitch, 53, seemed up to the task of putting Opera Pacific on firm financial footing. But at the close of its fiscal year in August, the 10-year-old company found itself still deeply in the hole.

Veitch’s one-year contract expired the same month, and he said then that he expected the board to renew it without dissent. Instead, on Dec. 17, the company announced plans to replace him.

Veitch and board members have declined to discuss the reasons for the parting, but it did not come as a surprise. A rash of resignations over the months indicated internal turmoil. And the Orange County arts scene had buzzed with talk of his possible departure.

The company hired Veitch, a Beverly Hills-based consultant to nonprofit groups who had once worked as the Metropolitan Opera’s marketing director, to replace founding director David DiChiera. In checking Veitch’s credentials, the search committee apparently learned of his history with the Pennsylvania Ballet and the Australian Opera, where he held top positions from 1989-91 and 1981-86, respectively. In both places, Veitch’s relationships with board members, staffers and even performers were often tumultuous.

“There was a sense of urgency to get a general director in place as soon as possible,” said Thomas Hammond, who headed up Opera Pacific’s executive search committee. “Patrick Veitch was available. We thoroughly checked his background, and we felt comfortable that he was the best choice, given the time constraints that we had.”

In a phone interview this week, Veitch said he was hired in all three cities--Irvine, Philadelphia and Sydney--to rescue organizations in fiscal crisis. He had to make hard choices that won him few friends, and those choices left the groups stronger artistically, if not always financially.

“Can you find enemies of Patrick Veitch? Boy, can you,” Veitch said. “Movers and shakers move and shake people, and it seems like I shook a lot of people.”

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When Veitch arrived in September 1996, DiChiera was still on board as artistic director. And Lori A. Burrill, who had been with the company since its founding, continued in her role as managing director. DiChiera, who runs the the Michigan Opera Theatre, soon announced that he would resign at the end of the current season.

Over the ensuing months, at least five full-time staffers either resigned or were dismissed. Hammond and another key executive committee member stepped down. Burrill resigned abruptly in June. Finally, development director David Griffiths, a Veitch hire, resigned a week before his boss left. They have all declined to discuss their exits.

Such high turnover certainly hampered the company’s fund-raising efforts, but insiders say that Veitch also alienated some major donors--an assertion he vigorously denies.

Veitch did alienate at least one key opera booster. Barbara Venezia, a volunteer who had co-chaired several successful fund-raising events, wrote a Jan. 30 letter to Veitch and Griffiths asking how they could “offend so many women in such a short time by shooting off their mouths without concern of consequences.” She faxed the letter to friends.

“It became one of the largest chain letters in Orange County history,” Venezia said. “I heard from people in L.A. and San Diego. He certainly alienated many people in this community with his high-handed attitude. If you’re going to be in that position, you have to be nice. He just wasn’t nice to people.”

Both men apologized to Venezia for remarks they said had been misconstrued, she added.

Despite its ongoing internal upheaval, last March the company hired its first music director, renowned conductor John DeMain, whose three-year term will begin in March. And in November it launched its annual season of four productions at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

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The DeMain appointment mirrored what Veitch views as another of the artistic coups in his career--the hiring of well-respected dancer Christopher d’Amboise as artistic director of the Pennsylvania Ballet.

When Veitch joined that money-strapped organization in 1989, he became its fifth executive director in a decade. By the time he resigned 14 months later, a host of others had already left, including previous artistic director Robert Weiss and his assistant, seven board members, three principal dancers, the directors of development and communications and two publicists. All had either resigned or been fired by Veitch.

Even D’Amboise wound up at odds with him, Veitch admits.

The official statement announcing Veitch’s departure praised his achievements of increasing box office and fund-raising and cited “policy and other operational differences” in the parting. However, insiders told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he had been asked to step down.

“I was brought in to rescue a company that was going bankrupt the next week,” Veitch said. “I pulled it back from the precipice. I got the board reorganized, got good staff and recruited a new artistic director. That artistic director [D’Amboise] and I disagreed about future artistic directions. He stayed and I left.”

The turmoil continued after Veitch’s departure, with other abrupt resignations or firings and continued financial woes.

Before taking the Philadelphia post, Veitch had spent two years as a consultant, after departing as general manager of Australian Opera. There, he inherited a $1.5-million deficit. During his 5 1/2-year tenure, he oversaw increased box-office sales and fund-raising and improved artistic standards. Despite these efforts, the company hit a life-threatening financial crisis in 1985.

An inquiry team established by the Australia Council, an arts governing body, issued a public report after questioning the opera staff on their attitudes toward Veitch and the company. The official report, which applauded his marketing efforts, led to a federal-state bailout of $2.5 million in January 1986.

After the bailout, personnel problems appeared to worsen, however. One board member resigned, arguing for greater restrictions on Veitch’s powers. And the singers passed a unanimous resolution (with one abstention) calling for his resignation. Six months later, in September 1986, he did so.

“I left the company with a million-dollar surplus, owning a city square block of Sydney, with the world’s finest opera center that I raised the money to build,” Veitch said. “I left it with a budget three times the size I found it with. I left it with an annual series of park concerts, an annual radio series. Do you want me to go on?”

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In joining Opera Pacific, Veitch again faced a dismal fiscal picture. After nine years of running in the black, the company had finished the 1995-96 season with a $1.1-million deficit, the result of sluggish ticket sales and fund-raising. Its budget was $5.5 million.

Veitch closed his first season with an $11,526 profit, compared with a loss of $951,363 the previous year. But an accumulated deficit of $653,576 remained.

“Clearly I wouldn’t be on the other side of the door if everybody were happy,” Veitch said. “I was brought in to do a turnaround. Nobody thought it was going to be easy or if they did, they were naive. In fact, it was not I, it was the board who thrust upon me the multiple titles of general director, CEO and president because they wanted somebody who was going to be tough, firm and get the train back on the rails. And certainly enormous headway was made in the first year in doing so.

“I know that I left the company stronger than when I found it. I leave the artistic product better especially, as will increasingly be seen.”

Veitch’s departure will not affect DeMain’s contract.

“What has happened is between Mr. Veitch and Opera Pacific, and really it’s not useful to go into the past,” DeMain said by phone from Seattle. “My total focus is on the future. The potential to have a great opera company in Orange County is there. I’m looking forward to it.”

The search committee for Veitch’s successor is still being formed, said company spokesman George Sebastian. Opera Pacific’s next production, Puccini’s “La Boheme,” opens on Jan. 6.