Veitch Says He Left Opera Pacific ‘Stronger’

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 Orange County’s only opera company 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 county arts scene had buzzed with talk of his possible departure.

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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. He was unattached at that particular time. 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. Lori A. Burrill, who had been with the company since its founding, continued as managing director. DiChiera, who runs the Michigan Opera Theatre, soon announced that he would resign at the end of the current season.

In ensuing months, at least five full-time staffers resigned or were dismissed. Hammond and another key executive committee member stepped down. Burrill resigned abruptly in June. 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 hampered the company’s fund-raising efforts. Insiders say that Veitch also alienated some major donors--an assertion he vigorously denies.

“I am not aware a of a single donor that I alienated. I do not know of a single gift of size that the opera has lost either due to me or my personality or my actions,” he said.

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 highhanded 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.

Veitch more recently faced a letter from board member Michael Dogali accusing him of withholding critical financial information. Board chairman Patrick T. Seaver acknowledged in an interview “a onetime problem” with full disclosure last month.

Responded Veitch: “At the Nov. 20 board meeting, I presented an oral financial statement to the board because there was not much to report at that time, and we had a very full agenda. I explained that we would be providing a full financial statement by the end of December.”

Board member Andrew Shawn confirmed Veitch’s account. “We got the reports in an accurate and timely manner,” he said.

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

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 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 resigned or been fired by Veitch.

Even D’Amboise wound up at odds with him.

The official statement announcing Veitch’s departure from Pennsylvania praised his achievements of increasing box office and fund-raising and cited “policy and other operational differences” in the parting. 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.

Prior to 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 the gains, 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.

According to respondents, the inquiry also painted Veitch as a tough boss. Staffers interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald said Veitch suffered from an inability to admit he was wrong, that he was distant and indifferent to the artistic staff and that he had an autocratic management style.

Veitch describes the report as part of a “massive battle in public” between him and the council. “The Australian Council, which is the equivalent of the NEA, tried to reduce our funding. I was trying to expand our funding.”

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

“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?”

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. 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 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 being formed, said company spokesman George Sebastian.

Opera Pacific’s next production, Puccini’s “La Boheme,” opens Jan. 6.