Opera Pacific Is Now Sailing in Much Smoother Waters

When Opera Pacific’s “Flying Dutchman” sailed into port Tuesday night at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, it wasn’t just the sailors aboard who gave thanks for making safe refuge. So, too, did local opera-goers--fans, supporters and donors who for two years have watched their company battle, and flounder, amid managerial and financial storms.

Finally, fair weather beckons. Or so says the company’s new leader.

“The art side of our business is going swimmingly,” says executive director Martin Hubbard, a first-time arts administrator. The retired Irvine investment banker and founding Opera Pacific donor was drafted into his job in 1998 by the opera’s board; he earns $1 a year.

“We’re on our budget for this season. For all of that, we still have a deficit of $964,000 to correct in order to get our cash flow in line. That’s where our effort is going. We don’t have the cash reserves that let us operate easily.”

That’s a bit of an understatement. Although it has continued to produce its typical four operas a season, the 12-year-old company’s deficit was at $2 million just a year ago, and it has suffered several major rounds of layoffs and has had three administrative heads in as many years.

A Financial Sinkhole That Kept Getting Deeper

The trouble first surfaced in 1996, when the company’s founding general director, David DiChiera, stepped down to concentrate full time on his other job, running the Michigan Opera Theatre. DiChiera was much loved by donors and fans; he’s credited with building Opera Pacific into a respectable regional company, with a budget of $5-plus million a year and a 50% subscription base, which means that half its ticket sales come via subscribers.

But DiChiera’s ambitions most likely set off the Opera Pacific’s perilous times--when he left, the company had a $1.1-million deficit that is now blamed primarily on a combination of star salaries, a few unpopular programming choices (ticket sales were poor for Wagner’s “Die Walkure” and Marc Blitzstein’s “Regina,” and the company is heavily box office-dependent), sluggish fund-raising and not enough bottom-line oversight.

His successor, Patrick L. Veitch, a Beverly Hills arts consultant and former head of Pennsylvania Ballet and the Australian Opera, took over at the beginning of the 1996-97 season. To cut costs, he cut the staff of 20 in half, reduced the number of performances for each production from six to four, eliminated double casting (singers alternating in major roles) and canceled plans to co-produce the premiere of American composer Lowell Liebermann’s “Dorian Gray,” saying, “The presentation of a new opera is the work of opera companies with greater financial strength than that of the current Opera Pacific.”

To improve the product, he started opening productions on Tuesdays rather than Saturdays (which creates more rehearsal time) and moved up curtain times to 7:30 p.m. so that patrons could get home earlier, a bonus to Southern California drivers.

But Veitch didn’t make friends. In addition to his layoffs and firings, key board members, staff and volunteers resigned. Although they declined to discuss their exits, insiders said that Veitch alienated them with an abrasive style and a high-handed manner. Among those reported to be unhappy were major donors--an assertion Veitch vigorously denied.

Fifteen months after he arrived, in December 1997, however, Veitch and Opera Pacific parted company. The press release merely announced he was leaving and thanked him “for his dedication to the company.” No additional reasons were made public.

“I know that I left the company stronger than when I found it,” Veitch told The Times at the end of his tenure. “I leave the artistic product better especially, as will increasingly be seen.”

Veitch was not entirely wrong--the productions he planned (which extend through this season) have had box-office and critical appeal that have helped ticket sales increase. And he hired conductor John DeMain, nationally known for his work as a director of Houston Grand Opera, as Opera Pacific’s first-ever music director. Unfortunately, Veitch also left Opera Pacific with a deficit nearing $2 million.

An All-Out Effort to Shrink the Deficit

It was midway through the 1997-98 season that Hubbard began his tenure, at the request of the board. In short order, he cut the staff even more drastically, downscaled the company offices with a move from Irvine to Costa Mesa, worked out a deal with the Performing Arts Center to defray the company’s rent payments and help share some administrative duties and began an aggressive fund-raising campaign among his fellow opera supporters.

He set an immediate goal of $1.7 million in individual contributions and came close: $1.6 million came in by the end of the fiscal year, in August 1998. The board contributed another $800,000. Ticket sales fell about $300,000 short of goals, but still reached $2.6 million. Though the opera still lost money overall, the deficit was knocked down to just below $1 million.

At about the same time, Hubbard, strictly a money man, elevated DeMain to artistic director and principal conductor, and brought in Mitchell Krieger from Michigan Opera Theatre as company production chief.

“We’re getting a lot of production out of fewer people than we would normally be staffed with,” Hubbard said.

So far this season, Opera Pacific’s steady sailing continues. Ticket sales for Puccini’s popular “Madama Butterfly,” which opened the season in November, averaged 80% of the 3,000-seat house and brought in $825,000. Subscriptions continue to run at about 50%, bringing in $1.4 million. “Our goal for next season is to increase it to 51%-52%, then to 60%,” Hubbard said.

There is no danger of Opera Pacific folding, he said. “We will produce all of our operas this season. We have an objective this year to raise above and beyond our budget, an additional half million dollars toward that $964,000 deficit,” Hubbard said. “We will get that done. One of these days, I will be able to announce we’re totally out of the woods.”