After a Rocky Year, L.A. Opera Reworks Top Administration

Just a year and a half into a new era under the artistic leadership of superstar tenor Placido Domingo, Los Angeles Opera is reshuffling its top administrative structure.

In September, the opera’s executive director and Domingo’s co-equal, Ian White-Thomson, abruptly resigned. Now his job will be filled by an executive from the artistic side and another from the administrative side, who will jointly take over White-Thomson’s post and report to Domingo.

The changes come in the wake of a rocky transitional year of leadership struggles and financial problems. “It was a difficult year,” acknowledged board president Marc I. Stern. “It was not a smooth organization; it was not an optimal structure. Under this structure, Placido will be involved in all the decisions. We can no longer have any finger-pointing. That’s the beauty, or logic, of this organization.”

Artistic administrator Edgar Baitzel, hired originally as Domingo’s right hand for programming and casting, and the company’s director of development, Elizabeth Kennedy, a longtime opera staffer, will assume the newly created positions of director of artistic operations and director of administration, respectively, replacing White-Thomson, 65, who left midway through his three-year contract.

According to White-Thomson, formerly chairman and chief executive of U.S. Borax, Domingo’s travel and performance schedule made it difficult to get everyone to the table for discussions, so he was unable to get information about artistic plans soon enough to be able to exercise enough control over finances. Along with his artistic leadership of L.A. Opera, Domingo serves as artistic director of Washington Opera and maintains his globe-hopping singing career.

“It got so it was more pain than fun,” said White-Thomson of the $225,000-a-year post.

“I don’t think I had a bad relationship with Placido, it’s just that it wasn’t a relationship at all--that’s the trouble,” White-Thomson said. “He’s a charming person, very determined, and he’s made it perfectly clear that he does not regard being around the place as part of his job. He regards it as a positive virtue that he is around the world, arranging artistic things.

“It’s all very well to be somewhere else, doing wonderful things, but there are indirectly hundreds of employees of the company, and hundreds of thousands of donors. And you just need to have somebody there.”

For his part, Domingo said: “I’m there when I need to be. My kind of job is not a job where you stay in the office. The most important part of being an artistic director is to be able to establish relationships, to meet conductors, to see artists. If you are sitting here, you are not going to be able to do it.”

And of White-Thomson’s departure, he added, “We are sorry that he left. He’s a former board member, and he loves opera--but you know, things are like they are. He decided to go away at a time when I think the real dancing was only starting.

“I have artistic ideas that need to be matched with administrative ideas, and obviously Edgar and Elizabeth and I will have to work very much toward that. It is a very simple equation, and it was more or less the same way with Ian. He was not here long enough to see how it could work.”

Starting in July 2000, Domingo took over from retiring general director Peter Hemmings. Because opera seasons are planned years in advance, the 2000-01 season had already been set in motion by the outgoing Hemmings. The new leadership deliberately set about raising the opera’s annual operating budget of $25 million to $32 million, to begin in the 2001-02 season, the first to be planned by Domingo.

The increase reflects Domingo’s grand ambitions, which include programming more premieres and new productions in L.A. While some board members expressed initial fears about change, board chairman and chief executive Leonard I. Green said the group fully backs Domingo’s plans.

“Placido does have an artistic vision that is very exciting, and it’s going to be very expensive,” Green said. “He would like to raise the standards of this company and has, I think, to a great extent started to do that. To become one of the major opera companies in the country, and throughout the world, that clearly meant an expansion of our budget, which we all expected.”

Domingo has been able to raise the funds needed to cover increased artistic costs through major donations from his friend, worldwide opera benefactor Alberto Vilar, contributions from the Skirball and Mellon Foundations, the newly formed Domingo’s Angels donors group and other sources. Board president Stern said Domingo has already raised more than $20 million, payable over the next four years.

Still, the first season was fraught with money concerns on the administrative side. Advertising and marketing expenses for 2000-01 went about $800,000 over budget. Green said those dollars generated $500,000 more than expected in ticket revenues, so in the end the overage was “not significant,” but Stern said some board members were taken by surprise by the expenditures. However, then-marketing director Greg Patterson--who now holds a similar post at American Ballet Theatre--said all extra expenses were authorized or requested by company executives with approval of the board of directors.

Green also said that some of the operas selected by Hemmings for the 2000-01 season did not draw well, including Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes”--for which, he said, ticket sales “dropped off a cliff.”

And a lavish March fund-raising gala failed to deliver expected income, earning $1 million instead of $2 million. The expected $2 million was earmarked to be divided: half to apply to expenses of the 2000-01 season, and half to go toward the current 2001-02 season. Instead, the $1 million earned was applied only to the costs of the 2000-01 season. That left Domingo struggling to make his first season happen with $1 million less than he expected to have.

“We were dealing with things from the past, that’s always difficult; there were some surprises there,” Domingo said. “When you come to a new place, you expect everything to be fine, clean, but then, if it were a house, you find the garden needs this, the living room needs that. We start to find out there are some deficits there, but once you are here, what can you do?

“Little by little, we are getting back into shape. Any transition takes time for adjustment. That first year was really not my responsibility; I take full responsibility this year. It was a difficult year.”

Even with a new administration in place, the financial challenges will probably continue. Company leaders believe that the events of Sept. 11 caused the disappointing ticket sales for the first two operas of 2001-02--”Queen of Spades” and “Lohengrin” both opened in September. Despite glowing reviews, combined ticket sales for the operas fell short by $227,000 in expected ticket revenue.

Domingo also noted that, within the next few months, opera leadership must start deciding how, or whether, to expand its season when Walt Disney Concert Hall, new home for the L.A. Philharmonic, opens in 2003. Currently, the opera must program around the orchestra’s season at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, but it has the opportunity to add more performances when the orchestra moves out. Opera executives, he said, will be making those decisions with the financial uncertainties caused by Sept. 11 in mind.

Green said it is too soon to predict the company’s financial state at the end of this season. “We are faced with a different world today, and clearly the opera is going to do what it has to do in order to stay alive in the present, so we can stay alive in the future, and if we have to make some changes, we’ll do that,” Green said.

Still, Domingo said he does not expect the gloomy national picture to cause cancellations of operas--although the number of performances might be curtailed if necessary, and some non-subscription events could be canceled.

And he insists that his expensive plans to produce Wagner’s “Ring” cycle at the Shrine Auditorium, with special effects provided by George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic, will go forward--though it will probably delayed from the planned opening in 2003. The project is estimated to cost a minimum of $30 million to $35 million.

“It will have to happen--it’s just how that may be different,” Domingo said. “A great enthusiasm has been awakened for the ‘Ring,’ and it is not going to be any problem for the board, because I promise not to ask them for more [money]. The money will be raised especially for the ‘Ring.”’‘We are faced with a different world today, and clearly the opera is going to do what it has to do in order to stay alive in the present.’