Editorial: Going out on a “high” note

Por Charlene Baldridge

Dateline: April 30, 2014

The Los Angeles Times informs us that Colorado Symphony is creating a new “Classically Cannabis” series. Times reporter Paresh Dave wrote: “Searching for a new audience and struggling through diminishing financial support, the Colorado Symphony plans to start selling $75 tickets Wednesday to what it’s calling ‘Classically Cannabis: The High Note Series.’”

Does the part about “Searching for a new audience and struggling through diminishing financial support” …  sound familiar?

Perhaps those pondering the possible future of San Diego Opera should take note and take the high road, as well. Instead of the usual patron tent, they could erect a cannabis pavilion, dispensing tokes and brownies. Inside the Civic Theatre they could present “Rent” instead of the planned La Boheme, upon which the musical is based. That way, the committee to Save San Diego Opera might attract the “grass roots” support needed to prove that vox populi are truly interested in opera. Just a thought.

No matter how the brownies are sliced, one has to admire the hearty souls at Save San Diego Opera who believe the expensive spectacle of grand opera can be saved by raising $2 million. The rest will magically appear and some semblance of a season will go on! Also magically.

Grand opera, even in its singspiel guise, has always been the expression of something ineffable that human beings seek and fail to attain. Drugs may approximate the experience, but opera live is still the grand experience and the most costly of all the arts, requiring hundreds of paid artists to create it, including symphony players, wig makers, make up artists, dressers, stitchers, stage hands and technical people. If vox populi and the board follow their plans to economize, where does that put all these people? And will the singers hired for La Boheme be willing to tackle Rent?

They talk of alternative venues — smaller, more amenable theatrical venues — even sports stadiums and warehouses. Seriously, can you think of smaller venues that are suitable? And do you really want your “Tannhauser” in a tent? Every venue this writer has imagined comes up short in serious ways like bad acoustics that would require amplifying the singers, no fly space, and heavy bookings.

As for presenting lighter fare like musicals, we in San Diego already have arts organizations that do that, from new Broadway bound works at La Jolla Playhouse and the Old Globe, to standard fare at San Diego Musical Theatre, Moonlight Stage Productions in Vista, and Broadway San Diego, Cygnet Theatre, ion theatre company, and others who present the occasional musical. Each of these has their audience and support. Some are for-profit, some not; but the fact remains that presenting musicals is costly and raising money is tough, and the audience sometimes fails to materialize, no matter how vociferously the advance clamor, good reviews and assurances. San Diego Opera’s suggested plan to attract more and younger audience members by adding musicals is iffy at best.

According to personal taste, need and means, hidebound opera lovers travel to find what they need. They go across the “big pond,” they go to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Long Beach and San Francisco. They go to Santa Fe, a bastion of new work since its inception and now presenting standard fare along with the new. In these places we experience a satisfying range of fare.

More and more we have become proud of San Diego Opera and the international artists who have come to sing and conduct and direct. It’s just that we haven’t supported San Diego Opera as it deserved. And we haven’t heeded the warnings and pleas to contribute and subscribe.

Now we are beset with misinformation, panels of “experts” who don’t even have their facts straight, and recriminations amounting to character assassination.

If we have someone to blame, that relieves us of accountability. The barbarians are at the gates, our leader fatally compromised and furloughed, and the best we can come up is Coriolanus. Perhaps Rome must perish; perhaps San Diego gets what it deserves, and perhaps Coriolanus will limp along for a time. Even if the state is preserved, what we knew, loved and failed to support will take a different form.

— Charlene Baldridge has been writing about the arts since 1979, and has had her features, critiques, surveys and interviews included in various publications ever since. Her book “San Diego, Jewel of the California Coast” (Northland Publishing) is currently available in bookstores. She can be reached at [email protected].

LETRAS

More than fit

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—Kris Westley, vía sandiegodowntownnews.com

New biz appreciation

I applaud, to myself silently, when I see new businesses try new creative ideas [See “Encore Champagne bar pops into Gaslamp scene,” Vol 15, Issue 4]. Since there are many wine bars … it makes sense there would be a champagne bar.

—Michael Long, via sandiegodowntownnews.com

Bidding a polite adieu

Thank you for Charlene Baldridge’s insightful story on the closing of the San Diego Opera [See “Requiem for an Opera Company,” Vol 15, Issue 4]. Her experience in the community and its organizations is an important contribution to the dialogue. What seems to be getting lost in all the chest beating is that the times are changing; Ian Campbell recognizes it, and he wants to exit on a high note (pun intended).

We are surrounded by businesses and non profits that close and leave the taxpayers, employees (union employees, too, Ms Gonzalez) and contributors holding the bag. There are many of us out here who wish we had gotten this much notice when our jobs went away. What, I ask, is so wrong with the Opera wanting to close its doors with satisfied creditors, paid up employees, ticket-holders getting all the performances they paid for, and virtually no animosity with its donor base?

As pointed out in the article, Campbell was sounding a warning five years ago that the financial condition of the company was not sustainable. But through cost-cutting and efficiency, he has managed to keep it going in a relatively healthy state that other opera companies could not accomplish. Yet he is being criticized for being responsible in this very effort, providing cultural enrichment and real employment, for those five years. Such hypocrisy.

In an earlier statement, Campbell discusses a condition he calls “donor fatigue.” He is precisely on the mark about this malady, and it’s one that is seldom addressed in the public arena because the discussion inevitably degenerates into a “haves vs. have-nots” argument.

Not-for-profit fundraisers, of which I am one, will gladly tell you that dozens of organizations, ranging from the symphony to homeless shelters, stand in line to ask for money from a short list of individuals who care enough about San Diego to part with money to support these causes. I was fortunate to once work for a great patron of the Opera, and he would often lament that he couldn’t contribute more to the Company to help it reach higher goals. And he had Hollywood connections.

Perhaps more self-examination and reflection is in order, too. San Diegans have shown that they don’t want to spend more tax dollars to support the arts nor, it seems, are they willing to cough up another estimated 30 percent to cover the actual value of the ticket. We can’t have it both ways without paying for it. I applaud Campbell for trying to keep the ticket price accessible to several income brackets while paying living wages to the performers, musicians, stagehands, and office workers.

Tens of thousands of us seem willing to pay a lot more than the price of an opera ticket to see a football or baseball game. Or accept a bank executive being paid millions to loot our retirement plan with impunity. A big donor stepped forward to help fund infrastructure improvements at Balboa Park but was slapped down when those ideas weren’t acceptable to someone else’s ideas, which, it turns out, can’t get funding, either.

Extrañaré la Ópera de San Diego y lo que contribuye a una cultura vibrante, pero también acepto que estamos viviendo un nuevo paradigma y todos estamos encontrando formas de sobrellevarlo. Ian Campbell y la Ópera son dignos de elogio por hacerlo con gracia.

—Ronn Rohe, via sandiegodowntownnews.com