“The curtain has gone back up on the San Diego Opera,” and by extension, on the San Diego Symphony, which provides musicians for the opera, writes James Chute in Monday’s (5/19) San Diego Union-Tribune. “The opera’s board of directors voted to rescind the board’s March 19 vote to shut down the company.… The opera held a 10 a.m. Monday news conference to announce the decision and release a 2015 season of three operas at the Civic Theatre: Puccini’s ‘La Boheme,’ … Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni,’ … John Adams’ ‘Nixon in China,’… [and] a pair of gala concerts … with the San Diego Symphony at Jacobs Music Center. The opera had set a condition of raising $1 million through a crowdfunding campaign by May 19 to avoid closure.… The opera met that $1 million crowdfunding goal 10 days early, and last week surpassed the $2 million mark…. In all, the opera will need to raise an estimated $6.5 million in contributed income toward a projected operating budget of $10.5 million for 2015…. The 2015 budget represents nearly a 40 percent reduction from 2014. Those cuts will come in part from scaling the season back from the four operas … to three operas, savings in production costs, some staffing changes, and the company moving to smaller and more economical office space when its lease on the top floor of the Civic Center Plaza ends in late July.”
Posted May 20, 2014
