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Calvin: Is the process of putting together a season a
maddening responsibility or a delightful challenge?
Stone: It’s a delightful challenge from the artistic
point of view and a nightmare from the standpoint of balancing the books.
Pell: It’s one of the most enjoyable things we do.
It’s like planning a dinner party for ten thousand subscribers.
Calvin: Where does the process begin?
Stone: The process begins by looking at what operas
have been produced in the past (because we don’t want to repeat ourselves too
often) and trying to find a balance between the more popular works that appeal
to a broader audience and those new or rarely performed works that will engage
and challenge our audiences.
Pell: It’s all about balance and combining different
flavors, combining more exotic things with the more familiar staples. As I’ve
said many times, I’m a chocaholic, but even I know that you can’t have
chocolate for every course! You need a menu that will appeal to a broad
cross-section of people. Finding the perfect balance of new repertoire, old
repertoire, things we have or have not done before, is terribly exciting. When
you get it right, you know it.
Calvin: People will want to know whether we follow
some sort of tried-and-true formula to arrive at a great season, or is there
such a thing?
Stone: We follow one formula, I suppose, and this is
that it’s always good to start off the season with a piece or a title or a
composer that is popular and has something familiar about it. It helps to
launch a season, and it’s very good to finish in a same way, because popular
works generate subscription renewals for the following season. Outside of that,
you weigh the advantages and calculate your risks, in varying degrees, as you
construct the remainder of the season.
Pell: I’ve often said that The Dallas Opera is
“availability driven.” We can plan to do a particular piece but if we can’t
get the right ingredients, we have to decide whether to accept that it will be
less than ideal or postpone it for some other time “when the truffles are in
season.”
Calvin: How do patron requests factor into the
decision-making process?
Stone: The patron requests are immensely important to
us. We ask for them on the Maria Callas Debut Artist of the Year Award ballot
that goes out to subscribers at the end of each season and, in fact, our 50th
Anniversary Season presented us with a marvelous opportunity to respond to
audience wishes. The number one piece that has been requested over the years –
the piece that we’d never performed – is Verdi’s great opera, Nabucco,
which will open next season. We do listen to our audience.
Calvin: What is it that motivates the Company to
launch a brand-new production? And how do you decide that you’re going to do
that, rather than go with an already established production? And how does that
affect the overall season plan?
Stone: On two levels, really. I think, first of
all, that anytime we do something new it creates a palpable energy. Producing
a new opera, assembling a team, the stage director, scenic designer, costume
and lighting designers creates a distinctive sort of energy in the house that
communicates itself to the audience. There’s a freshness, a cutting-edge
feeling to the process. Also, it’s also very useful to be a producing opera
company because we rent-out our productions after we create them. Over the
years, this has generated a huge amount of income for The Dallas Opera. So, we
consider it an investment with a very good return. However, the amount of time
in our workshops, the costs and the risks you absorb, going in, have to be
balanced against the option of bringing in a successful, already established
production from another company; one that seems a ready “fit” with our
audience.
Calvin: When planning a season, do you put more
stock or trust in your past experiences or your personal instincts?
Stone: That’s an interesting question. I think it’s
a bit of both, really. There are operas that work in certain countries: If you
are in Austria, they adore their operettas; in England, they love Gilbert &
Sullivan. Do these same pieces work as well in America, or Italy? Not necessarily. So, I think you have to take the time to learn the tastes of your audience
and remember that your prior experience may be geographically limited. At the
same time, the experience of what has worked well, what commits an audience,
what bonds them to you – some of that comes from experience, some from your
feelings or instincts and a lot from simply asking other people the right
questions.
Calvin: When I try to picture the two of you, Music
Director Graeme Jenkins, Production Director John Gage and Marketing Director
Jennifer Schuder all in the same room, making these decisions, the first thing
that strikes me is the very strong personalities you possess. How difficult is
it to achieve a consensus?
Pell: It isn’t really that hard. There are economic
issues, of course. If we’re going to do a large opera, like Lohengrin,
we need to do a smaller piece, like The Barber of Seville. And you
have a number of columns to consider: operas the public has asked for, operas
that are wildly popular and will attract new audiences, operas we’ve never done
before, and less familiar works we believe could be loved by our audiences.
When you start to work through the logistics, for example, you want a
particular singer for a particular piece but they are only available at another
time, you have to weigh the price of moving that piece.
Calvin: Like a game of “three-dimensional chess.”
Pell: Exactly; but with a lot of variables.
Stone: It ‘tis a complicated game. You say,
“three-dimensional chess,” and I seem to remember watching a clip from one of
the Harry Potter movies showing an extraordinary ballgame where they were all
flying through the air! I think there are lots of different elements: One of
them is, the repertory we haven’t done, new repertory and well-known repertory;
the other x-factor is the singer we would love to bring back to Dallas or introduce to our audience. Once they find a slot in their calendar, we try to
build a production around that availability. Dallas has always been famous for
its singers and that’s a tradition we try to both honor and develop.
Calvin: And do you, as General Director, have the final
vote?
Stone: My grandfather was a captain who said, “My
ship is a democracy and I run it.” I think that’s more or less the answer to
your question. Yes, you have the entire team up there but, at the end of the
day, someone has to make the decision and then take the responsibility. If
it’s the wrong decision, you can’t turn around and say, “Well, they said
we should do it.” You’ve got to back your own decision one hundred percent,
once you’ve made that call.
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