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California's new state budget reduces arts funding 7.6%
Mike Boehm
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Culture Monster (Los Angeles Times)
Arts advocates who tried to throw a touchdown bomb in Sacramento this
spring were sacked for a loss instead Friday as the California
Legislature passed a $234-billion budget that cuts funding for the
state's arts grant-making agency 7.6%. The budget for the 2013-14 fiscal year that begins July 1
includes $5.024 million for the California Arts Council — $412,000 less
than its current funding.
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Lyric Lyric Opera of Chicago breaks even, ticket sales up 15 percent
Andrew Patner
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Chicago Sun-Times
Given the many additional post-season and in-season programs via the
educational, outreach and community division dubbed Lyric Unlimited,
general director Anthony Freud and president and CEO Kenneth G. Pigott
can take special pride in this achievement. A total of 264,000 tickets
were sold for the season, 15 percent more than last year.
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Nashville Symphony, musicians plan talks on new contract
Walter Roche
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The Tennessean
Officials of the union representing the musicians at the Nashville Symphony Association said negotiations over a new contract are set to begin this week even as the symphony’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center is facing a June 28 foreclosure auction.
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Lyric Opera [of Chicago] signs off on busiest season ever
John von Rhein
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Chicago Tribune
Lyric Opera's unprecedented effort this past season to make itself more generally relevant and to provide what general director Anthony Freud calls “a broader, deeper cultural service to more people around the city” appears to have paid off.
What's more, the company ended its 2012-13 season in the black, just as it has done for 25 of the past 26 years.
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Sacramento County lags in U.S. arts study
Edward Ortiz
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The Sacramento Bee
Sacramento County trails in many categories in a national study
that seeks to quantify the economic impact that nonprofit arts
organizations have on their communities. Conducted every five
years by the Washington-based arts advocacy organization Americans for
the Arts, the study "Arts and Economic Prosperity" looks at spending by
arts nonprofits and audiences. For the most recent study, covering
fiscal year 2010-11, Americans for the Arts surveyed and gathered
information from 182 communities in all 50 states.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/06/16/5500055/area-lags-in-us-arts-study.html#storylink=cpy
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Portland has so far collected $7.6 million in arts tax payments
Ryan Kost
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The Oregonian
A day after the third — and final — arts tax deadline, Portland city
officials say they've collected about $7.6 million dollars from nearly
250,000 taxfilers. City staffers are still sorting through 10,000 paper tax returns and
the city's Revenue Bureau expects to collect about $8.3 million by the
end of the month.
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Opera Theatre of Saint Louis gets $500,000 from Saigh Foundation
Matthew Hibbard
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St. Louis Business Journal
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis has received an endowment grant of $500,000 from The Saigh Foundation,
which will increase the Fred M. Saigh Endowment Fund at Opera Theatre
to more than $1.5 million, according to a statement from the company.
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Free opera for the unemployed
Staff
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euronews.com
The ancient Atticus Theatre opened its doors to 1,500 unemployed Greek
citizens this week, for a one-off free performance of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman.
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How Much Is Michael Bolton Worth to You?
Adam Davidson
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The New York Times
Few products are so underpriced that an entire subsidiary industry
exists to take advantage of the discrepancy. When there is excess demand
for a new car or phone, some people might sell theirs at a markup on
eBay, but there’s nobody across the street from the dealership or Best
Buy offering it right away for double the sticker price; there certainly
isn’t an entire corporation built on exploiting companies’ failure to
properly price items initially. Yet concerts and sporting events
consistently price their tickets low enough that street scalpers risk
jail time to hawk marked-up tickets, and StubHub makes hundreds of
millions a year in revenue.
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Big state arts funding bill falters, so backers lower the ante
Mike Boehm
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Culture Monster (Los Angeles Times)
A bill in Sacramento that would have decisively erased California’s longstanding dubious distinction as the stingiest state in the nation for arts-grant funding has failed for now. Some backers hope it might be revived next year. The bill would have secured $75 million in guaranteed annual funding for the California Arts Council but was frozen last week without a vote. Now advocates aim to persuade legislators and Gov. Jerry Brown to give the agency at least a modest increase as they determine the state budget for the coming fiscal year.
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Commentary: Why every artist should work at a startup
Clayton Weller
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GeekWire
The startup scene is vibrant and is constantly reinventing itself. While running Freak’n Genius, I stayed active in the arts community and I finally had some perspective. At a startup, I was doing satisfying work, getting paid to do it, and wondering: “Why isn’t art like this?”
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Opera Is Not Dead
G.W. Bowersock
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New Republic
Writing music that complements and illuminates a previously prepared text
takes its inspiration from the plot, however dreary or inept, and the
conjunction of plot, text, and music must inevitably lie at the core of
any history of opera.
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Lyric Opera of Chicago mum for now about "Oklahoma!" ticket sales
Lewis Lazare
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Chicago Business Journal
The just-concluded run of the classic American musical Oklahoma! was uncharted territory for the prestigious Lyric Opera of Chicago. It was the first time the opera company had produced an extended engagement of a musical separate from its regular season offerings.
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Song of Houston operas redefine the art form
Steven Brown
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Houston Chronicle
"Bound" is one in a series of works that have helped Houston Grand Opera redefine what its art form means to a 21st-century city. After centuries as a song of faraway lands and people - hotheaded lovers, ailing heroines, insatiable villains - opera has become a Song of Houston.
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Survival Economics: Small Opera Companies Drive Change
Molly Colin
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San Francisco Classical Voice
Welcome to the world of small opera companies, where rising costs and
diminished private and public support require a constant shifting of
gears to stay viable. Some companies are reinventing themselves with
complex business models. Others are sharing productions as a way to trim
costs and increase production values. No matter what model these
companies choose, however, they’re all chasing funds to sustain
themselves.
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Is An MFA The New MBA?
Steven Tepper
•
Fast Company
Organizations far and wide — perhaps even yours — will compete intensely for workers who are adaptable, resourceful, and can quickly learn and apply new skills to a variety of challenges. Where can you find such workers? One answer runs counter to much conventional wisdom: Ask an artist.
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Will Women Billionaires Make Better Philanthropists?
Anya Kamenetz
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FastCoExist.com
The phenomenon of women being personally responsible for giving away billions is really new. Currently women hold almost three-fourths of all jobs, and almost half of all CEO positions, in the nonprofit sector. But they are much more underrepresented at the board and executive level at the really big large charities, the ones with more than $25 million in the bank.
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Met Opera Dismantles Its Ballet in Buyouts
Allan Kozinn
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The New York Times
The Metropolitan Opera
has decided to disband its resident ballet company, whose roots date
back to the opera’s founding in 1883. The 8 remaining dancers of the
Metropolitan Opera Ballet, down from 16 in 2011, have accepted buyout
packages and left the company, their union confirmed.
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OPERA America Program to Aid 13 Companies
Allan Kozzinn
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ArtsBeat (The New York Times)
Thirteen opera companies across the United States will share $300,000 in grants awarded by OPERA America in the first year of its new Building Opera Audiences program. The grants, which range from $7,500 to $30,000, are for programs meant to increase first-time opera attendance, and to increase return visits.
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Why Not Have City Opera Go Home to City Center?
Anthony Tommasini
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The New York Times
Last spring, reflecting on the completion of New York City Opera’s first
season as an itinerant company bringing productions to the people in
theaters throughout the city, George Steel, its general and artistic
director, defended his decision to abandon Lincoln Center and argued
that things were going well.
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Theater's Expiring Subscription Model
Terry Teachout
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The Wall Street Journal
"I'm in the ticket-selling business. If I don't sell tickets, we shut
down. We used to do it by selling subscriptions. That gave us money up
front, and it also made it easier for me to do serious work, because
people were buying a five-show package, and they trusted me to give them
a well-chosen, wide-ranging package each year. We'd do a comedy, a new
play or two, a classical revival, maybe a couple of modern classics.
August Wilson, Tennessee Williams, that kind of thing. Sometimes they
didn't like all five. Maybe they never did. But they still went home
feeling like they'd gotten a balanced diet, they'd done their duty to
theater. And that used to matter to people. It really did. They thought
that seeing good shows made you a better person."
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Atlanta Opera Appoints Tomer Zvulun as General & Artistic Director
Staff
•
broadwayworld.com
Beginning June 1, 2013, Tomer Zvulun will become the Atlanta Opera's new general and artistic director. At only 37 years old, Zvulun is hailed as a rising star in the opera industry, and has earned consistent praise for his creative vision and work in prestigious opera houses worldwide, including The Metropolitan Opera, and the opera companies of Seattle, Cleveland, Dallas, Cincinnati, Buenos Aires, Wolf Trap and more. Zvulun, an Israeli native, will manage both the artistic and administrative aspects of The Atlanta Opera.
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BBC Proms 2013 announced
Staff
•
Gramophone
The BBC Proms has unveiled its programme for this summer’s season. The announcement confirms details of the already-anticipated Ring Cycle from Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin, with soloists including Nina Stemme and Bryn Terfel. Other events marking the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth include Tristan and Isolde with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Semyon Bychkov, Tannhäuser with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Donald Runnicles, and Parsifal with the Hallé under Sir Mark Elder. Marin Alsop will conduct the Last Night, becoming the first female conductor to do so.
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Syracuse Opera's artistic director Cathy Wolff departs after almost 17 years
Melinda Johnson
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Syracuse.com
Cathy Wolff, general and artistic director of Syracuse Opera, is leaving her position after almost 17 years. Wolff announced her departure in an email. She wrote: “The leadership of the board has decided to take the company in a different direction from what I envisioned, and I have decided to close this chapter of my life, effective immediately.”
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What if an Arts Organization was a MOOC?
Douglas McLennan
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Diacritical
That’s “Massive Open Online Course” and they’re everywhere right now. Some of the most prestigious universities are creating courses online and attracting tens of thousands of students.
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Obama's arts budget plan goes beyond restoring 'sequester' cuts
Mike Boehm
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Culture Monster (Los Angeles Times)
President Obama’s budget proposal for the coming fiscal year would boost
federal arts spending 10% above where it stands at the moment, lifting
it to $1.58 billion for the 2013-14 budget year that begins Oct. 1 and
more than compensating for cuts from the "budget sequestration" bill
that went into effect last month.
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Opera Colorado announces 2014 slimmed-down season
Claudia Carbone
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Examiner.com
Opera Colorado has announced that its 2014 season will include only two productions: Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi and Carmen by Georges Bizet. In January of this year, the company announced a reorganization with a
$1.2 million fundraising campaign that pared its offerings to two
productions instead of the usual three per season. The "Stories that
Sing" campaign has raised more than $1.3 million thus far, and donations
are being accepted at operacolorado.org/support.
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Opera House calls in a principal partner
Tim Douglas
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The Australian
The Sydney Opera House has taken on a principal partner for the first time in its 40-year history as it positions itself to undertake renovations worth up to $1 billion during the next decade.
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Tapestry Opera delays production, faces budget crunch
Trish Crawford
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Toronto Star
Tapestry, which has been providing new operas for 34 years, is facing a budget crunch. The Toronto-based opera company announced Tuesday that the upcoming production of Shelter, which was to open in Toronto in June 2013, will be delayed until 2014. Tapestry will instead launch a $100,000 fundraising campaign with an “Opera Unites Us” theme.
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New leader of Sacramento philharmonic/opera alliance to bring European viewpoint
Edward Ortiz
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The Sacramento Bee
A native New Yorker with extensive experience staging opera, symphonic
music and other art forms has been picked to lead the soon-to-be merged
organizations of the Sacramento Philharmonic and Sacramento Opera.
Read
more here:
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/04/07/5322392/new-leader-of-sacramento-philharmonicopera.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy
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Raymonds give Palm Beach Opera $50,000 challenge grant
Jan Sjostrom
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Palm Beach Daily News
By now, most audience members know that ticket revenues fall far short of the cost of supporting an opera company. In
Palm Beach Opera’s case, its $1.2 million in ticket sales cover less
than a third of its $3.8 million annual operating budget. That’s
why Palm Beach residents Beverlee and John Raymond have given the
company a $50,000 challenge grant to encourage fans to not only buy
tickets, but also donate. Each contribution will be matched up to
$50,000.
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Bass, Tenor, Alto, Sombrero
Jennifer Maloney
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The Wall Street Journal
As opera companies and symphony orchestras across the country confront
financial crises, Houston's main company is undergoing a surprising
resurgence. The Houston Grand Opera is commissioning new works that tap
into city's growing Hispanic community. Its most ambitious commission to
date, "Cruzar la Cara de la Luna," or "To Cross the Face of the Moon,"
is the world's first mariachi opera, the company says.
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And the nominees for this award which is sponsored by . . .
Ken Davenport
•
The Producer's Perspective
The Olivier Awards (London’s Tonys) announced their nominations last week. If you didn’t catch them, click here to see the complete list. And then let me know if you noticed anything ... ummmmm ... interesting.
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Arts Hub for All May Work for None
Anthony Tommasini
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The New York Times
The visionary architect Frank Gehry remains committed to designing the
performing arts center at the site of the former World Trade Center. But
what exactly has Mr. Gehry been asked to design? What is it for? Which
institutions, ensembles or companies will perform in the complex? Who
will be its artistic leader?
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Juggling the craft of cultural leadership
Matthew Westwood
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The Australian
One senior arts professional said recently she could easily work 15
to 18 hours every day: mornings that start with breakfast board
meetings, evenings that end with networking at after-show drinks. No one
could question the commitment of people who make their livelihood in
the arts. You just wouldn't do it for the pay alone.
Yet the
responsibilities are great. The chief executive of Big Corp has to deal
with shareholders, staff and customers. Arts managers have a fraction of
a corporation's turnover yet have many stakeholders: often three levels
of government, multiple donors and sponsors. The level of stakeholder
servicing can seem grossly disproportionate to the sums involved.
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