This interview was originally recorded on March 27th, 2024.
The Oral History Project is supported by the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation.

Evans Mirageas, arts administrator 

Evans Mirageas joined Cincinnati Opera as its Harry T. Wilks artistic director in 2005, bringing over 40 years of experience in opera and symphonic and chamber music, as well as a long history of successful partnerships with many of the world’s leading singers, conductors, and composers. Mirageas’ varied career in classical music has included radio production with the WFMT radio station in Chicago, artistic administrator to Seiji Ozawa at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, senior vice president of artists and repertoire for Decca Records, and for 15 years, vice president of artistic planning for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. His board affiliations include the William Matheus Sullivan Foundation for singers, of which he is president. Since 1999, Mirageas has served as an independent artistic advisor to conductors, instrumentalists, singers, symphony orchestras, opera companies, and other performing arts organizations throughout the United States and Europe.

Transcript

Marc A. Scorca: Evans Mirageas, welcome to our Oral History Project, and thank you so much for taking time to speak with me today.

Evans Mirageas: You're very welcome, Marc; always a pleasure.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, it's going to be our pleasure, I know. And you've probably seen some of my interviews. You know the first question: who brought you to your first opera?

Evans Mirageas: I took myself, actually. It was a student production of Eugene Onegin, and this will date me, and the time of the performance, because I was at the University of Michigan. Friends in the music school were singing and everybody was wearing Nehru jackets. So it's the early '70's, while I was still an undergraduate at the University of Michigan.

Marc A. Scorca: Your affinity for classical music began at a very young age, so it would not be outside your normal exploratory, curious personality to bring yourself to the opera. When did the classical music bug bite?

Evans Mirageas: When I was a preteen, I would go to Greek weddings and Greek baptisms and Greek festivals, and there was always a band. And the band usually consisted of a bouzouki player, which is the Greek double stringed instrument (sort of like a mandolin with a neck problem), guitar, bass and drums and clarinet. And when the clarinet player got up, everybody got up on the dance floor. Everybody wanted to dance. When the, as it were, snake charmer took out his instrument. And so I made up my mind that I wanted to play clarinet, to be in a Greek wedding band, essentially. And so, still in late elementary school, I started playing clarinet. In those days, in the early '60's in Ann Arbor, the school music program was generous enough, so that you could actually take instruments while still in elementary school. And when I got to junior high school (in those days, that's seventh, eighth, and ninth grade)...I'm the son of an offset printer. My Dad had a small printing shop, so I like order and putting things back where they belong and paper and ink and so on and so forth. And I volunteered early mornings, before school started to be in the joint office of the band, orchestra and choral director to file music from the rehearsals of the day before. So, this is probably the middle of seventh grade, maybe towards the end of seventh grade. I'm in there one morning, and the orchestra teacher is playing a record. Remember records Marc?, You have a few still. And he was playing a recording, and it fascinated me, 'cause I'd never heard an orchestra before. And I said, "What is that?" And he could have been speaking Martian, but he replied to me, "Oh, Evans, that's the Tchaikovsky violin concerto with Jascha Heifetz and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fritz Reiner". And I said, "Wow!" Two days later, same thing happened, but now it was the Brahms violin concerto. (He was a violinist, of course). A few days later, it was the Beethoven violin concerto, by the way, all with Heifetz. He was a Heifetz nut. So eventually I said to him, where can I get this stuff? And he said, well, there's a record store here in town called the Liberty Music Shop. No relation, by the way, to the fabled one in New York; it was completely independent. And mind you, this is also the mid to late '60's, so there are lots of record stores in a college town. But Liberty Music specialized in classical music, and they had salespeople who were knowledgeable in classical music, and so I started buying records there. But my allowance was three bucks a week. And so I could afford what, in those days, was called a budget LP, which cost $2.98. So I would go into this record store, pester the staff, take four different recordings of the Brahms First Symphony into the little booth where you could still play records in those days, sample them with all the intensity of a fervent teenager, and buy one. And it was always the cheap one, of course. So after about, I don't know, call it eight weeks of doing this - and I went in religiously every Friday when I got my allowance - the owner came over to me, (widow's peak, cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth), scared me to bits. And he said to me, "Kid, I don't know what I'm gonna do with you. You come in here every week with your lousy three bucks. You bother my staff. You listen to 10 records and you walk out with one, and it's always a budget record". So Marc, I was terrified. I thought, he's gonna kick me outta the store, and then he said the words that changed my life. He said, "Want a job?" And I started working part-time at that record store, after school, from the beginning of eighth grade until I graduated from college.

Marc A. Scorca: Until you graduated from college?

Evans Mirageas: Yeah. I worked after school. And as a matter of fact, I had to take the bus from school until I got my driver's license, and I remember my Mom, or my Dad would pick me up after work. And then on Fridays, when he closed the door - now mind you, I'm 15 or 16 years old - I was the one who had to go to the back of the store and get the beers out of the fridge for them to have their regular Friday beer. But the turning point in that relationship, as far as regular classical music was concerned, was one day, Mr. Mauerhof was his name, said to me, "You know Evans, records are only a photograph. You've gotta go to concerts". And Ann Arbor then and now had a spectacular live music program called the University Musical Society. And I said, "Mr. Mauerhof, my Dad runs a print shop. I mean, we don't have money for concert tickets". And he says, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I buy four tickets for everything the Musical Society produces. My wife and I use two, and I give away the other two to college students, or someone who wanders into the store who likes something". He says, "From now on, you're guaranteed one of them". So Marc, before I left high school, I'd seen every major orchestra. I saw Luciano Pavarotti's first US recital tour. He gave his first recital in Liberty, Missouri, the second one in Ann Arbor. On and on and on and on and on. So I had the keys to the kingdom from a very early age, but opera wasn't part of it, at first.

Marc A. Scorca: I've been listening to keep track of that. So, it wasn't until college then that you opened that next chapter.

Evans Mirageas: Because Garrett Mauerhof was very smart, 'cause I had said some stupid teenage things about, "Oh, I don't like all those screaming voices". And he said, one day on a Friday or a Saturday, 'cause I would take (records) home for a couple days, he said, "Here, take home this recording". It was of all things Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, not Carmen, not Aida, not Bohème - Pearl Fishers. He said, "If you don't like it, bring it back. You don't have to buy it". So I took it home. It was the old Angel recording with Janine Micheau, Nicolai Gedda, Ernest Blanc, Jacques Mars, Pierre Dervaux conducting. Anyway, of course, it was one great melody after another, and I was hooked. I said, "Wow". But the real turning point was spring of '78 - so I was out of college by this point, still working part-time at the record store, already working nearly full-time at the radio station at the University of Michigan...A friend of mine had studied Russian in college, and he'd seen that The Metropolitan Opera on tour was coming to Detroit, and part of the tour that year was Boris Godunov. And I think they may have still been singing it in English, I'm not quite sure. But he wanted to go, and I had a car and he didn't. So I said, "I'll take you, I'll go". So I read up on the piece. I was very studious and listened to some recordings. And there we are in the Masonic Auditorium in Detroit. Boris Godunov starts. Now, you know how it starts, Marc. There's first the scene in the monk's cell, then Dmitri decides he's gonna go off and change the world. Then there's the big scene in the square, before the monastery, where supposedly Boris is praying for guidance in order to accept the throne. And there's (sings) "Slava, slava", full Metropolitan Opera Chorus on the stage, and there's these enormous brocaded carpets in the middle of the stage. And I thought, "Okay, well that's what's gonna happen. Boris is gonna come down those stairs, he's gonna stand on the carpet and begin his first great monologue". This incredible, I think it's a dominant seventh chord, and then Boris is supposed to appear...no Boris. So I thought, "What's happened? Something's gone wrong". Then the carpet stood up. All six foot plus Jerome Hines had been laying on the floor praying, and the carpet was his robe, and the entire audience gasped. And I thought, "If this is opera, I could get into this".

Marc A. Scorca: Wow. Well, you know, The Met tour for sure, college productions. And you know, I hear that you are a very self-motivated classical music expert, that it wasn't that your father, who had a print shop, also played piano four-hands with your mother at home. You were a very, very self-driven music lover. And you've already mentioned the radio station. I wanted to get there, because I know that the first of your many careers, and you are a man with many careers, was in radio. And, this is a chicken and egg question: when you were in Michigan in Ann Arbor, and had your radio program, was that because you wanted a career in radio? Or did you have a job that just actually pointed you to a career in radio?

Evans Mirageas: My parents told me that when even I was a little kid, I set up a radio station in the basement. It was all makeup stuff, none of it was real. And I did radio broadcasts, myself. When I was about, probably it was fifth grade, there was a very pretty girl in my class named Joanne Petersagen. And what I found out about Joanne, is that her dad was the manager of the biggest, local AM radio station. So I asked her, "Could we someday go and visit your dad's radio station?" And she took me, and I met her dad, who was the program director, but it was also the radio station that on Sunday nights offered an hour of program time to the local Greek Students Association at the University of Michigan. And they would recite soccer scores from Greece. They would tell all the news from Greece and play Greek records. And I was fanatic about Greek music. I claim only one thing at which I am really expert, Marc, I'm a really good Greek dancer. That's the only thing I'll ever be proud of, is I'm a good Greek dancer.

Marc A. Scorca: To think that I've known you this long and I've never seen that.

Evans Mirageas: Come to a wedding.

Marc A. Scorca: It gets added to the list.

Evans Mirageas: But what happened was, that I was given a birthday present. I probably was 11 and one late Sunday night, my Dad took me down to the radio station, and I sat in and announced a few things in Greek. I spoke, and I still speak pretty good Greek. So, that was the beginning of my getting hooked on radio. Spin forward to college, the fall of my freshman year. There was a campaign to start a radio station within the dormitory system. And there was a representative from the local student radio station, the 10 Watt Stereo FM Studio Station. Mind you, this is 1972, and he saw my enthusiasm and said, "You don't wanna work for this dormitory. Why don't you come down and audition for the real radio station?" So, I went down and I did an audition, and I was given the classical music slot, 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM on Sunday morning. I had one listener that ever called me, and he was my good buddy from high school, Warren Deck, who was a fantastic tuba player. He eventually became the tuba player of the New York Philharmonic. But what that did, is it gave me a chance to be terrible, and make all sorts of mistakes, and sort of figure it out as I went along. But my claim to fame, and I think part of the thing that really solidified my fanaticism for classical music, is that very early on, during study break, right before finals of every semester, I organized a classical music marathon. 72 hours of nonstop classical music to study by. And I co-opted all these rock and roll DJs, and all these sports guys. I made little pronouncer cards for them, and we did a two and a half day festival of classical music. That got noticed by the big radio station, WUOM, the 50,000 Watt FM station. In those days, public radio was everything. It wasn't just news or public affairs, it was classical music and jazz and so on. Anyway, the guy who was the manager of the student station had a new girlfriend, and he wanted to lessen his hours at the university station, and so he said, "You should audition for the university station". So, I auditioned for the big station. I was still in my freshman year. And by the summer of my freshman year, I was working part-time at the radio station doing Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons, and working at the record store, and carrying a full load of classes.

Marc A. Scorca: How do you audition for a radio job?

Evans Mirageas: Oh, Marc, I have the tape. When I left Ann Arbor in the fall of 1982 to go to work for WFMT in Chicago, my beloved mentor, Steven Skelly, who was my boss, the music director of the radio station, had saved my audition tape. Oh, my!

Marc A. Scorca: Oh, I would love to hear that.

Evans Mirageas: Arrogant, mispronunciations, sounding like I was, you know, a combination of Edward R. Murrow and I don't know who, Duncan Purney and Milton Cross, but I guess I had an enthusiasm that they recognized and they realized they could train.

Marc A. Scorca: That's just fabulous. And I think I've seen once a script for a classical radio station audition where every difficult composer, you know, Szymanowski is listed there, and every conductor from central Europe is listed there, just to try to see whether you know the pronunciations. It's really quite something.

Evans Mirageas: Well, and also in that career too, I had to do the news, and I had to do the sports, and I had to do the weather. And I have the distinction of having been the guy on duty of the famous Saturday Night Massacre in the time that led up to Nixon's resignation. So it was a momentous time.

Marc A. Scorca: We're talking then, because Nixon, that's '73, '74, and then you say '82, you went to WFMT. So were you working for the radio stations in Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids throughout that whole time?

Evans Mirageas: Yeah. What the plan was, that when I graduated from college, I was going to seek my fortune in a radio station outside of Ann Arbor. And my father died at the beginning of my senior year in college, and I had three very much younger siblings. So I made a deal with my Mom that I would stick around Ann Arbor until my youngest sibling graduated from high school, and that happened to be the spring of 1982. And along about that time, I'd gotten noticed by WFMT in Chicago. We hosted a radio conference in Ann Arbor. I was demonstrating the recording techniques I had perfected at the University Musical Society concerts, and WFMT was about to launch a program for which they needed a producer. And it had the wonderful premise, that if you had all the money you needed, and all the time you wanted, and you loved classical music, what would you do every week? Would you go to Bayreuth for the opening of the festival? Would you go to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania for the Bach Festival? Would you go to the opening night at The Met? Would you go see the new Ring Cycle being premiered in Seattle? And so I was hired to be the producer of that program. So every week on Monday, I'd fly out of Chicago to someplace, eventually including Europe. Tuesday and Wednesday, I'd collect interviews, maybe record a rehearsal, dash back to Chicago, madly - sometimes through the night - edit the tape, - mind you, this is editing tape with a razor blade - write the program, and then my boss would voice the program. It would be put up on the satellite on Friday - wash, rinse, repeat. And I did that for 39 weeks a year for seven years. But what that gave me, was carte blanche entrance to every great musical activity in our country, and eventually also in Europe, for one really specific reason. I was not a journalist doing an exposé on what your conductor is doing in his off time. I was going to give you an hour of free national publicity, 'cause the radio program was heard on 110 radio stations around the United States. So I met everyone - (Claudio) Abbado and (Georg) Solti. The one I missed was (Herbert von) Karajan, unfortunately. But I interviewed every great artist of the '80's during my time working for WFMT in Chicago. But my love of opera increased in that time, because my then program director, Norm (Norman) Pellegrini felt that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Georg Solti were his personal property, and I was to get nowheres near the orchestra, but he was very relaxed about the Lyric Opera. So I also became what they call the line producer for Lyric Opera broadcasts. So from '82 to '89, I basically lived at 20 North Wacker six months out of the year, when I wasn't on the road, recording interviews backstage, going to rehearsals, and most importantly, watching Ardis Krainik like a hawk. She was my model for an opera impresario, because she was fair, charming, she had dimples of steel, and she knew how to treat artists. So I had such a great lesson in being backstage and watching, you know, (Luciano) Pavarotti and (Plácido) Domingo and everybody singing year after year in that opera house, and interviewing them backstage.

Marc A. Scorca: Wow. I'll get to it in a minute, but I will say that Ardis Krainik is probably the person whose name is invoked most through our Oral History of people who are now old enough, and who had the good fortune to experience what that extraordinary person was like. But we'll come back to that in a second. Now, of course, you did that, and that's where I first got to know you. You were working at WFMT, but then you left radio, and you went to work for the Boston Symphony, and in a senior artistic position, so a a great move, but away from radio, into the live performance symphony world. What motivated that change of venue for you?

Evans Mirageas: I think a year before, and this would've been the spring of '88, Tom (Thomas W.) Morris, who was then the head of the Cleveland Orchestra approached me. I'd known him because of our radio connections. WCLV in Cleveland was another one of the radio station powerhouses. And he said, "I have the position of artistic administrator opening up at my orchestra, and I'm wondering if you'd be interested". And I rather foolishly said, "What's an artistic administrator?" And he said, "Well, why don't you come to Blossom; spend a couple days with us. Vladimir Ashkenazy is conducting. We're doing one of the very first performances of the Eisenstein film, and you can see an orchestra in action". So I went, and I spent the weekend, and I talked to some of the people there, and I said to Tom at the end of the weekend, "I don't think I'm ready for this. There's just something about the responsibilities of this job that I just don't feel prepared for just yet, but thank you". But by the following year, three jobs were actually open: the Boston Symphony job, the Philadelphia Orchestra and San Francisco, and they were all looking for an artistic administrator. And to be perfectly honest, I think the storm clouds were gathering a little bit on the horizon at WFMT. The glory days of syndication were going away. My job as the producer of the Lincoln's Music in America program had ended, but they kept me on to be the producer for Lyric Opera and for a couple of other programs. But I saw that my time would come to a close at a certain point. So I looked at all three jobs, actually. I actually had a ticket to go to San Francisco, and the plane was going to touch down the moment the earthquake hit that year. I didn't go. And I looked at Philadelphia, and I had met Riccardo Muti by that point, because we had syndicated the Philadelphia Orchestra broadcast, and I thought it'd be fun to work for Muti. But then Boston came calling, and Boston had something that none of the rest of them did, which was Tanglewood. The chance to work with young musicians and Seiji Ozawa, whom I had admired. So, I threw my hat in the ring for the Boston Symphony. They had sought me out and said, "Would you be interested? We'd heard from Tom Morris that he talked to you about a year ago". And I went and interviewed at Tanglewood. I remember it was in the summertime. But Seiji wasn't there. He had left for the summer; he'd done his four weeks and was off in Europe traveling with his orchestra, the Saito Kinen Orchestra. So, in early September of '89, I traveled to Berlin actually, where he was, and interviewed with Seiji, and then got the job.

Marc A. Scorca: Wow. So I know that you sneaked in a few opera performances at the Boston Symphony. So even though opera was still in the background, there was nonetheless some opera activity as a producer, not just as someone producing recordings or broadcasts, but actually producing the performance.

Evans Mirageas: It was a trial by fire, and drinking from a fire hose. I mean, whatever image or metaphor you want to use, because before I came to work in Boston, Seiji had already begun a tradition of semi-staged opera at Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood. Famously, before I arrived there, they made the now legendary recording of Elektra with Hildegard Behrens and Christa Ludwig. That was just before I arrived. But even as I arrived, Seiji said, "We're going to do Queen of Spades of Tchaikovsky, and we're going to do it first in Tanglewood", which was kind of crazy. "Then we're gonna reprise it in Symphony Hall live and record it for RCA, and take it to Carnegie Hall. And so, that was my first season working for the Boston Symphony Orchestra - of producing an opera. Let's remember, in 1989/1990, Queen of Spades was not much done in this country.

Marc A. Scorca: And it still isn't ...

Evans Mirageas: True. But we assembled an amazing cast of Mirella Freni and Vladimir Atlantov and Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Sergei Leiferkus and Maureen Forrester, and on and on and Seiji and the Boston Symphony. So that continued nearly every season that I was with the orchestra. I was only there five years. But in that five years, we did a semi-staged version of Falstaff, semi-staged version of Idomeneo and a semi-staged version of Salome. And they were all, of course, great scores for the orchestra, and we worked with the top stars in the world to be able to produce those operas. So if I wasn't hooked on opera by then? Yes, I was totally hooked at that point.

Marc A. Scorca: Okay. So, radio career, career in a symphony orchestra, off to London to Decca records, and in a way, your next career. Here you were, sharing recordings on radio, and then you were producing great work that was recorded. How did you get to a recording company like Decca?

Evans Mirageas: It starts at WFMT in Chicago. I mentioned Luciano Pavarotti performing often for Lyric Opera of Chicago until Ardis fired him, of course - very famously. Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which was a pretty much exclusive recording relationship with Decca and Solti, and Decca's really legendary head of artists and repertoire, Ray Minshull came to Chicago often to supervise the recordings of the CSO himself, and to talk to Pavarotti from time to time. I met Ray; we went to lunch a couple of times. And then I asked him if I could come to London, because within the larger framework of the Music in America program, I did a mini-series over several years about the history of recording, from the end of World War II to the beginning of the CD era. It was a legendary time, all those great post World War II performers, and it was the rise of the record producer, people like John Culshaw and Walter Legge, and all of these legendary producers, pretty much helping make the career of people like Karajan. So, I asked Ray if I could come to London, and interview him and his colleagues at Decca about the history of the Decca Record Company. And I remember I spent a magical afternoon with Ray, with Christopher Raeburn, (the man who discovered Cecilia Bartoli) and with Erik Smith, who was the supervising producer on Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes - later went on to run Philips records, (as well as) some of the great legendary engineers like Jimmy (James) Lock. I had an afternoon of interviews with them. And at the end of the afternoon, they said, "Well, young man", Ray always smoked a pipe. "You certainly have done your re-search, as you say in America". And so Ray remembered that I knew a lot about Decca, and it was my favorite record company. It really was, because of the sound, because of the Ring with Solti, because of Pavarotti. You notice I'm mentioning mostly opera recordings. And so when Ray decided he was gonna take early retirement, Decca started an international search for his replacement. And they scoured the EU. They looked in the UK. They couldn't find anybody they really liked. And Ray said to his boss, "You don't know this guy. He's never run a record company before, but I think he would be great for us. His name is Evans Mirageas". So they sent a headhunter to Tanglewood. I remember vividly, he came driving up in a chauffeur-driven, black, long limo from whatever airport he'd flown into - nice Englishman. And we sat in my office and on the porch behind my office for a couple of hours, and he talked to me about this job. And I said "No". And I wasn't being arrogant; I just was very happy at the Boston Symphony. And my then partner, now husband, Tom (Thomas) Dreeze, was also doing the artistic administration by that point for Boston Lyric Opera. It was a terrific opportunity to say, "No, I love what I'm doing". But they were persistent. And finally, I remember very vividly, it was my birthday the next fall, November 17th, 1993, and the headhunter called. I'd gone out for lunch, I'd had a glass of wine, and he said, "Evans, the job's yours if you want it". And I said, "But I told you I'm not..". He says, "Look, they don't want anybody else". He didn't say you could write your own ticket, but I said, "Okay, listen - Boston Symphony's coming on tour to Europe in a few weeks. I wanna meet Ray Minshull some place away from everybody else, and I want him to come to this meeting to tell me where all the bodies are buried at Decca, because I wanna know the truth of what I'd be getting into. So we met. In those days, the Royal Festival Hall was not the really fancy place it is now; it was kind of downmarket, and I remember we sat in a cafe on a dreary December day and Ray was very honest, and he told me that the CD boom was about to evaporate. There was a false bottom being created by the enormous sales of the Three Tenors record, which was selling millions of copies every year, but every other record was beginning to lose money. The overall function of the company was fine, because the Three Tenors carried it, but eventually that would fall off, and the company would have to go through a massive realignment. It was frighteningly honest. So he left the meeting (and) thought, "Well, I just killed that opportunity". I left the meeting thinking "I would be an idiot not to try". So I did. I took a chance and we moved to England. You know, two cultures separated by a common language, and for the next seven years, I had another amazing set of experiences. I got to work with Luciano; I got to resign Cecilia; I got to steal Renée (Fleming) away from RCA. So yeah, it was an amazing beginning, but it was an incredible learning experience.

Marc A. Scorca: So, there we have you becoming a recording expert, after having become a symphonic operations artistic expert, having been a radio expert and you begin to build a consulting practice. Now, it doesn't all follow quite sequentially, 'cause there are some overlaps, but you are so well-known and so well deployed as a consultant, where you are consulting conductors and symphony orchestras, where you have produced recordings for opera companies and others. The life of a consultant - 'cause you had gone from an institution to an institution to an institution - how did you find the consulting life, when that kind of became, for a while at least, your primary focus?

Evans Mirageas: I'll tell you, Marc, as my time at Decca drew to a close, I had a sort of a landmark meeting with my boss in the fall of '99. And by that time, the company had been sold twice during my tenure. And each time the timeline for profitability for recordings had shrunk. And so, I saw the handwriting on the wall, and my boss made all the right noises about, "No, we want you to stay on". And I said, "You know what, with the recording plan that you've got coming up ahead, you don't need an A&R director, you need a marketing director. Why don't you give me a golden parachute, and we'll part ways", because I saw that there was really no future. The company and the business itself were changing so radically that someone like myself, who was about investing in artists' careers and building over a period of time, that was gone. Everything has its time, and that had its time. And it was Tom actually who said, "Well look, you have all this experience, why don't you consult?" And I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "There must be opera companies and symphony orchestras who need temporary help". And in my travels around, I had seen lots of vacancies happen, and people scrambling for a while and subordinates taking on the role. And I thought, "There's something to be said for that". And so I left Decca at the end of '99, and by, I think, February of 2000, I had my first client, which was the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra. And it was through a connection I'd had with Bob (Robert) Spano, with whom I had worked closely at the Boston Symphony. I was actually his boss, as he was the assistant conductor, and he heard that I was going freelance, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic was in dire straits, as it often was, and they needed someone to come in and help them refashion the programming, because they realized that they were gonna run out of money by the end of the season. So I accepted that opportunity. And at that particular moment around the turn of the millennium, there was a sort of a generational shift. A lot of people were retiring. There were a lot of ambitious institutions that were growing, and very soon through word of mouth only, I found myself with seven or eight clients: orchestras, the Boston Handel and Haydn Society, a couple of individuals. And it sort of grew of its own accord. And so I went from being, as you say, salaried, healthcare and whatnot, to being a freelancer. And I really immediately began to have a deep respect for all of those practitioners with whom I work now, of having to construct your life from gig to gig, having to find your own health insurance. Luckily since we were living in England, we had national insurance, so for a while, that wasn't an issue. So, it was a natural outgrowth. And you're right, I was able to work with organizations that wanted to have a recording relationship or an organization that wanted to tour, or an organization that simply wanted to up the ante in what they were doing. And I was able to bring this variety of experiences to each client individually for what they needed.

Marc A. Scorca: You know, you are so rare in the diversity of your expertise and the way it has been of use, of service to the entire industry. As I came along at OPERA America, your name was frequently on the list of possible general directors of opera companies, but no one could actually get you to bite. Everyone was saying, "Well, there's Evans Mirageas". And everyone saying, "Oh well, he's not interested...". "There's Evans, you've gotta talk to Evans". You did not wanna be an opera company general director. Is that correct?

Evans Mirageas: That's correct, and there were a couple of times when it was extremely tempting. Two occasions, dear friends said, you know, basically they'd sponsor me right through the process. And I thought about it seriously. And I have the deepest respect for those women and men with whom I have worked, who've been in the hot seat at the very top of the organization. And I'm not saying being artistic director is not being in the hot seat, 'cause I am too. I am involved in every step of the budgeting process with Cincinnati Opera. I have to make every difficult decision alongside my chief executive. But I love the art. And one of the things that I know is, that if I were to have become a chief executive, I would've had to let go of some of those things, rightfully so. Because when you are the chief executive, you are the steward of the financial health of the institution. It doesn't mean you're not involved in the art, but you can't dedicate yourself to it. And I realized fairly early on, that that was my happy place. That I had been given the privilege, particularly with Cincinnati Opera, and particularly with the work I did for 14 years with the Atlanta Symphony, to be respectful of the financial needs. You know, every time I meet a new CFO, they start by apologizing to me like, "I'm the bad guy. I'm the one who makes you cut $50,000 from your budget". I said, "No, no, no, no, no. You don't understand. I worked in the for-profit world for seven years. I know what it means to be only as good as the turnover you had from last year, and that you will lose your job, if you don't make a profit". So I have the deepest respect for numbers, because without numbers, I don't get to do what I do. So I am one of those, perhaps - I won't say rare - but I'm one of those people who works in the art, who loves the finance part of it. I'm just privileged to be able to say, "Ultimately, I will help you in any way I can to help you raise the money, but you've got me here in this particular position to dream, to challenge, to cast, to engage, to create the art itself".

Marc A. Scorca: Which does bring us, as you've already mentioned it, to Cincinnati Opera and amazing as it may seem, it's been what, 20 years at Cincinnati Opera now

Evans Mirageas: My 19th season.

Marc A. Scorca: 19th season, which is the longest institutional commitment you've had. And if I reckon correctly, it's the place you've lived longest, since perhaps childhood in Ann Arbor.

Evans Mirageas: I owe it all to you, Marc, because I keep framed on my wall - you can't see it; it's out of the picture - an email that I received from Patricia Beggs in the fall of 2004. It's in November, and she says, "Your good friend and mine, Marc Scorca said that I should be reaching out to you, because we're in need of some temporary help while we're in between artistic directors. And he said that you might be the guy to help us". So, I looked at it as a consulting gig, and I made contact with Patty. Originally the brief was to help them figure out how to make a recording of Margaret Garner, help them continue in the casting process during the transition between Nick (Nicholas) Muni's departure and whomever would take his place, and to be sort of a friend outside of the room, in their search for their new artistic director. And I gladly signed on. I began in January of 2005, and not long after, I came here for a visit. I wanted to meet the people that I was gonna be working with, and I spent a couple of days here. And I remember a wonderful dinner at a restaurant I still go to called Nicola's, with some board members and with Patty. And I went back to my room at the Hilton Hotel, and they all sat down at the bar, and according to Patty, they said, "Why not this guy?" And I'm afraid I repeated exactly what I did at the Boston Symphony. I said, "I'm not interested". At that point, we had moved back to the United States. Tom had a wonderful job at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, my consulting business was going gangbusters. And as you know, and as many of our opera colleagues know, Patty Beggs doesn't take no for an answer. And she kept after me. And in May of 2005, she was planning a board trip with board members to London, and I still had lots of London connections. And she said, "If you're going to be in London, would you meet us, have a meal with us, go with us to Covent Garden, maybe get us a backstage tour". I said, "Fine, happy to do that". And I spent those two, three days with about six or seven of the board members. Sadly, a couple of them have passed away, but you know them: people like Fred (Frederick) Good and Bob (Robert J.) Hasl, these wonderful people from that time. And the last morning, Patty took me for a coffee, and she said, "So, what do you think of our board?" And I said, "Patty, I'd be a fool not to try. I love your board. If everybody connected with this company is as passionate as they are, if the job is still going, I'd like to throw my hat in the ring". So I did.

Marc A. Scorca: And you know, the life of a consultant is both exciting, because you get to go in and problem solve, then you leave. At Cincinnati Opera, 19 seasons later, you're there. You are part of a community, part of a company that's been the longest association of your career. What is it like to actually put down roots, to become rooted in a community you serve through art?

Evans Mirageas: It's the most gratifying experience of my professional life, and I have worked with the greatest artists who've trod the earth in the last 50 years. But I will say with my hand on my heart, that to be able to sit in the theater on the opening night of a production, and see it all come together, hear the cheers of the audience, and know that I had a hand - however small on some occasions - in bringing that to life. And also for me, some of the most gratifying things, and this is just an isolated incident of many years ago...Every city has a long-term care facility for people who will never leave the hospital, because of brain injuries or debilitating physical injuries, and they are there for the duration. And many of them are forgotten, and many of them can't speak. Some of them can barely hear or see. And one afternoon, about 10 years ago, we took about four opera singers and a little battered upright piano that they found someplace in the facility. And for an hour with these people, mostly in gurneys, and a few of them, more fortunate in wheelchairs, my singers sang for them. And I saw tears on the faces of people who probably hadn't heard music in a decade. I saw smiles. I heard sounds, not words, but vocalizing of joy. And I thought, "You know what? This is what I was put on this earth to do". It wasn't Die Meistersinger, and it wasn't the fourth production of La bohème, but it was using singing to bring solace and joy to an individual, who had been pretty much forgotten by the world.

Marc A. Scorca: It is interesting to hear you describe your progress toward the grassroots, not toward the heaven of our work, but your progress toward the grassroots of our work.

Evans Mirageas: For me, it's the most gratifying thing I do. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing more thrilling than hearing a great operatic singer on our stage with the incredible Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in the pit, and all the trappings of tights and lights, but it is fleeting, of course. The performance ends and the run ends and the performers go on. But to be able to call myself a citizen of this city, which we have adopted - this is gonna be our forever home. And yes, I've had family in the region, so I've got roots here that are familial as well. But for me, Cincinnati Opera has been the greatest gift of my professional life.

Marc A. Scorca: How wonderful. Now you've moved the company. It's had its 100th anniversary. It is a company that was so rooted in the extended 19th century, and here it has become known as a producer of new work, of a curator, producer, collaborator with Opera Fusion and CCM (Cincinnati Conservatory of Music). How did you negotiate, navigate, steer the company into a much more varied present?

Evans Mirageas: I think the seeds were planted by my predecessor Nick Muni, and certainly by Patty Beggs. I date it to really 2002, when we presented Dead Man Walking, one of the first companies to do so after the world premiere in San Francisco. And that ignited a thirst for newer opera. Jim de Blasis had done some newer, adventuresome things. His passion though, was for less well-known 19th century opera, and he brought rarities like Risurrezione and Zazà to our stage. But, as the millennium turned, and as people like Jake Heggie started to gain currency, and we began to have a new generation of - for lack of a better way of putting it - melodic opera composers, it caught fire here. I think the next single event was just before I arrived, which was that Cincinnati joined in this three-way collaboration with Detroit and Philadelphia to create Margaret Garner of Richard Danielpour, the story of which is, of course, rooted here, just on the other side of the Ohio River. That ignited the spark, so that by the time I got here, the field was fertile for new or newer work. Along comes the ambition of Robin Guarino of CCM, who was then the head of the opera program there, and my former colleague Marcus Küchle, who was our director of artistic operations, and they persuaded Susan Feder at the Mellon Foundation, that we should have this opportunity for the conservatory and the opera company to work together to create workshops for operas for other companies, because there was a lack of opportunity for testing works. You've seen so many one-and-done productions that didn't get the kind of birthing they needed. And the Mellon Foundation signed on, now 12 years ago almost, and Opera Fusion New Works was created. So what that did was start to bring to Cincinnati on a twice a year, sometimes three times a year basis, The Metropolitan Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Minnesota Opera, Los Angeles. From all corners of the country, companies would bring their projects here, and it would be a combination of our graduate students at CCM, the company's expertise, and the genius of it ultimately, was that every workshop ended with a public presentation for patrons here in Cincinnati and livestream eventually. And so we began to build a constituency among our core supporters of people who got excited about new works. So it was easy to say, "Well then, let's ourselves have a new one every year as part of our menu". Remember, we only do four operas in a summer, so to make that kind of, sort of 25% commitment that it'll be new, or newer, was extraordinary. But we had built it up over a period of three or four years, and so there really hasn't been a season since, where we haven't either had a work new to us that is from a living composer, or a work that we have commissioned or co-commissioned, or a work that is just, as it were, hot off the press.

Marc A. Scorca: So it was a grassroots transformation.

Evans Mirageas: Oh, I'm so proud of it, and of course, it culminates in what we've just announced, which is this incredible three year commitment to, every year from 2025 to 2027, the Black Opera Project, three new grand operas by African American creative teams on subjects of black joy. And it makes me really proud to be with a company that has evolved to the point where we can be a standard bearer for a new direction in our art form.

Marc A. Scorca: That's great. Evans, it's just amazing. In this career of yours, now that you are halfway through it, you've met some extraordinary people. You mentioned Ardis Krainik. Are there one or two other people who you would single out as being remarkable artist leaders from whom perhaps you learned. They may or may not know that they were or are models for you. Are there a couple of other distinguished people to add to that list?

Evans Mirageas: It's a name that no one will remember. His name was Gail Rector, and he was the impresario of the University Musical Society when I was a kid. Gail was a tall, distinguished gentleman, who actually started out life as a bassoonist in the Boston Symphony, but felt the pull of producing, and went back to Ann Arbor, Michigan and served as an apprentice alongside a legendary producer by the name of Charles Sink. Sink had had the job since the turn into the 20th century, and he brought Caruso to Ann Arbor. So that's the legacy. I watched Gail very carefully. I didn't know that I was gonna become a producer myself, but I watched how he treated artists. I watched how he interacted with the public. A sort of a gentlemanly, reserve, but also a steel that he had underneath it. Gail has long since passed, but he was the first sort of producer that I watched. Another person that I admire deeply, and he's a little bit controversial, but I admire Joe (Joseph) Volpe tremendously, because Joe loved opera, and he knew it from the last nail that went into the floor of The Met, and he worked his way through the ranks to the top of the institution. He wasn't there to make friends and he could be a son of a bitch, but I respected him because he had opera as his passion.

Marc A. Scorca: How did you have contact with Joe?

Evans Mirageas: Oh my goodness. Well, during my Decca time, we made a few records with The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. And I remember a fateful afternoon, standing on the shores of the Adriatic below Pavarotti's house, and I had to pick up the phone and call Joe Volpe in Florida, where he was having a brief respite between seasons and tell him that Luciano had decided, with less than seven weeks notice, he wasn't gonna make a recording of La Forza del Destino. And I thought all hell was gonna break loose. I was terrified, and I picked up the phone and I called Joe and I said, "Joe, I'm in Pesaro". He said, "Uh-oh". He said, "Did you go there by choice?" And I said, "No, I was summoned". He said, "Let me guess. Luciano doesn't wanna record Forza". I said, "How did you know?" He said, "I knew he'd never do it. I'm just glad you called me before the six week time, when we would have to pay the orchestra, 'cause I would've stuck you with the cost". He said, "Look, I've got bigger fish to fry with Luciano. I need him to come back and do some Toscas. I need to keep on his good side. So we're just gonna let this one go". And for me, that was a beautiful lesson in keeping your eye on the prize. Always be thinking at four or five levels of your responsibility, as to what is really the most important thing you have to accomplish, and not let your temper, or your personality, or your personal wishes get in the way, and basically do the right thing.

Marc A. Scorca: Great story. All of this, everything that you have said to me for nearly an hour now is advice. But more specifically, when a youngster who wants a career as a producer, or in radio recording, wants a career in the arts, as you have had, what's your advice? What is at the heart of Evans Mirageas's advice to the next generation?

Evans Mirageas: I am in some ways the worst person to ask that question, because if you look at my career, it's been accidents. How on earth did I have my very first job in the symphony business working for one of the top five orchestras in the world? How in the world my first job, and my only job in the record business, was working for one of the two or three legendary international record companies. And the only reason I say that is because I think there is a reason. And part of it I think is, just a willingness to be open to new challenges, to work very hard. There is no substitute for blood, sweat, and tears, and there is no substitute for humility. I think for me, one of the things I try and say to young women and men who come to me, is the one thing I didn't do, and I don't regret it, but if I had it to do all over again, I would - which is to get a business degree, because I've learned what I need to know about finance on the job. And I am a pretty quick study, and, as I said earlier, I love my CFO's and I can read a spreadsheet with the best of them. And also, because of my time working in the for-profit world, I can read a P&L, but I did it catching up. How much easier it would've been for me - and, you know, Marc, I might have been actually tempted to be a general director, if I'd had a little bit more firm earlier footing in the world of finance. But I recommend to everyone who would want a career, even if it's just in artistic administration, because even there, you have to manage a budget. You are given a certain amount of money to book a season. You have to live within those numbers. There are no fairy godmothers. So, I would say, at least get a solid grounding in business. I also think it's extremely important, no matter how shy you are, or how maybe introverted you are, you must learn how to communicate with patrons with a relative ease. It doesn't mean taking Dale Carnegie or speaking courses, but you must be able to interact with the public. Particularly as I said earlier, if you are going to be the person who is spending the money, which I've been in - that's all I've done all my life, is spend money that other people raise, then you have to be passionate and eloquent enough to sell it. So those are my two real loadstars. Business experience, or business learning and being comfortable in proselytizing for that in which you have a passion.

Marc A. Scorca: Wow. Great advice. Great advice. Evans Mirageas, such a pleasure. We could just go on and dig into these stories and I know how many of them you have. Thank you though for this time, this afternoon.