The storyline of the Opera Pacific was playing out like a tragedy.
The jolt of the 2001 terrorist attacks had helped push the Santa Ana-based opera company into a financial freefall. Patrons were tough to find. The organization that has been a part of the Southern California arts scene since the 1960s was in danger of going dark.
It needed a hero to save the day. Robert Jones is proving to be that man.
Jones, president of Opera Pacific since 2004, has big-time arts management credentials. He was president of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and president of the National Symphony Orchestra. He was vice president of music for The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., until he retired in 2001.
Jones came out of retirement to help turn around Opera Pacific because he said he missed the rush of the job and admired the company’s artistic director, John DeMain.
“I missed the excitement of the dynamics of a performing arts organization,” Jones said. “Life is all about finding the right playmates.”
Today, Opera Pacific is projecting a profitable year. The challenge now is to raise more money to put on additional shows and to expand its audience. Its annual budget is $8.5 million, with about $2.5 million coming from ticket sales.
But getting there took some sacrifices.
During Jones’ first month on the job, he said he had no money to pay the staff. So he took a bottom-line business approach to making the company profitable.
He cut the staff from 36 to 24 people. He cut the number of shows from four to three. And he sought out the money people.
Paul Musco, chairman of Santa Ana’s Gemini Industries Inc. and an opera fan, loaned the company $2 million to get its warehouse out of hock. Opera Pacific owns a 20,000-square-foot building at 600 W. Warner Ave. in Santa Ana where it stores and makes sets and costumes, houses sales and marketing staff and rehearses some performances. It had borrowed against the building to keep from closing.
Musco’s loan came with a unique set of conditions. If Opera Pacific could match his loan through fundraising efforts, he would forgive the debt.
Jones and his board recruited 15 donors and pulled in $2.3 million. Other big donors include Broadcom Corp. Chairman Henry Samueli and wife Susan.
Opera Pacific has been able to rally business leaders to the cause,not necessarily by selling the opera, but by selling the story of an organization that has righted itself and is poised for growth.
“(Donors) will have the opportunity to make an impact,” Jones said.
That’s what appealed to Patrick Dirk, chief executive of Troy Group Inc. in Costa Mesa, and one of the opera’s newest board members. Dirk liked the idea of being part of an organization that is an important part of a thriving arts community. He also made a deal with Musco to support his charity if Musco joined Dirk’s charity board, Canyon Acres for Children in Anaheim Hills.
“We support each other in these, what we consider, good causes,” Dirk said. “Opera is necessary in Orange County if we want to remain a world-class community.”
Since each opera can only be performed for about four days because of the strain on singers’ voices, it is a tough business to break even in, much less make a profit.
“If no one shows up for us we take the risk,” Jones said.
Jones has to make the best choices for the company, weighing show quality and costs.
Shows cost about $1.5 million to put on when factoring in additional staff, fees for the artistic rights, salaries and renting the performance space from the Orange County Performing Artscenter.
When Opera Pacific is producing a show, it ramps up its staff to about 200. It hires seamstresses, singers for the chorus, an orchestra, stage directors and the like.
Most shows fill to 70% to 75% of the 3,000-seat venue. Jones wants to bump that up so ticket sales make up 40% of the company’s annual revenue, with another 40% coming from fundraising and the additional 20% stemming from an endowment.
Opera Pacific needs to cater to its core audience,the well-heeled educated person,while making it more accessible to a new audience. Only about 3% of the general public has seen a true opera, Jones said, excluding popular musicals such as “Phantom of the Opera.”
Susan Totten, Opera Pacific’s new director of fundraising, plans to use a $400,000 James Irvine Foundation grant to expand the audience. Plans call for a series of events outside the performing arts center including a summer opera camp for kids and an “Opera Under the Stars” night at the Irvine Bowl in Laguna Beach.
Of all the arts, opera meshes with today’s many entertainment choices, Jones said. It involves fashion, history, singing and acting, he said.
“It brings all the arts together,” he said. “Opera is made for the senses.”
