Brian Dickie

Land of Song

I am delighted to be in Wales for the week - land of song indeed with a fine opera company in Cardiff, just a few miles from where I am, and homeland of one of the great singers of our day - Bryn Terfel. The Welsh have contributed so much to the opera world internationally. Geraint Evans was one of the all time greats.  And choral singing is a national passion for the Welsh.

There is a fine new opera house for the Welsh National Opera in Cardiff.  This company was run for years by Brian McMaster, recently retired director of the Edinburgh Festival.  Brian was succeded by Matthew Epstein, later Artistic Director of Chicago's Lyric Opera.  And he was succeeded by Anthony Freud, now General Director of Houston Grand Opera.  The new General Director is John Fisher, former Artistic director of the Fenice in Venice, then a lippar of the Metropolitan Opera until last year when he went to Wales.   So this is a company with  a first class pedigree.

But I am here for a short break with my family.  Please do not expect too much of me this week.  There are other priorities.  But log on just in case!

Yesterday evening

We had a lovely party yesterday evening at Colleen Flanigan's place (she is our wonderful Director of Marketing) and we sent off Roger in fine style.  Colleen put together a wonderful scrapbook covering Roger's seven years with us.  And above you see his accepting it and pointing to one of the highlights - look closely and you can see Danielle Denise and Nathan Gunn at our gala party in 2005 when Roger turned the pages for Nathan's wife Julie.

I am now in London..........

Taste of things to come

It is a great treat for Chicago to have the delightful and immensely talented Joana Carneiro in town.  She is conducting the Grant Park program tomorrow evening.  I went along to the rehearsal this morning (she is seen here at a brief relaxed moment - click to enlarge)) and we then went off to lunch.  She is with us next season taking over the performances of A Flowering Tree from the composer, John Adams, who conducts the first two and then has to be off to Amsterdam for more performances there.  Joana was John's associate conductor for the first performances in Vienna last November.  She spends 26 weeks a year in Los Angeles where she is working with Esa Pekka Salonen at the LA Phil.  And otherwise she is in Europe, based in her home town of Lisbon.  I think that we are in for a great time with this young graduate of Northwestern who is making a remarkable name for herself already.  Another star of whom we all will be proud - as are surely her husband, parents and eight siblings in Lisbon and around the world!

I can not be at the concert tomorrow alas - I am on the road again, this time to London, a brief holiday in Wales, three days at Glyndebourne to see Tristan and Turn of the Screw, then to Cape Town, Buenos Aires, Santiago and Mexico City.

But before that we have this evening the farewell party for Roger Weitz, leaving us after 7 years to take a fellowship at the Kennedy Center.  A sad day for all his Chicago friends, and for his COT colleagues,  but we will always stay in touch.

Life

This blog's sub title is "Life a General director of COT".  And the sooner you realize that it is not a bed of roses the better!  One of my endless hassles is to make people understand that there are two bottom lines to running an arts organization.  And people are obtuse.  A dictionary definition is "annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand".  That seems to me to be perfect.  And this characteristic, obtuseness, seems to be present in people who are regarded, evidently quite wrongly, as intelligent.  Ah well.......Anyway back to bottom lines.

We have to protect the financial base, and we have to protect the quality, and therefore the validity of the work.  A fine balancing act.  Just the kind of things that highly paid consultants do not grasp.  As you can see, I have had an irritating day.

Otherwise I have had a happy time.  It has been deliciously warm here - particularly welcome as I look at the weather forecast for London where we are going on Saturday.  I joined some Board members for a delightful lunch with a promising prospective young board member.  Youth is good as long as it stays around long enough to develop into added value.  And then we had a major brainstorming session about marketing. Tomorrow I will have some nice things to report.  Watch!!

That French program

This was in many ways a perfect concert - early start, no intermission, out of there by 7.40pm!  But it was also an interesting program with only the terminally depressing Ravel Bolero to offend one sensibilities.  There was an amazing crowd there - this Grant Park Festival is really one of the many huge successes of the city's politicians. The quality of the Orchestra and Chorus is of the very highest and the ever gracious host, Jim Palermo, Grant Park's General Director, has a magic touch with the public.  Chicago is indeed fortunate.

Our Swedish friends

I had the enormous pleasure of seeing some delightful Swedish friends in Chicago this morning - and I thought that I was going to miss them as a result of having been away last week.  They are the excellent couple Viktor Åslund and Katarina Åsbrink, he a musician, a wonderful pianist and also a conductor, and she an international affairs expert (who has also directed opera) with a particular interest in and knowledge of Central Asia, especially the former Soviet republic of Kyrgistan.

Viktor was one of our specialist coaches with the European Union Opera in Baden-Baden in 1998, working with Elisabeth Söderström and those young members of the company who chose to explore the rich Scandinavian song repertoire.  I am really happy to have kept in touch with Victor and Katarina over these years.  She was in Chicago last year visiting a friend from Bishtek, capital city of Kyrgistan, who is now working for Discover Card here in Chicago.  And I usually manage to see Viktor on my occasional visits to Stockholm, though not on this last very brief stay.  All the better to have them both here together.

Viktor has just been appointed First Kapellmeister in the opera of Würzburg, a very beautiful Northern Bavarian city between Frankfurt and Bayreuth, famous for the Tiepolos in the Archbishop's Residence.  (See one on the left) So he will be moving there in September.  And Katarina will no doubt be based in Kyrgistan -  but the surprising thing to you all may be that there is an excellent opera house in Bishtek, and indeed Viktor conducted  and Katarina directed a production of the Zauberfloete there in 2002-03.

This evening we members of the advisory Board of the Chicago College of the Performing Arts have our summer social get together and troop over to the Pritzker Pavilion for the Grant Park Symphone Orchestra concert. An all French program.  Its a warm evening with the chance of rain...........

Yesterday's blog posting

Oh dear - there seems to have been a technical glitch and my posting was repeated and repeated and repeated.  I deleted all but one and ended up with nothing!  So I will have to remember what I wrote......

It was all about being back in harness.  All rather tedious stuff.  But I had an enjoyable meeting with the young Artistic Director of the Washington DC based American Opera Theater, Tim Nelson.  They are doing a fine job and well worthy of the attention of opera lovers in that exciting city and an excellent diversion from all the other stuff in DC!

Otherwise it was good to be back with my friends and colleagues at COT.  Time was spent on Marketing, Development and even opera.  There was a good deal to catch up on course after a week out of the office.

And the work day ended rather late with a Finance Committee meeting where a variety of opinions and strategies as always were aired. The end of our fiscal year is always a difficult time.  And I hear today that we are far from being alone in a troubled environment as many companies struggle to balance their year end books. 

I hope to spice the blog up a bit with some illustrations in the next day or so.  I think long solid blocks of text are indigestible.

PS - a kind reader has captured the lost posting somehow and you can read the original in the comments section below!

Back in the heat

I am home to the heat of our Summer after my brief spell in the other hemisphere.  Busy day today.....

Safe and sound in the USA

Landed - left Sydney 24 and three quartes of an hour ago.  Home soon - yipee.  But first have to fly for another four hours from SFO.  Oh well, in for a penny in for a pound.  And think of all those miles!

Here at 3, gone by 4.30

I am writing this one hour out from Hong Kong as we zoom past Manila at 600 mph.  And when I get there I will still be 20+ hours from home which is somewhat alarming!

The fact that you are reading this means that I got there safely and am no doubt by now well on the way to the next port of call, San Francisco, where I land around 2pm PST (still Monday July 23).  You fortunate US residents are comfortably tucked up and fast asleep I suppose.  My excellent Ulysse Nardin watch tells me that it is now midnight yesterday in Illinois.

You might like to have a look at some more pictures from Sydney.  You can get to them by clicking the link to the left or just click here.

Yes - I am in Hong Kong sending this off.  Had a great shower in the fabulous facilities in the new Hong Kong Airport so I am all set and ready to go.