Two opera companies angling for audiences and funds in the same midsized metropolitan area sounds like a perfect formula for a Hatfield-and-McCoy-style feud.
But leaders of the two Denver-based companies – Central City Opera and Opera Colorado – say the organizations actually get along quite well and even enjoy some staff crossover.
“There’s a degree of civility, if not outright friendliness, between the two organizations, both staff and board at the current time, that our forebears would have considered to be all but unimaginable back in the 1980s,” said Peter Russell, Opera Colorado’s president and general director.
Not only have the two coexisted since Nathaniel Merrill and Louise Sherman founded Opera Colorado in 1981, they have doubled or nearly doubled their annual budgets in the past decade alone. Both have boosted their lineups from three to four productions for the upcoming seasons.
The two companies are also strikingly similar in other ways. They have nearly parallel 2007 budgets – $5.4 million for Central City and $5 million for Opera Colorado. Both enjoy solid national reputations.
But along with those commonalities come significant differences, none more obvious than their principal venues. After years of bouncing between Boettcher Concert Hall and the Buell Theatre, Opera Colorado settled into the 2,268-seat Ellie Caulkins Opera House in 2005.
In sharp contrast, Central City Opera performs in the 129-year-old Central City Opera House. The 550-seat theater, with a 25-foot-wide stage opening, less than half that oft the Caulkins, provides opportunities for productions of rare intimacy.
“The audience is in your laps, and the slightest movement, the slightest nuance is going to be picked up,” said Ken Cazan, a California-based director who frequently stages productions there. “That’s the big thrill for me.”
But the theater’s limited orchestra pit and stage size means it cannot present large-scale operas by composers such as Richard Wagner or Richard Strauss that the Caulkins Opera House can easily handle.
Strengths, weaknesses
While Opera Colorado presents a fall-to-spring season, Central City’s productions run in repertory in June, July and August. Like other summer opera festivals, it can afford to offer more adventuresome fare because artist fees are lower then and audiences are willing to travel to see unusual works.
Central City Opera regularly presents new works and champions American and other less-frequently performed operas. This summer, the company presents its sixth world premiere – Guo Wenjing’s “Poet Li Bai.”
“Our job as summer festivals is to take that risk because from a financial standpoint we have it a little bit easier than they do the other nine months of the year,” said Pat Pearce, Central City’s general and artistic director.
If Opera Colorado can’t match Central City’s range of repertoire, its larger theater and pricier tickets mean it can more consistently book international stars, such as sopranos Elizabeth Futral and Hasmik Papian.
“Opera Colorado is a kind of a destination spot for really fine singers now,” said Stephen Lord, music director of Boston Lyric Opera and Opera Theatre of St. Louis. “For Sam Ramey to want to try his first ‘Pasquale’ out there (in 2007-08) is a really big coup.”
While Central City can draw major performers as well, it has put an emphasis on developing young talent. Its 29-year-old training program draws more than 800 applicants a year for 30 places.
Year-round opera
Such a discussion of similarities and differences might seem commonplace to Denver opera fans. But having two companies in one city is hardly the norm nationwide because of the inevitable limitations in potential audiences and underwriters.
What makes Denver even more unusual is that its companies’ seasons complement each other. Audiences can see operas virtually year round.
Probably the only other place that is possible is in the Washington, D.C., area, where the Washington National Opera presents a fall-to-spring season, and two outlying companies offer productions in the summer.
While it might seem that Opera Colorado and Central City Opera would hotly compete for the same audiences and funding, the organizations’ leaders say that isn’t really the case.
Hard-core opera fans from the Denver area attend the offerings of both companies, but the leaders say fewer attendees go to both than might be expected. In addition, Central City Opera draws 13 percent of its audiences from outside the state.
Similarly, there is little crossover in individual funders, just as there is no one who serves on both boards. Over the years, most supporters have naturally gravitated to one company or the other.
“If there’s anything where we’re going after the same organizations, it would be in corporate and foundation giving,” Russell said. “My experience to date is that the local philanthropic foundations, if they give to one of us, they give to both us, and they give about equivalently.”
Funding has limits
However, Dan Ritchie, Central City Opera’s board chairman from 1994 to 2005 and now chairman of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, believes there is a ceiling to how much area funders are willing to contribute to the two companies.
“I think it depends on how ambitious they want to be,” he said. “There are certainly limits to what you could raise here.”
He thinks the two companies should merge because of the cost savings that could result. But talk of such a consolidation has been around for at least a decade, and nothing has happened.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Yes there should be a merger,”‘ said Jeremy Shamos, co-chairman of Opera Colorado’s board. “But the devil is in the details – what’s the name of the emergent organization going to be, or what’s the makeup of the board?”
For now, the companies have focused on cooperating where they can, such as Opera 101, a preview series organized in conjunction with the Denver Public Library and Colorado Public Radio.
“I think we’ve all made a great effort to get along,” said John Baril, Central City’s music director and Opera Colorado’s chorus master. “Those of us who do work for both companies, it’s sort of an ‘other duty’ to keep the bridge between us happening, and I certainly have done that, and I have wanted to do that.”
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
