Opera Colorado’s top leaders — president and general director Peter Russell and artistic director James Robinson — announced their resignations today, saying they want to pursue new career directions.
When Robinson privately told the company earlier this year he planned to leave in September 2008 to take an undisclosed position with another opera company, Russell decided Robinson’s departure would also be an ideal moment for him to step down.
“Everything sort of came together, and I said, ‘You know what, I think it is time for me to move on as well,’ ” said Russell, who took over his duties in September 2001. He will stay on as a consultant through January.
To replace Russell, the company has named Greg Carpenter, its director of development since July 2004, as executive director. A former professional opera singer, he was previously manager of development at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
“I’m thrilled about it,” Carpenter, 45, said. “It’s the direction I’ve been looking for my career to go in and never thought it would be here at Opera Colorado. Figured I’d have to go elsewhere, but I’m thrilled to get to stay here in a company that I love very much.”
Sheila Bisenius, the company’s board chairman, said Carpenter immediately emerged as Russell’s successor, because of the breadth of knowledge and abilities he has displayed during the past three years.
“He was not the heir apparent, because no one was thinking heir apparent,” she said. “But when thoughts turned to that, we were really extraordinarily lucky to have him.”
Bisenius acknowledged that the near-simultaneous departures of the opera’s two key leaders did come as a blow to Opera Colorado, but she said it presents the company with opportunities as well.
“Any change is inherently traumatic,” she said. “I think quite honestly this gives us a chance to make the company new again.
“We have been such beneficiaries of Jim and Peter’s attention, but now we’ll go on a search for a new artistic director. So it’s going to be a new team, and I think that’s very exciting.”
Under the combined leadership of Russell and Robinson, a nationally known stage director who began his post in 1999, Opera Colorado has soared to unprecedented artistic heights, luring opera stars such as Elizabeth Futral, James Morris, Hasmik Papian and Samuel Ramey.
Particularly since its move to the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in the fall of 2005, the company has participated in co-productions with such major companies as San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera and Seattle Opera.
At the same time, it has expanded it annual offerings to four, including its first contemporary work — John Adams’ “Nixon in China — in 2008, and boosted its annual budget from $3.1 million to $5 million.
“The company is in a position where it’s a real player in the North American opera scene,” Robinson said.
Opera Colorado is in the midst of assembling a new strategic plan, which will include a decision about what kind of artistic director makes sense at this stage of the company’s history. It will then begin a search, hiring a replacement in the next year.
“I would be surprised if it would happen in the next six months, but I would be surprised if it would take nine months. We’re not going to hunker down tomorrow and go find one,” Besenius said.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
