More Belt Tightening

These past few days have seen more belt tightening by our friends and neighbors up north.

San Francisco Opera has announced a scaled back 2009-2010 season, filled with many classic operas with incredibly strong casts. "There's no question that this season represents a huge belt-tightening for us," SFO General Director David Gockley told the Chronicle. "We're scaling our budget back from $70 million last season to $64 million, and we'd already planned to make sure there were a lot of popular productions and ones for which we could do a lot of performances." You can read the entire article here.

Closer to home, Los Angeles Opera announced staff and pay cuts this morning as well as a reduction in performances and the delay of the world premiere of Daniel Catán’s Il Postino. The economy and the financial drain of mounting their first Ring Cycle is to blame. You can read the article here.

With this news falling like bombs around us, many of you must be wondering how San Diego Opera is doing. Times are tough, like they are everywhere. We are working incredibly hard to fill up our Tosca. We have also announced an Audience Challenge Campaign and are asking the community for financial assistance. Like every other organization we face some very real and tangible threats. You can read about them and donate to the Audience Challenge here.

Or, you can purchase a ticket to our operas which, if you ask me, seems like a win-win situation for everyone.

-- Edward