How many tenors in their 20s would (much less could) trade contracts with New York City Opera for a teaching job at a less-than-prestigious university?
Eric Dillner, the new managing director of the Skylight Opera in Milwaukee and the former director of Shreveport Opera, did just that about a decade ago, leaving a skyrocketing career as a singer for offstage musical work, first in teaching and directing, then in arts administration. And apparently he has never regretted it, finding greater satisfaction in his current work than he ever did in his singing.
“I love being in the audience when the audience is going nuts—not being on stage,” Dillner said. “I’m kind of an odd duck . . . that way, because a lot of people, they want to get out in front of that audience and sing, sing, sing, and then have them [the audience] clap and feel great. I love the rehearsal process, [and] the discussions of how we are going to create this piece. I wasn’t getting [from performing] what I can from looking at the bigger picture all the time.”
Not many singers can boast, like Dillner, that they were ever in a position to turn down contracts at City Opera, but perhaps some aspiring young artists would enjoy having successful and satisfying careers off stage, if those young artists are willing to take an honest look at what really makes them tick.
“If you’d called me when I was 25, I probably would have said there’s nothing I want more [than to have a singing career],” he said. “But looking back on it now, the things that I was spending so much side time on were what I [eventually] ended up doing. You really ought to look at what you’re really enjoying and do that for a living. But how do you tell some 25-year-old kid that?”
An enthusiasm for group activities and a flair for leading them are career threads that began to emerge while Dillner was at Hendricks College in Conway, Ark., working on the “extremely boring, extremely easy” beginnings of a business career. Dillner said that his undergraduate courses left him with time and energy on his hands, which he spent helping to organize events, clubs, and student groups, as well as singing in a rock band.
Business school may have been a breeze, but Dillner struggled through his rock gigs. “I started taking voice lessons because I couldn’t get through an evening of singing. I was wearing out,” Dillner said. “After a lesson, he [the teacher] said, ‘Eric, you should study opera.’ And I said, ‘Hmmm? Are you crazy?’” Intrigued by the depth of musical study required—and by a performance of The Pirates of Penzance—Dillner left Hendricks and began a music education degree at Butler University in Indiana. Soon he was performing nonstop.
“I performed in everything they had, whether it was a straight play, an opera, a musical, it didn’t matter,” he said. “Before I knew it, my teachers were saying: ‘You’re going to be a performer. You’re not going to do this other stuff.’”
Dillner took his teachers’ advice seriously, but he also continued his group leadership activities in a new way, getting classmates together to put on impromptu productions. “I directed a few ‘let’s-pull-a-bunch-of-students-together-and-do-Trial-by-Jury’ things,” he said. “I was fortunate in that I was a voice type that everyone used and needed, but all my friends who weren’t getting cast were bummed. So . . . we started doing some shows. Looking back now, I can say that it’s because I love pulling lots of people together . . . to me, it was giving others opportunities to perform and myself an opportunity to direct.”
Dillner set his sights on a master’s degree in opera production at Florida State University, only to have his vocal cords “derail” him once again. “I got there, and I realized that the reason they had me there was to sing, not to direct. That’s where I sang Nemorino for the first time, Rigoletto, Werther,” he said. “I got a degree in opera production, but truthfully, I got no education in production, because I was singing the whole time.”
Apprenticeships with Sarasota, Chautauqua, and Opera Theater of St. Louis (all while he was still in college) led to roles with regional companies, and well before his 30th birthday, Dillner was in New York singing for City Opera. But soon he left it all behind, finding that the spotlight was a little short on the kind of creative cooperation he liked best.
“One day, I walked into Robin Thompson’s office—the guy who was hiring for New York City Opera,” he said, smiling. “He was offering me a contract for next season, and I said, ‘You know, Robin, this sounds absolutely crazy, but I don’t really like singing as much as everyone else on stage does. I think I like what you do, what everybody else around here who is not on stage, does. So I don’t want the job, thanks. I’m going to go do something else.’”
Dillner accepted a temporary appointment teaching voice and running the Show-Me Opera at the University of Missouri-Columbia. “For nine months [I was a] visiting professor, one of the lowest-on-the-totem-pole things you can be, and I thought, ‘Perfect!’” he said. “I don’t have to commit forever, and they’re not committing forever, so I can go and try it for nine months.” Once he was there, Dillner realized that he had made the right career call. “It was like a dream come true,” he said. “I think [it is] because it goes to the creation of the whole picture. In a teaching environment, you’re pulling lots of different people with lots of different levels of understanding together.”
When Dillner arrived, the program was in decline. “They’d gone to just an opera workshop where they talked about it and sang a few songs. I said, ‘Well, this is crazy. Let’s start doing operas!’” And they did, with Dillner acting as a one-man production staff. “Because it was really such a small program, I had to do everything,” he said. “I had to teach everything. I had to teach lighting, I had to teach costumes, I had to teach all these things that, really, I had watched other people do, but I really hadn’t done. So—lighting—I didn’t know anything about it except what I’d seen, so I would hang out in the theater with a couple of students and we’d learn how to do it. I thought, ‘I’ve arrived. This is what I want to do. I’m making zero money, but, I love it!’”
Dillner was discovering that mentoring, as well as leadership, was an important aspect of his career satisfaction. “I was getting to help everyone, to share everything I had learned with my students,” he said. “Teaching is, to me, collaborating with another person. Yes, you’re in the driver’s seat and you’re helping them, but if they don’t bring something to the table, there’s nothing to help them with. A person walks in the door who wants a lesson, and I say, ‘Sing,’ and I say, ‘Give me a performance, and now, let’s make it better!’ That’s actually more rewarding to me than doing it myself.”
“Eric is just a fabulous teacher,” said Maria Zouves, executive director of V.O.I.C.Experience, a summer workshop in Tampa, Fla. where Dillner has been teaching and directing for the past five years. “There is no voice-teacher mysticism . . . He explains everything and he talks logically, and he does it from the point of kindness, which is so nice. Learning how to sing is a very personal thing. It’s so intimate. You’re dealing with the psyche as well as the voice, so when you have someone who instills comfort and sensibility, it’s empowering to the singer.”
Dillner brought the Show-Me Opera back up to two productions a year, directing six shows in his three years as a teacher there. He also managed to raise $20,000 for the program in one fell swoop. “Somebody came to see our ‘Così,’” Dillner remembers. “And he said he liked our production at the university better than the one he just saw at Santa Fe, and he said, ‘What can I do for you? What do you need?’ I said, ‘Money, resources.’ And literally, this guy, who runs a brick company, wrote a $20,000 check and said, ‘Here, use it to get this company to move forward.’”
Around the same time, Dillner was also working as a consultant for Shreveport Opera. He had already directed a “really successful” Barber of Seville for them, then worked as a free-lance artist to help mount the first season of their new education program. He ended up leaving his position at the University of Missouri to become the general director of Shreveport Opera.
“I love to talk to singers about what they can do to help themselves, and I always say, ‘Never turn down anything. Do it no matter what,’” he said. “If I had thought, ‘I’m not going to direct an education show,’ you know, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
Dillner spent the next seven years at Shreveport Opera, later adding “artistic director” to his titles, learning as he went along and enjoying (almost) every minute of it. “It was kind of like not knowing anything about lighting at the university job, and then you realize that you do know something, and then you go forward with it—you know, on-the-job training. I learned everything I could—and obviously, judging by huge increases in ticket sales, it worked.”
“He left us in awe,” said Joe Kane, current president of the board at Shreveport Opera. “His artistic vision and the type of artists that he brought here elevated the performances and brought, quite frankly, a better product to our audiences. And he did it on a shoestring,” said Kane, describing in detail a stripped-down production of Sweeney Todd that used projected digital photography to suggest most of the set pieces. “People are still talking about that production. You’ve got to be creative if you can do it within the budget that we have. He. . .would have this discussion with people about where he wanted to go, and it would get done.”
Kane also commented on Dillner’s attitude towards the singers he hired. “I knew the singers adored him,” he said. “Maybe it was the teamwork atmosphere, the way he treated them, the respect he showed, the candor. Many performers came here that were head and shoulders above what our company is because they wanted to work with Eric,” he said. “The creative atmosphere that Eric produced brought the best out in people.”
Now living in Milwaukee, Dillner is diving into his latest challenge: running the Skylight, a musical theatre and opera company with a much larger budget than Shreveport and with its own facility (including two theaters). Facility management is new to him, but just a few months into the job, he is already pursuing new opportunities for team building with his signature enthusiasm and skill. Building mutually beneficial relationships with the other artistic organizations in Milwaukee (some renting space in the Skylight’s building) is a big part of Dillner’s plan.
“How do we use better the space that we have, and what kind of expansion is needed to allow not only the Skylight but also the tenant companies in the building to grow? I’ve moved all the office space around,” he says, mentioning that he is, for the moment, sitting at a folding table. “And I went out and found two more tenant companies to rent office space from us. It’s going to help the bottom line, but it’s really going to help the synergy of collaboration within the building.”
There he is, back to that word: collaboration. Whether it be with students, with singers, or with fellow administrators, it is what Dillner says life is all about for him. “It’s about the process getting there. I believe in people treating each other with respect. . . . Is it a common goal we are all reaching for, or are we grandstanding to prove a point? I think if we’re open, transparent, and honest, we’ll have respect. We’ll enjoy each other and the process of getting there. It allows many people, not just one, to feel ownership and pride—and when people feel pride and ownership, they’re going to tell the world.”
