I had been very taken by several discussions in The New York Opera Newsletter, about singers who were tired of auditioning and placing their lives in others’ hands. They took the bull by the horns and made their own opportunities, relying on themselves to get an audience and find a place to sing. I thought about that for a very long time. One day, when my son was in kindergarten, one of my friends and I went to my son’s class as part of a project in which the kids’ families showed the class what their careers were like. I talked to the children about what opera was and what it felt like, and then we performed a couple of pieces for them. We loved it, and the kids loved it.
I didn’t know where it would lead, but I decided to put on a little recital. A guest singer and I performed a free concert at a beautiful tiny library hall at Harvard University. I wrote a detailed, fun narration, and asked an actor friend to read it. We did two performances of another recital, and the next fall I asked more singers to perform with us. I knew I would have to pay the singers, and we also wanted to videotape the performance, both to have a record of the event and for family who couldn’t be there. But all those things would cost money, as would the hall rental. We realized we’d have to charge for tickets. The audience diminished a bit, but people seemed to love it.
In the spring of 1997 I was working on Dido and Aeneas, and thought we’d do a scene from it on the next concert. Then I thought, “It’s so short—let’s do the whole thing!” As I got deeper in, I realized I was in for the ride of my life. We’d chosen a name by now—the Cambridge Lieder & Opera Society. Soon I was dealing with dancers, choreographers, a chorus, several lead singers, costumes, directors—and even getting a boar’s head made! But my chorus was full of dedicated and competent singers, and the leads were fabulous singers and actors. While our budget-poor advertising didn’t actually land us a critic, we had the best audiences to date.
For Handel’s Rodelinda, our big coming-out, so to speak, we paid big money to everyone. Not big in Met terms, or even Boston Lyric Opera terms, but very big for us—several hundred dollars for the local names (and they’re used to getting more), and less for the very good talent just out of the university. We’d have loved to pay them all better and equally, but we were at high risk already. We paid union wages for the orchestra, and got some of the absolute best players in the city. The union helped us as much as they could, but it was still very steep—one of our major costs. But the critics loved the orchestra especially, so we felt it was worth it. My husband and I are both former orchestral players and couldn’t deal with a bad orchestra, especially for this glorious Handel music. Our conductor also insisted on the very best, and he was right. We got all the best talent we could afford in every area—direction, lights, etc. But we also cut as many corners as we could. We spent big-time for a baby company on that opera.
I kept singing through all this, and that was pretty rough at times. But we got our reviews, including one in the American Record Guide; had our biggest audiences yet—and we did it all for $37,000. Trouble was, we only sold $7,000 worth of tickets, and ended up owing $30,000. Obviously, we had to scale back and had to learn the basics of fund raising.
Concerts are cheaper than operas, so that was one way to stay before the public. We had to tell everyone we could not pay at all for a year. Singers around town varied greatly in their attitudes toward not being paid for singing—some, even though they are not “names,” will not sing for free, and others are starting to be names around town and get enough work that they get by. Some consider trying new material with us for free, but few have actually done that. Many singers were so happy to have a place—any place—to perform, they didn’t mind not being paid. But of course they hope to be paid eventually. We told them we would start paying this fall no matter what, even though we’re still basically broke and using our own private savings.
To do concerts cheaply, we use only the free media listings, and we find that we must always check and re-check to make sure they’ve gotten all the information printed correctly. This is a hugely annoying task in itself—if the media listings are wrong, it can ruin a concert. We held a concert last summer, and every single free media listing had an error in it. That was when we learned we had to check them, but it was too late. Hardly anyone showed up.
We know we can’t go on like this without help, but there’s little funding, and we’re in a vicious circle of being so busy running things that we can’t find time to learn and do the fund raising, grant writing, and people prodding that need to be done. Our small board is very busy, too. Whether we make friends with a millionaire or not may be the final determining factor in our survival.
It really is much easier to ask for donations if you’re nonprofit and can guarantee that people can take donations off their taxes. We did get donations before, but I think we may do better once this happens. We have been working on becoming nonprofit for a very long time with help from Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts in Boston. But it still cost over $500 to become nonprofit—that was a shock. [Note: see sidebar for more information on forming a nonprofit corporation.]
The great thing about starting your own company is that I have had the opportunity to learn the music I love, and that’s a great treasure to me. If someone else asked me to sing something I would, but so far I’ve gotten to choose most of it. Can we do a production again? I don’t know, but it’s been a wild, wonderful trip.
