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It’s a Lyric-al life
Fresh off the wild success of Carmen on the Common, Boston Lyric Opera director Janice Mancini Del Sesto reflects on the state of opera in Boston
BY TAMARA WIEDER

A funny thing happened on Janice Mancini Del Sesto’s way to Boston Common. She realized that the free performance of Carmen by Boston Lyric Opera — of which she is general director — was drawing a bigger crowd than the 5000 people she’d expected. A lot bigger. When all was said and sung, park rangers and police estimated the recent Friday-night audience at 60,000. The following night, the crowd was estimated at 75,000 — a stunning accomplishment for an organization that normally sells 40,000 tickets in its entire season.

But with Carmen’s unexpected achievement come myriad questions, including how to capitalize on an unusually diverse audience; how to lure free-performance-goers into a regular-season production, when tickets are priced as high as $117; and how to do it all again with equal or greater success. Complicated questions, to be sure, but all issues that Del Sesto — a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music with a degree in voice and music education who’s been with BLO since 1992 — is happy to be faced with.

Q: Tell me when you first started to realize that Carmen on the Common was going to be a lot more successful than you’d expected.

A: I would say that on Friday night between five and seven o’clock, when traffic came to a halt, and people I knew who saw me standing near a pathway into the park started saying that they had abandoned their cars because the traffic was so backed up to get to the Common that they got out of their cars and walked with their chairs to the park, an hour walking, just to get there — [that’s when] I figured we had a lot of people coming.

Q: Did you have to revise your logistical plans on the spot?

A: We couldn’t at that point, and they were just coming and coming and coming. After I welcomed people on stage and the performance started, I walked — since we couldn’t get through the pathways, I walked the street perimeters with the park rangers and the police, who were showing me what was going on, and my deputy director, who was the project manager of this, and we were addressing issues of how to handle or change things for the following night; there wasn’t a lot we could do then. But it was a very, very polite, well-mannered crowd, and very engaged and absorbed. They told us they’ve never seen such a wonderful crowd there. And for us, it was pretty exciting in that it was a very diverse crowd, a lot of young people, and that’s very exciting to us. Many, many first-time opera-goers, who went away excited and thrilled and ready to come back and do it again.

Q: For those people who’ve now maybe developed a taste for opera, how do you get them back in when the ticket prices may preclude them from coming?

A: Well, we have student rush tickets, and we do advertise those. Interestingly enough, we’ve already had several university newspapers call because they had large groups of young people that they discovered had gone, or they were promoting it. And I don’t know whether you know this, but what is most encouraging about opera audiences — first of all, of all of the performing arts, it’s still the fastest-growing; we’re growing by leaps and bounds every year, according to National Endowment for the Arts data. But what’s most fascinating for us in the business is, the largest growth segment of our audiences is 18-to-24-year-olds, which also happens to be the smallest demographic group in the country. So it’s very encouraging and promising for the future of the art form, obviously.

Q: What had your initial expectations for Carmen on the Common been?

A: We thought that we could easily get about 5000 a night, and 10,000 a night would be fabulous. So obviously we’re thrilled at the numbers.

Q: Do you worry now that expectations might be too high for next time?

A: No, because I know that we care so immensely about doing it right that when we do it again — and plans are already under way to do that — that it will be just as good and just as exciting, and people will say, " Wow, it wasn’t just an odd memory of something that was great; it really is terrific. " And the phones have been ringing with people who are calling and subscribing who have never even bought a single ticket before, because they were so excited by the experience, and said, " Gee, I should’ve done this years ago. " And that’s great; that’s what we want.

But more importantly, and I want to emphasize this, because this is sincerely meant, and is at the heart and core of our mission as an organization: to make opera accessible and available to everyone, whether they can ever afford a ticket to come to the opera. It is the most expensive art form to produce, and it’s not going to get cheaper. You could say, okay, build a 4000-seat house and you could have a lot of cheap tickets, but that’s not the kind of experience we want people to have if they’re going to pay for their tickets. We’re very much committed to making sure that there is free opera for everyone. And some of those people will become ticket buyers and some of them never will. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still bring opera to them.

Q: How important is it that a new facility be available for presenting opera?

A: Since the only real opera house ever built for opera in Boston, on Huntington Avenue, was razed many years, there’s never really been an adequate and appropriate facility. We were thrilled to be able to move into the Shubert Theatre, and we’ve signed another five-year extension. But we must build a real opera house in this city one day. We’re in the early stages of developing specifications for it, and looking at minimum site requirements, land footprints. We’ve talked to the [Boston] Ballet for some years, because we share many, many of the same requirements; as a matter of fact, there’s very little that we don’t share, except for the need for the kind of dance floor they have, that could be laid on the stage. But we share the same acoustical needs; they need a stage house of roughly the same size and technical requirements; they want the same audience amenities in front of house, with dining and education space and boutique space, and comfortable seats, and easy parking, and all the things that we’re looking for for our audience. And we sort of roughly agree on the size. And it’s particularly important to us that it happen one day because it’s very, very difficult to co-produce with other companies and other major cities because our stage house is so small, relatively speaking. It’ll happen; I do believe it’ll happen, and certainly, raising awareness about the company and the art form, and having this number of people enthusiastic and excited about seeing it does reinforce what we believed all along, that there are many people who want to and would come to see opera if we had adequate programming and facilities for that to happen.

Q: If I had asked you a week ago what you thought of the state of opera in Boston, would your answer have been different than it is today?

A: I would have said that I think it is in better shape than it has ever been in terms of having a financially healthy company here, one that now has an international reputation as we do that draws audiences from around the world and media from around the world and impresarios from around the world. That we’re not where we want to be eventually, but God, we’ve grown in 13 years from a $200,000 company that no one paid attention to, to a $7.5 million company that’s considered to be one of the leading and best-run and most-exciting companies in the country. So I think it’s very healthy, because it’s not only artistically healthy; it’s organizationally and financially healthy, and I do sincerely believe that for the first time — and we have very clear indicators that demonstrate this — for the first time, people in Boston believe that opera’s here to stay. It has a future.

Q: For a city that’s considered as cultural as Boston is, why did it take so long for people to believe that opera and the BLO are here to stay?

A: I think in part because there were many companies, all of which had some real highs and some real lows, and many companies valiantly did some great things, but maybe were not organizationally sound; perhaps artistically exciting but not organizationally sound. I say this about singers, too; you can have all the spectacular singers and directors and designers and conductors and musicians in the world, but if you don’t have healthy organizations that make opportunities for them possible by having great boards and sound financial management and vision and great artistic thinking and planning, then it doesn’t do you any good.

Q: Are you planning more free performances for next year?

A: Well, no, because we want to take a couple of years to really plan adequately for the next one. There are issues with, how many do we do? With these kinds of numbers —

Q: Before, it was kind of " ignorance is bliss. "

A: Right. If we can spread out the crowds, it makes for an easier, better experience — if there are fewer people each night because they have more choices. There’s the issue, when you’re doing outdoor programming, of weather. But for us, it was very exciting, and it was very, very affirming, because we believed that all the talk about, " Well, Boston’s really not an opera city, it’ll never be an opera city " is just not true. We’ve seen the interest, we’ve grown from a couple of hundred subscribers to over 7000. In our normal subscription season, we sell 40,000 seats as a sold-out season. We served the public, 60,000 people, in just one night [with Carmen on the Common]. And we as an organization, the staff and board, believe that that’s a part of what we must be doing. But we can’t jeopardize our main-stage season, and the people who have supported us and who buy tickets every year, by throwing so much into free performances that the staff resources and artistic and technical resources are not paying attention to those that helped us get to this point.

Q: How do you, as general director, respond or react to a negative review?

A: I have to tell you that the philosophy in the business, and any of my colleagues would pretty much say the same thing, is that we pay attention to the people who buy the tickets, not the people who come for free. And that includes reviewers. It is one individual’s — and, you know, highly respected and certainly knowledgeable people — but it’s one person’s personal opinion and judgment.

Q: But that opinion may affect the people who buy the tickets.

A: Well, you know something? It hasn’t in our case. It really hasn’t. We find, in all of the research that we’ve done, that reviewers really haven’t affected our sales; that in fact, what affects our sales is word-of-mouth of the audience. That’s what sells the tickets.

Q: So is opera criticism obsolete?

A: I don’t think it’s obsolete. I think it’s informed. But I think that we have very, very sophisticated opera-goers here in Boston, and they’re people who trust their own judgment, their own taste, who in fact trust the opinions of their peers. And that’s really what has sold tickets for us.

Q: Do you have a favorite opera?

A: No, I don’t. I have many that I like for different reasons. Because I started first as a singer before I went to the business side, I have some that I have great love for because they felt good to perform. I do have strong feelings about what works well for introducing opera to people; Carmen is a great one for that, for instance. And what ones I would never take anyone to for their first time. And there are some that are greatly loved that if I never saw them again, I would be perfectly happy. But I don’t program for my tastes; I program for our audience.

Q: When you’re at home and not listening to opera, what do you listen to?

A: I have rather broad-based taste. I love reggae music, just love reggae music. I love some of the jazz and blues. I also love people like Bonnie Raitt, real crooners. And as a matter of fact, unless I’m doing work at home, I actually try not to listen to opera, because it’s just not an escape for me. I mean, the one problem with being in the business is that you don’t listen to opera for pleasure. It never becomes non-work. It’s the only downside to it. So I try to listen to other things. I grew up in my early years as a conservatory student, when I wasn’t making classical music, reggae was just being introduced into this country, and I got to go to early Bob Marley and Tosh concerts. I really miss going out to dance to reggae music. I’d like to just go out and do some reggae dancing. And I’d love to do some salsa dancing.

Q: Well, you should.

A: I’m going to! This middle-aged lady’s going to show up some day and kick up her heels.

Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com



A complete archive of our weekly Q&As
Issue Date: October 3 - 10, 2002
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