Friday, December 18, 2009

No Press Conference

Email to the press from Jon Finck, Director of Communications and Public Affairs at San Francisco Opera, telling us that there won't be a 2010-11 season-announcement press conference for the opera company in January, as in the past...well, ten or fifteen years. Instead, there will be a press release on January 19.

They are operating under significant budget constraints, with a season that will have a budget some $6 million under this past year's. That is something, considering that it includes three presentations of the Ring cycle in a new production. Jon Finck's email makes it clear that the opera will save some money by skipping the press conference.

The fact is, we already know about the Summer, 2011 season: it's three presentations of the Ring cycle. So all that needs to be announced is the remaining productions, for fall, 2010. In a good year, there would be seven operas, making a total of eleven for the season. But given the budgetary issues, I'm betting on six at the most and maybe even five. Opera Tattler has been following rumor, gossip, opera press releases, and singers' web sites carefully; see her San Francisco Opera future seasons page for the latest.

2 comments:

Henry Holland said...

If OT's predictions are right, and there's no reason not to believe her, then that's pretty grim. The Makropolous looks interesting, depending on who's conducting

Fall 2012: Jake Heggie's Moby-Dick

Yikes.

Lisa Hirsch said...

I would go to Makropoulos and maybe Werther. I don't exactly like (Massenet, brrr), but....