Opera Boston

Opera Boston is closing down. With no advance warning that the city's second-largest opera company was in trouble, board chair Winifred P. Gray and board president Gregory E. Bulger issued a statement this morning that Opera Boston faces "an insurmountable budget deficit" and will cease operations on Jan. 1, 2012. The announcement cited "lackluster fundraising in a tough economic climate" as the main reason for the closure. The staff was notified yesterday. The closure comes just months after the hiring, earlier this year, of respected opera and ballet leader Lesley Koenig as general director.

It didn't take Gil Rose long to fill his schedule. Just before Christmas, Rose's position as artistic director of Opera Boston disappeared when the company closed. Today, Monadnock Music, based in Peterborough, N.H., and known for its annual summer music festival, appointed Rose as its new artistic director. Rose, who also leads the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, replaces Jonathan Bagg and Laura Gilbert, the former co-artistic directors who last year were told that they would not be invited back as part of changes being made at Monadnock Music.

They met late one October afternoon in 2011 in the lobby of the Westin Copley Place Hotel. Randolph Fuller, the millionaire opera aficionado who helped found Opera Boston in 2003, wanted to tell Jim Marko, only six weeks in as development director, that the company was being led on a doomed path. Fuller's target: General director Lesley Koenig, the former Metropolitan Opera staffer just 9 months into her job. She was "incompetent," Fuller steamed, and he would have nothing to do with her. Marko felt shaken.

The case for the $6 parking meter: Leon Neyfakh on a new idea in urban planning: By making the most desirable parking spaces more expensive, we can ensure that there's always a free space or two on every block for the people who really want them. But, "inevitably, attempts to bring demand-based pricing to America's cities will involve a reckoning with difficult questions about fairness, as city officials and citizens ask themselves whether it's right to allocate a highly desirable public resource based on who can afford to pay the most for it . " What's really happened in Haiti?

It's a young composer's opera about young love, performed by young singers, to welcome the start of a new year. But for all its optimism, the production also represents a sad and unexpected ending. Mozart's one-act "Bastien und Bastienne," written when he was just 12, tells the story of a young shepherd and shepherdess whose romance gets a boost from the village magician. Opera Boston will present it twice at First Night on Saturday in semi-staged, 40-minute performances at Emmanuel Church, promising fun for all ages.

BERLIOZ"S "BÉATRICE ET BÉNÉDICT"" Opera Boston At: Cutler Majestic Theatre, Friday night (repeats tomorrow) Last year Opera Boston began its season with a darkly violent "Fidelio" and moved on to Hindemith's "Cardillac," about a homicidal jeweler who preys on his own customers. For this season's opener, angst is out and romance is in, jagged interiors have been traded for moonlit Sicilian nights, interwar expressionism exchanged for a more, well, merry war. The work is "Béatrice et Bénédict," Berlioz's charming take on "Much Ado About Nothing.

After opening its season with a fumbled “Fidelio,’’ Opera Boston scored a memorable success this weekend with its new staging of Hindemith’s “Cardillac,’’ a largely forgotten opera from 1926. Sunday’s performance at the Cutler Majestic Theater proved not only to be an afternoon of arresting opera. It was also a pointed validation of the company’s larger mission to bring deserving yet rarely heard works before the public — a mission that has seldom felt so vindicated and so essential.

THANK YOU for your editorial about Opera Boston ( "City, arts leaders should fight to keep Opera Boston alive," Dec. 29). I agree. The five-member executive committee is out of touch with what the public wants. Any local company that presented the excellent Stephanie Blythe in "La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein" in 2010 must do everything possible to stay afloat. Polly Erickson

I WAS disappointed to hear that Opera Boston's board decided to disband this unique organization ("Funding gap abruptly shuts Opera Boston; Company disbands after 9 creative years," Page A1, Dec. 24). I am an opera lover, and a subscriber to both local opera companies. It is frustrating for me (and I presume others) that we were not given the opportunity to do our part to keep the company going. This incident, the previous loss of Sarah Caldwell's Opera Company of Boston, and the destruction of the Boston Opera House in 1958 make Boston's reputation as a cradle for the arts...

AN OPERA company in distress might be excused for over-dramatizing its plight in the hopes of finding a financial rescuer. But with barely a whimper, Opera Boston - the city's second largest opera company - announced last week that it was closing its doors as if it were nothing more than the corner sub shop. It's both a strange and sad outcome. The official reason given by Opera Boston's board was an "insurmountable budget deficit. " But the roughly $750,000 deficit and liabilities weighing down the company struck few experts as insurmountable in a city of Boston's size...

When Opera Boston announced just before Christmas that it was ceasing operations, the city's supply of fully staged opera was rather abruptly slashed. Opera Boston had, in its eight-year run, fed the city's appetite for novelty and rarity, putting on operas both new and old that had infrequently, if ever, been seen or heard here. The company's dissolution had its own specific pathology, of course: slow fund-raising in a down economy, maybe, or a fractured board. But in the wake of its unexpected collapse, one familiar theme emerged: Speaking of Boston, the company's former general director,...

They met late one October afternoon in 2011 in the lobby of the Westin Copley Place Hotel. Randolph Fuller, the millionaire opera aficionado who helped found Opera Boston in 2003, wanted to tell Jim Marko, only six weeks in as development director, that the company was being led on a doomed path. Fuller's target: General director Lesley Koenig, the former Metropolitan Opera staffer just 9 months into her job. She was "incompetent," Fuller steamed, and he would have nothing to do with her. Marko felt shaken.

A murderous prince I found Sebastian Smee's piece on the sculpture "Prince Arikankharer Slaying His Enemies" fascinating ("Vengeance in a fragment of concentrated violence," g, Jan. 3). I note that the multiple figure in the [sculpture's] lower left corner is somewhat incoherent: The first figure has one arm across his chest and the other raised with an open hand. Then we have two more heads but four more sets of hands. Further, the three heads each have slightly different headdresses (or hairstyles)

THANK YOU for your editorial about Opera Boston ( "City, arts leaders should fight to keep Opera Boston alive," Dec. 29). I agree. The five-member executive committee is out of touch with what the public wants. Any local company that presented the excellent Stephanie Blythe in "La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein" in 2010 must do everything possible to stay afloat. Polly Erickson

It's a young composer's opera about young love, performed by young singers, to welcome the start of a new year. But for all its optimism, the production also represents a sad and unexpected ending. Mozart's one-act "Bastien und Bastienne," written when he was just 12, tells the story of a young shepherd and shepherdess whose romance gets a boost from the village magician. Opera Boston will present it twice at First Night on Saturday in semi-staged, 40-minute performances at Emmanuel Church, promising fun for all ages.

AN OPERA company in distress might be excused for over-dramatizing its plight in the hopes of finding a financial rescuer. But with barely a whimper, Opera Boston - the city's second largest opera company - announced last week that it was closing its doors as if it were nothing more than the corner sub shop. It's both a strange and sad outcome. The official reason given by Opera Boston's board was an "insurmountable budget deficit. " But the roughly $750,000 deficit and liabilities weighing down the company struck few experts as insurmountable in a city of...

When Opera Boston announced just before Christmas that it was ceasing operations, the city's supply of fully staged opera was rather abruptly slashed. Opera Boston had, in its eight-year run, fed the city's appetite for novelty and rarity, putting on operas both new and old that had infrequently, if ever, been seen or heard here. The company's dissolution had its own specific pathology, of course: slow fund-raising in a down economy, maybe, or a fractured board. But in the wake of its unexpected collapse, one familiar theme emerged: Speaking of Boston, the company's former general director,...

It didn't take Gil Rose long to fill his schedule. Just before Christmas, Rose's position as artistic director of Opera Boston disappeared when the company closed. Today, Monadnock Music, based in Peterborough, N.H., and known for its annual summer music festival, appointed Rose as its new artistic director. Rose, who also leads the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, replaces Jonathan Bagg and Laura Gilbert, the former co-artistic directors who last year were told that they would not be invited back as part of changes being made at Monadnock Music.

I WAS disappointed to hear that Opera Boston's board decided to disband this unique organization ("Funding gap abruptly shuts Opera Boston; Company disbands after 9 creative years," Page A1, Dec. 24). I am an opera lover, and a subscriber to both local opera companies. It is frustrating for me (and I presume others) that we were not given the opportunity to do our part to keep the company going. This incident, the previous loss of Sarah Caldwell's Opera Company of Boston, and the destruction of the Boston Opera House in 1958 make Boston's reputation as a cradle for the arts...

Opera Boston is closing down. With no advance warning that the city's second-largest opera company was in trouble, board chair Winifred P. Gray and board president Gregory E. Bulger issued a statement this morning that Opera Boston faces "an insurmountable budget deficit" and will cease operations on Jan. 1, 2012. The announcement cited "lackluster fundraising in a tough economic climate" as the main reason for the closure. The staff was notified yesterday. The closure comes just months after the hiring, earlier this year, of respected opera and ballet leader Lesley Koenig as general director.