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KPBS Midday Edition

Roundtable: More Drama At San Diego Opera Unfolds

By Neiko Will / Producer,  Pat Finn / Producer ,  Mark Sauer / Host, The Roundtable
Published April 25, 2014 at 8:30 AM PDT
This story was published more than 10 years ago.
Roundtable: More Drama At San Diego Opera Unfolds
HOST: Mark SauerGUESTS:Angela Carone, KPBS News Beth Accomando, KPBS News Dean Calbreath, San Diego Daily Transcript JW August, 10News

The San Diego Opera Board was expected to decide on Thursday, April 24, whether General Director Ian Campbell and his ex-wife, Deputy Director Ann Campbell, would be asked to leave or stay on. Instead, the Campbells have been placed on indefinite paid administrative leave.

Act One: The Opera Shuts Down

When the board voted on March 19 to shut down the opera after the final performance of "Don Quixote" in April, jaws dropped and anguished questions immediately were shouted from many corners.

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It was known that the opera had suffered dwindling audiences and donations since the Great Recession of 2008. Donations have improved somewhat recently, but ticket sales have not. Ian Campbell and Opera Board President Karen Cohn were convinced that a viable 2015 season could not be mounted.

The civic upset caused the board to back off a bit, issuing a two-week stay of execution, and things calmed down somewhat.

Act Two: Out With The Old, In With the New

And then came the board meeting of April 17.

The board members in attendance began to consider ways to keep the opera going with a greatly reduced budget, causing Ian Campbell and Karen Cohn to leave, or, some say, storm out, along with Life Director Faye Wilson and several others. Cohn resigned as president. Board member Carol Lazier was named acting president.

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The embarrassing discovery was made that under California law, the board of directors did not have the power to shut down the opera by themselves without a vote of the 800 members of the San Diego Opera Association. That vote is scheduled for Monday.

Act Three: Anybody's Guess

During his 30 years as director, Ian Campbell moved the Opera from a $3 million budget and a mountain of debt to a budget of $17 million and fiscal stability. He brought singers to the Civic Theater stage from all over the world and filled the 3,000 seat house for many years.

Will this story be his legacy? Or will his legacy suffer from his love of grand opera and aversion to change?

Will Carol Lazier be able to save the opera?

What kind of opera will it be?

Stay tuned.

KPBS Midday Edition
Neiko Will
Neiko Will is a producer for KPBS Evening Edition and KPBS Roundtable.
See stories by Neiko Will
Pat Finn
Pat Finn previously served as a producer for KPBS Midday Edition and KPBS Evening Edition. Finn began her career in broadcasting at KTLA and KCET in Los Angeles. In 1979 she became KPBS’ Public Information Director, then Director of Advertising and Promotion, Program Director, and Director of Broadcasting. She oversaw the station’s local and national productions, including the one-hour documentary Los Romeros: The Royal Family of the Guitar, and Child Protective Services, a one-hour look inside the San Diego County agency responsible for the welfare of at risk children. Both programs also aired on public television stations nationwide. Finn has earned honors from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
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Mark Sauer
A newspaperman for more than 30 years, Mark Sauer joined KPBS in October 2010 and previously served as the host of the KPBS Roundtable. He spent 27 years as a reporter and editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune after stints at The Houston Post and at two papers in his native Michigan. A features/human-interest writer in the UT's Currents section for many years, Mark also spent about a third of his UT career as an editor and reporter on the Metro Desk. He has covered a wide range of events: Wild fires in Southern California and Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast; Super Bowls and the World Series; foster care and child-abuse issues; the Roman Catholic Diocese's sexual-abuse scandal and bankruptcy; royal visits of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and Princess Diana; Republican and Democratic national conventions; high-profile criminal trials; and many other stories, from the silly to the sublime. Along the way, he interviewed everyone from presidents to pan-handlers. His work exposing the false accusations and prosecutions of several San Diegans for murder, rape and child abuse garnered Pulitzer Prize nominations and many regional and local journalism awards, including Best in the West, the Sol Price Award for Responsible Journalism and several San Diego and California bar-association awards. Mark has a degree in journalism from Michigan State University.
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