With $2-Million in Crowdfunding, San Diego Opera Stays Open

Two months after prior San Diego Opera leadership voted to shutter the company, the organization’s reconfigured board said Monday that the opera will remain open and present a scaled-back 50th-anniversary season, U-T San Diego and KPBS television report.

Opera officials said they more than doubled the goal of an online fundraising campaign that ended Monday, taking in $2.1-million from nearly 2,500 contributors. With additional gifts pledged since the unexpected closure announcement, the company has $4.5-million toward a 2014-15 season that is now budgeted at $10.5-million, a 40 percent cut from this year.

“The community told us they wanted the opera,” said Carol Lazier, who took over as the board’s president after roughly half the members resigned in a split over the shutdown plan. The opera last week officially severed ties with artistic director Ian Campbell, who was widely viewed as having shaped the proposal in March to close the company in the face of dwindling attendance and donor support.

The opera will mount three already-planned productions in the coming season but dropped an expensive staging of Wagner’s Tannhauser. Singers and other employees have expressed a willingness to take a 10 percent pay cut to help finance the opera’s renewal, the organization said.