San Diego Opera Board Shakeup Revives Survival Hopes

The San Diego Opera’s board of directors was reconstituted during a stormy meeting Thursday, and the new leadership is exploring a reorganization plan to avert the scheduled shutdown of the opera this month, U-T San Diego writes.

On Friday the new board postponed the planned closure date from April 29 to May 19 to give the opera time to raise money for a possible 2014-15 season, the newspaper also reports.

Karen Cohn, the board president who oversaw the move to close the 49-year-old company, resigned and was replaced by Carol Lazier, the panel’s secretary, who earlier this month donated $1-million to the opera in hopes of persuading her peers to reconsider. Several other board members also walked out of Thursday’s meeting, a session one director characterized as “chaos.”

Closure backers said declining ticket sales and a lack of big donors put the opera on a path to financial disaster if it continued. The new board agreed to pursue a plan recommended by national arts group Opera America that would see the company trim its $17-million budget by 25 to 38 percent and implement new models for programming and fundraising.