Long Beach Opera Cancels Rest of Season as Deal Nears

Long Beach Opera, the provocative and enterprising small opera company founded by Michael Milenski in 1978, is canceling the rest of its season and finalizing plans to become the resident company of the Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center on the campus of Cal State Long Beach next season. Until now, the company had independently produced all its programs at the Long Beach Convention Center, with most in the small Terrace Theater.

The deal provides free use of the center’s theater and rehearsal space, as well as administrative offices, alleviating those rental costs for the financially beleaguered company. The agreement is expected to be approved by boards of directors of both organizations within two weeks.

The remainder of the 1996 season has been canceled. It included Massenet’s “Werther,” scheduled to open June 2, and Rossini’s “The Turk in Italy,” which would have opened June 30. Subscribers can receive refunds for tickets by contacting the Long Beach Opera.

“We are not taking on financial risk,” said Wade Hobgood, dean of the College of Arts at Cal State Long Beach and executive director of the Carpenter Center. “That was not something the opera asked us to do. But we’re very excited about this. We’re excited about the kind of work they do and our students having greater access to Michael and the performers, artists and directors he brings in.”

Milenski said the agreement will allow for more ambitious programming. “I’m looking forward to doing rather bolder and bigger things than we could under the old format,” he said. The company will also provide some lectures, symposiums, exhibitions and other educational events.

The first production planned for the Carpenter Center will be a new opera, “Hopper’s Wife,” by the team that created “The Life and Times of Harvey Milk”--composer Stewart Wallace, librettist Michael Korie and director Christopher Alden. The previously announced work, to be presented in Long Beach in spring 1997, is a co-commission by Long Beach Opera and the 92nd St. Y Tisch Center for the Performing Arts in New York. A second production will be announced later.

This year’s Long Beach Opera season opened in March with Henze’s “Elegy for Young Lovers,” but attendance was poor.

“After the last show,” Milenski said, “we sat back and thought, ‘We’re doing something wrong. We have to stop now and refocus ourselves, otherwise we will put ourselves in a position of loss and risk that we can’t emerge from.’ ”

The company, which has operated on a shoestring budget from $500,000 to $1 million annually, has long struggled to get and keep subscribers in the shadow of the better-heeled Los Angeles Music Center Opera ($16 million for eight operas in 1994-95) and Opera Pacific in Costa Mesa (roughly a $6-million budget). Long Beach Opera has gone through a number of financial crises and has had to plead for support at performances to erase deficits and keep from going under at the last minute. Administrative staffing fell from seven in the late 1980s to four currently. This year’s budget is about $750,000, Milenski said.

Widely acknowledged as the most adventuresome opera company in the Southland, Long Beach Opera has drawn critical praise and brickbats but has never built a large audience. The subscriber base is currently 700, down from a peak of 1,200 in the late ‘80s, Milenski said. He tried to carve a niche for the company by presenting enterprising stagings of adventurous, small-scale productions of lesser-known works, such as Rossini’s “The Turk in Italy,” which was a sellout when it was produced in 1995.