Here is the full version of my Thursday January 13, 2011 suntimes.com and Chicago Sun-Times story.
Brian Dickie, shown in 2004 | al podgorski~sun-times
Chicago Opera Theater chief Dickie to step down in August 2012
BY ANDREW PATNER
Brian Dickie, who has done more to change the shape of opera in Chicago than anyone since Lyric Opera of Chicago impresarias Carol Fox and Ardis Krainik, announced Thursday that he will step down as general director of Chicago Opera Theater after the 2012 COT season at the end of his current contract.
Dickie, a Briton who will then be 71 and marking his 50th anniversary in opera management and administration, and his wife Nell have a young daughter and they will return to London where their extended families are.
"The time obviously comes at a certain point. And in addition to our daughter, Beatrice, I have nine grandchildren -- eight of them boys," Dickie said in an interview Wednesday. "But I’m here and quite busy for another 18 months!"
Dickie came to Chicago in 1999 at a time of transition both for COT, Chicago’s smaller opera company, and for him. COT’s founder, Alan Stone, had retired for health reasons and the group’s initial mission of opera performed in English had fallen out of fashion in an age of supertitles. Raising money for American works had also stalled.
Dickie, who had a long career with the famed Glyndebourne Opera in England and had also been head of the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto was living in the U.S. and looking for a new position.
The COT board took a major gamble in bringing an international figure to the small, cash-strapped operation. Dickie almost immediately brought it to renewed national and even international attention with innovative productions of Baroque and modern works with singers, conductors, stage directors, and designers who were newcomers to U.S. houses or even to opera itself. Dickie also led the group in its successful move from a small North Side former school auditorium to the new 1,525-seat Harris Theater in Millennium Park in 2004.
“I did not want to duplicate what our great friends at the Lyric were doing,” Dickie said in a statement, “but to give Chicagoans three more titles every season to expand their experience of operatic repertoire, and to provide additional opportunities for innovative approaches to production. This I believe we have done, thanks to a wonderful board and staff and especially to an adventuresome group of donors and ticket buyers who championed our cause. I will miss this city deeply.
“I have no plans to retire and hope to continue to contribute to the opera community for many years to come.”
In an interview, Dickie added, “What we want to ensure is that this company can build on what we have achieved. It’s certainly a very difficult period for all arts organizations and for the ticket-buying public.”
COT has an annual budget of only $2.5 million -- “That has to change,” Dickie said -- compared with Lyric’s $53 million. “I’ve always believed in keeping to one’s artistic standards and achieving excellence. That in the end will win through. COT will find someone. There are all kinds of exciting people out there in their ‘30s and ‘40s and they’ll figure out the challenges. Necessity being the mother of invention and all that.”
COT board president, Gregory O’Leary, is chairing a search committee for a successor which will begin its work immediately and the company has retained a search firm as well.
Dickie presented 20 Chicago premières at COT ranging from Monteverdi’s 1607 Orfeo, to such 20th century masterworks as Britten’s Death in Venice and John Adams’s Nixon in China. 2011 will bring the Midwest première of Tod Machover’s cyber-opera Death and the Powers and a new production of Charpentier’s 1693 Medée, also a Chicago première. Such artists as soprano Danielle de Niese, conductor Jane Glover -- now music director of Chicago's Music of the Baroque, and stage director Diane Paulus made their U.S. or opera débuts with the company under Dickie.
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