My Tuesday May 24 Chicago Sun-Times story on Lyric Opera of Chicago's 2011 annual meeting and 2010-2011 financial reports.
Incoming Lyric general director Anthony Freud inherits a balanced budget
Aided by reserve fund, Lyric Opera in the black
Raises fundraising goals for 2011-12
BY ANDREW PATNER
Lyric Opera of Chicago, internationally renowned among arts organizations for its fiscal solvency, reported a balanced budget for its 2010-11 season at its annual meeting Monday night. It marks the 23rd time in the last 24 years that Lyric has ended its season in the black.
To balance its operating expenses of $53.7 million, Lyric trimmed the number of performances — although not the number of operas produced — at the Civic Opera House last season by about 10 percent and dipped into a rainy-day reserve fund for $4.4 million for the second time since the non-renewable fund was established six years ago.
But the company also exceeded its annual fund-raising goal of $17.2 million and sold 91 percent capacity -- a 5-point uptick -- for its 68 regular performances, two student matinées, and a subscriber appreciation concert. Subscription and individual ticket sales brought in $23.8 million on 229,775 tickets sold, an attendance drop of only 3.6 percent against last season’s greater number of 77 performances.
Lyric remains wary of societal changes and ticket-buying patterns that have seen its traditional base of full-season subscription sales slip, retiring general director William Mason told attendees at the company’s annual meeting and dinner at the Four Seasons hotel. But it is boosting targeted marketing efforts, and its confidence in the generosity and loyalty of its supporters remains so strong that Lyric is upping its fund-raising goal for 2011-12 to $20.6 million, an increase of almost 20 percent to match all but $300,000 of an anticipated $3.7 million increase in expenses, most of it production-related.
Although no information was offered Monday on Lyric's endowment, forthcoming reports were said to show an increase in invested funds. Lyric is also one of the few major U.S. opera companies that does not carry an accumulated deficit. Audited statements are to be released in August.
Lyric’s president and CEO, investment banker Richard P. Kiphart, who has played an unusually strong role in his five-year term as donor, fund-raiser, and recruiter of soprano Renée Fleming to the company’s artistic leadership as creative consultant, passed the top post to investor Kenneth G. Pigott. A longtime Lyric board member and production sponsor, Pigott previously had been elevated to executive vice president and chaired the eight-month international search that led to the hiring this spring of Houston Grand Opera chief Anthony Freud as Mason’s successor. Kiphart will succeed attorney Allan B. Muchin as chairman of the Lyric board.
At the dinner, also a fundraiser, Freud -- who takes up his Chicago job October 1, opening night of the new opera season -- saluted his predecessors, Mason and the late Ardis Krainik, for their artistic and fiscal leadership. He underscored his belief that these goals must be augmented by greater civic and community engagement.
Fleming presented Muchin with the Carol Fox Award, named for Lyric’s co-founder. Pigott announced that backstage space at the opera house would be named the William Mason Rehearsal Hall in honor of Mason’s literal lifetime of service to the company.
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