Lev Bratishenko spotlights City Opera Vancouver’s new Artistic Director
Survival isn’t enough. That’s the Gordon Gerrard, who sounds acutely aware conviction you take away from a conversation with City Opera Vancouver’s Artistic Director of the special risks and opportunities that come with running a smaller opera company. More nimble and carrying fewer costs, like leases on big halls that were always hard to fill, the smalls can have a clearer identity and a purposeful culture—but they also have smaller endowments (if they have one at all) and can rightly feel financially precarious.
Most recently the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony filed for bankruptcy, but what would happen if one of Canada’s major organizations, something with the international recognition of the Canadian Opera Company, looked like it was about to disappear? Perhaps some organizations are too big to fail, not because their failure would increase
