The loss of the Baltimore Opera Company, which filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in March, left a gap in the community's cultural life that several people are interested in filling, none more energetically than Giorgio Lalov.
The colorful Bulgarian-born impresario, who runs a touring company that has given hundreds of staged opera performances in Europe and the U.S. during the past two decades, plans to start a new troupe, Baltimore Opera Theater, with his Baltimore-born wife, Jenny Kelly.
"I can run a company on one-third of the $6 million budget of Baltimore Opera," Lalov says. "It's going to be run in a completely different way. We will do La Boheme, Rigoletto and The Barber of Seville next season. I'm going to bring in great singers. I can guarantee you that people won't be disappointed."
Lalov clearly does not lack for self-confidence. Or, apparently, resources.
"We're prepared to finance all of this ourselves," he says in the couple's grandly scaled Cockeysville home.
Lalov, 50, speaks energetically about plans to buy up some of Baltimore Opera's stored sets and other assets at auction, to build new scenery in a warehouse the couple already use. He also speaks heatedly about perceived resistance to his goals of forming a local company - resistance specifically from the Lyric Opera House, where Baltimore Opera made its home for decades.
"There is too much politics here," he says. "I am an artist. I can't play games. With me, there is no fraud."
The couple refer with particular bitterness to a reception held recently by Ed Brody, chairman of the Lyric Foundation, an event for board members of the Lyric and others. "People who were there told us that slanderous things were said about us at that party," Kelly says.
That comes as news to Brody. "I don't understand where this is coming from," he says. "They weren't even mentioned."
Brody says that no one at the Lyric wants to keep Baltimore Opera Theater out of the theater. Adds Sandy Richmond, the Lyric's executive director: "We are still open to working with Giorgio, or anyone else who's interested in bringing opera back to the Lyric."
On June 2, the opera house will present a concert version - no sets or costumes - of Puccini's Turandot by Washington National Opera. That rankles Lalov.
"Shame on Ed Brody for bringing Washington Opera when he will not support a new local company," Lalov says.
