Baltimore Opera

Baltimore Opera Company officials said yesterday that they must raise $600,000 in cash and pledges by December or face bankruptcy before the end of this 40th anniversary season.Founded by renowned diva Rosa Ponselle, the company is operating with an $800,000 deficit, half of which was incurred last season.The opera has received $400,000 in cash and pledges in the last several months, but much of that money is contingent on raising an additional $600,000 to meet a $1 million goal by the end of the year.

In a generous act perfectly suited to the holiday season, four major arts organizations - the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera, Centerstage and the Hippodrome - will offer a gift of free tickets to patrons of the Baltimore Opera Company, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Dec. 4 and canceled the remainder of its 2008-2009 season. Baltimore Opera is unable to provide refunds for tickets sold to the scrapped spring productions of Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.

Louise B. Wise, a founder and first president of the Baltimore Opera Guild, died Sunday of heart failure at her daughter's Lutherville home. She was 99 and had lived in Guilford for many years. Recalled as an accomplished hostess, she is credited with building up a volunteer constituency which has contributed enthusiasm and money to the city's opera company for more than 30 years. Born Louise Berry in Des Moines, Iowa, and raised in Oak Park, Ill., she attended the University of Illinois at Urbana, where she was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority.

The Monets now on exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art can be seen almost any time you visit Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. The sets and costumes of the current Baltimore Opera Company's stunning production of Verdi's "Don Carlos" can be seen this week only. Tickets for the Opera are easier to get and there's no standing on line.This production of Verdi's great score, which opened Saturday, is beautiful to look at -- as beautiful, in fact, as anything one might find in a museum. It was designed by the same team of Argentines -- Roberto Oswald, who directed, designed and lit it, and Anibal Lapiz, who did the costumes -- who were responsible for the wonderful production of "Salome" a few years back.

Loretta Ver Valen, a former opera and concert singer who contributed to cultural, medical and religious institutions in Baltimore, died of heart failure Friday at the Blakehurst retirement community in Towson. She was 96. In 1997, Mrs. Ver Valen, a former Roland Park resident, made significant bequests to a number of local institutions with which she had maintained an interest throughout her life. The Johns Hopkins University received $1.5 million -- $1 million for the Peabody Conservatory, $250,000 for the Wilmer Eye Institute and $250,000 for the Johns Hopkins Hospital Oncology Center; the Walters Art Gallery received $250,000; Grace United Methodist Church was given $1 million; and the Baltimore Opera Company received $1 million, the largest single donation in its history.

Last night's all-Wagner concert at the Lyric Opera House exposed the current strengths and weakness of the Baltimore Opera Company.The strengths included a first-rate conductor, who led a free-lance orchestra unfamiliar with Wagner in idiomatic performances of that composer's music, and two fine singers, soprano Judith Telep-Ehrich and tenor George Gray, who have the vocal heft and the temperament to sing this most vocally demanding of all operatic composers....

Renee Fleming, the velvet-toned, unfailingly glamorous soprano who is among today's most popular opera stars, will sing a benefit concert for the Baltimore Opera Company on Dec. 8. Fleming's program at the Lyric Opera House has not been finalized, but "it will be an evening of operatic arias, repertoire that is close to her," company general director Michael Harrison said yesterday. The Grammy Award-winning soprano will be backed by the Baltimore Opera Orchestra, conducted by Wang Ya-Hui, a Peabody Institute graduate and former music director of the Akron Symphony in Ohio.

The Baltimore Opera Company's petition for Chapter 11 protection, filed yesterday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Maryland, revealed $1.2 million owed to creditors holding the largest unsecured claims. Seventy other creditors were listed, without a dollar value. Heading the credit roster is Bank of America, owed $640,000; and $245,000 is owed to subsidiaries of the company that manages the Lyric Opera House, where the company's productions have been performed for decades.

If you're going to throw a party for the Baltimore Opera Company, it makes sense to feature a little singing. That's what happened at the Baltimore Opera Guild's Annual Spring Gala, held this year at the Hunt Valley home of Drs. Mahin Shamszad and Homayoon Farzadegan. Soprano Kathleen Stapleton performed at the gathering. So did the party's hostess. Mahin delivered a fine rendition, we hear, of "Happy Birthday." Seems six guests were celebrating their big days either the day before, day of, or day after the party.

The 1992-'93 Baltimore Opera Company season will be characterized by two blockbuster operas that play bookends to a lyric and sentimental one.The season, announced yesterday by the BOC, will open in October with Puccini's "Turandot," continue in March with Donizetti's "The Elixir of Love," and conclude in April with the first Baltimore performances of Verdi's "Nabucco," perhaps the first piece in which the composer unequivocally announced his greatness....