Word: krainik
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Today, under Ardis Krainik, 56, a former mezzo who was once Fox's secretary, the company is again robust. The deficits are gone, the budget has risen from $9.1 million four seasons ago to $14.8 million this year, and the number of productions will increase from eight to nine next year. Ticket sales have run at 92% of the opera house's 3,520-seat capacity. Quality is high too: this season, Bellini's bel canto I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Soprano Cecilia Gasdia and Mezzo Tatiana Troyanos was an unexpected smash hit, and the Lyric's tradition...
...Krainik's secret is "constant vigilance." She pares each opera's budget line by line, until expenses are balanced by box-office receipts and fund raising. This may seem like mere common sense, but in opera it is a radical approach. Of necessity, she chooses the repertoire carefully and conservatively, this season balancing ham-and-eggers like Butterfly and Traviata with Otello and Die Meistersinger, the lone German entry. "What I've learned," says Krainik, "is that you can have all the art you want if you've got the money...
...Lyric is setting an example for companies all over America. And not just fiscal: the Metropolitan Opera, for example, has not performed La Rondine since 1936. "It's love that generates all this," says Krainik, taking in her opera company, the Chicago River and the Lake Michigan shore with one expansive gesture. "We're here to put on beautiful music." And so they do. --By Michael Walsh
That control extends to everything from hiring singers to choosing a * balanced program that encompasses not only classics and premieres but also thorny modernist works such as Alban Berg's Wozzeck, which last week got a stunning new production that typifies the Krainik style. Krainik had originally planned the project as a co-production with the Chatelet Theatre Musical de Paris, to be conducted in Paris and Chicago by Daniel Barenboim. Following the French performance, Krainik decided that the lighting design was unsuited to the Lyric's stage. "It would have cost us an extra $600,000 just...
Such inspired improvising is characteristic of Krainik's unorthodox management method, which is tactical rather than strategic. "I don't have a master plan," she says, "because there are always developments in the middle that are even better than the master plan...