Michael Hill
Chautauqua Institution President Michael Hill is responding to criticism from residents over changes to the Opera program and other items.
The Institution, in a media release earlier this summer, said due to attendance still being down after the return to full programming in 2022 after the pandemic, in addition to the rising cost of labor, housing, and other costs; a significantly reduced multi-year budget model for the opera has been developed. The cuts include the end of major opera productions being presented at the Institution.
Some Chautauqua residents met this news with shock and anger, with some threatening to withhold donations and calling for the resignation of President Hill.
Hill said, like many organizations, the Institution is assessing what its mission looks like in the post-Pandemic years and how the organization can be more financially responsible, “We did take a hard look at our opera program and have forecast an reimagined vision for that. Opera is not going away at Chautauqua. What we are trying to do is try to fit it in a structure that allows it to thrive here for years to come.”
Hill stressed that the Opera Company’s product has always been stellar. He said, however, that opera is a very expensive artform to produce and efforts to attract new audience members, specifically at the Institution, were upended by the Pandemic, “Attendance had been declining and costs were going up. And so, we took it as an opportunity, unlike others across the country, many of whom canceled entire seasons or closed their opera program entirely, we took this as an opportunity to reimagine it to see if we couldn’t find a way to live into this artform and preserve it in an exciting new way.”
Hill addressed concerns that the Institution is getting away from making investments in the arts, saying that about 60% of the Institution’s funding is focused on that pillar, “We are in the early stages of leaning more heavily our theatre program. We will have just completed a national search for new Artistic Director for our Visual Arts program. The facility that houses that program has gone through a pretty significant upgrade – new roof, new kiln room floor, we’ve done some fundraising with our friends of visual arts here and even more money is going to go into that facility.”
Chautauqua Institution will be celebrating its 150th Anniversary in 2024.
I was an usher at Norton Hall from 1967-1975. In those days Chautauqua put on six plays and six full operas every season. I was lucky this year to have chosen a week during which one “full-length” opera (a stripped-down version of Bizet’s “Carmen”) was performed by the opera company, along with an evening of operatic selections, two of Puccini’s one act operas from his “Tritico”, and the musical, “Sweeney Todd”. All were excellent, although the use of minimal sets (and even a set shared–!–by “Carmen” and “Todd”) must have kept costs down considerably–kudos to the opera company’s ingenuity.
In the meantime, administrative costs at Chautauqua have soared; perhaps if Mr. Hill is looking to cut costs, he should look at that bloat instead.