General Director’s Message – Fall 2009Dear West Bay Opera Patron, Thank you for visiting our website. Despite the economic downturn, or precisely because of it, we are working extra hard to make this season special. What better place than the opera to leave your cares behind for a couple of hours? West Bay Opera, with a half-century history of community support, cannot live or die by the temporary ebbs and flows of the economy, no matter how severe. We need to look beyond the crisis and plan to be there for the next generation of opera lovers. Our audience expansion program is making more people in the Peninsula aware of us. You probably have heard our spots on KDFC and other radio stations. This holiday season, you will see information about our upcoming production of Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz on Comcast cable, as well. We have reshaped our website into a community asset. You can now use it to buy tickets online and even pick your own seats; but there’s a lot more. We are working to preserve our archives of over 50 years of productions and to make the information readily accessible online. We have launched an initiative to create a digital archive of photographs and even film clips of all our productions. Now you can help underwrite the digitalization of images from that 1962 Carmen that you loved so much and still remember! A caption under each picture will credit you. To check out the details, visit the SUPPORT section of the website. There are many ways in which the community help us remain a major cultural asset in the Peninsula. Some families volunteer their spare rooms to temporarily house our out-of-town singers and directors. Others help with the periodic maintenance of our headquarters, the Holt Building. Yet others donate food and drink for our cast parties and donor receptions. And intermissions would not be the same without the scrumptious brownies and chocolate chip cookies baked by some of our most dedicated volunteers: the folks from the West Bay Opera Guild. It’s opera by the people and for the people, and we deliver it at an artistic level that has been getting noticed well beyond the Bay Area. In these hard times, the solace and perspective that only the performing arts can provide are nothing short of indispensable. Needless to say, your contribution, at whatever level, is more needed than ever. Thanks for your continuing support. Enjoy the season! José Luis Moscovich General Director Leave a Reply |