Freud's goal: Keep Chicago's Lyric Opera relevant – Quincy Herald-Whig | Illinois & Missouri News, Sports

By MIKE SILVERMAN Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) - When Anthony Freud was 14, his favorite pastime was going to the opera in London and then, on the train ride home to Wimbledon where he lived with his parents, "dreaming about how I could do it better when I ran a company of my own some day."

He's gotten his chance, not once but three times: first in Wales, then in Houston and now in Chicago, where he has been general director of the Lyric Opera since 2011.

Freud is only the fourth person to run the 60-year-old Lyric, and the first, after founder Carol Fox, who didn't come up through the ranks. Fox established the company's reputation for artistic excellence, but it was her successors, Ardis Krainik and William Mason, who stabilized its finances.

Lyric long enjoyed a subscriber base that was envied throughout the industry, but that has slipped in the wake of the economic meltdown. Changing tastes and competing demands on people's time also have contributed to a decline in ticket sales.

Despite these problems, Lyric ended last season in the black on a budget of more than $70 million. Meanwhile, the similar-sized San Francisco Opera and New York's Metropolitan Opera - five times as big - finished in the red.

But, as Freud was quick to point out during an interview last week in his office on the fourth floor of the Civic Opera House, though Lyric is financially sound for now, "Stability is also fragile, especially post-2008."

"Arts organizations the world over went through a period of existing in hermetically sealed bubbles," he said. "We felt we were doing a good job ... and if it ain't broke, why fix it? Those assumptions gradually proved less and less reliable, to the point where they became almost irrelevant."

Keeping Lyric relevant is much on Freud's mind these days. And his proudest initiative is Lyric Unlimited, an outreach to cultural and community groups that previously had little or no exposure to opera.

For starters, he brought to Chicago a mariachi opera, "Cruzar la Cara de la Luna" ("To Cross the Face of the Moon") that he had commissioned in Houston. It played one performance at the 3,600-seat Civic Opera House and several more in neighborhoods with large Mexican populations.

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Freud's goal: Keep Chicago's Lyric Opera relevant - Quincy Herald-Whig | Illinois & Missouri News, Sports