Photos: Faced with shrinking budget, Anchorage Opera takes a page from Rossini

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Tobias Mill, played by Kyle Gantz, confronts his looming financial crisis in the opening of Rossini's Anchorage Opera's production of Rossini's La Cambiale di Matrimonio. La Cambiale di Matrimonio (The Marriage Contract) runs through February 2. Jan 22, 2014

In the opening scene of Rossini's opera "La Cambiale di Matrimonio" ("The Marriage Contract"), Tobias, a businessman, confronts his finances and comes to the conclusion that in order to stay afloat he has to try something drastic.

Anchorage Opera, a 50-year-old Alaska institution that's facing financial woes of its own, is taking a page out of Rossini's book.

When composer Gioachino Rossini was 18 in 1810, a Venetian opera company commissioned an opera, Rossini's first. But they gave him a laundry list of restrictions. Due to the size of the theater, the opera would have to be one act. And he would have to do with no chorus and no set changes.

Instead of throwing in the towel and refusing to work under such restrictions, Rossini got to work, finishing "La Cambiale di Matrimonio" in eight days. The opera was a success, partially due to the challenges he confronted, and he ended up writing four more like it.

Anchorage Opera, facing a shrinking budget, is embracing a similar approach to that used by young Rossini. In Anchorage Opera's traditional home, the Discovery Theatre at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts, a full-scale opera production normally costs $160,000 to $180,000 to stage, and only 40 percent of that cost is recouped through ticket sales.

The rest comes from government, corporation and foundation funding. In the past 10 years, according to the Opera's executive director, Kevin Patterson, funding from those sources has shrunk up to 75 percent. Faced with the prospect of only being able to produce only one or two operas per season in the Discovery, Patterson decided on a different approach.

"Taking a page from Rossini, we decided to embrace these new constraints," said Patterson. "Opera companies have a tendency to be complacent. In a way, this has forced us to be more creative. It's definitely made us more nimble."

For evidence of this newfound creativity, take the Opera's current production of "The Marriage Contract."

The stage, at Alaska Pacific University's Grant Hall, is much smaller than the Discovery. There's no chorus. There's no orchestra pit, so the ensemble is smaller, only 15 players. And the one-act opera has no set changes, so there are no stagehands.

"Eighty-two percent of the cost of producing an opera is labor," said Patterson. With these constraints, the total cost to put on a show in a space like Grant Hall is only $40,000 to $60,000. The house is smaller as well, seating 210 to the Discovery Theatre's approximately 700.

But it's not to say that the smaller space and smaller budget mean that quality declines. "We can increase the quality by going smaller," said Patterson. "We couldn't build a set like this for the Discovery. It would be four times as big and eight times as expensive."

And having the singers in a smaller theater makes the experience more intimate.

Patterson sees this model continuing for at least the next three years.

"Before I came to the Opera, each season we were doing one opera, one concert and one musical. It's kind of hard to say that's an opera company. Now we are putting on four operas each season. We're taking the resources we have and doing it differently."

"La Cambiale di Matrimonio" runs through Feb. 2, 2014 at Alaska Pacific University's Grant Hall. Tickets available at CenterTix.

Contact Alaska Dispatch Multimedia Editor Loren Holmes at loren(at)alaskadispatch.com.

Disclosure: Loren Holmes is the production photographer for "La Cambiale di Matrimonio."