New Glimmerglass Opera Chief Steers Toward Uncharted Waters

It takes 10 minutes for the general and artistic director of the Glimmerglass Opera, Michael MacLeod, to commute to work, but his route doesn’t weave through the silos, barns, and cornfields of Cooperstown, N.Y. where his festival makes its home. Mr. MacLeod prefers a more direct route to the opera house on the shores of Lake Otsego, which James Fenimore Cooper called “Glimmerglass” in his “Leatherstocking Tales”: via his 22-foot boat, named “The Flying Scotsman” in honor of his birthplace.

It’s a smooth ride, and that’s a relief, considering all the work that goes into running Glimmerglass. The 8-week festival, begun in 1975, mounts four new productions each summer, drawing an audience of 35,000 to 40 performances, and operates on a $6 million–$7 million annual budget, a shoestring in the opera world.

Making the task more arduous is that the signature style of Glimmerglass doesn’t allow any shortcuts. The creative team gets to spend time with the sets before they are finalized. The singers get up to double the rehearsal time most companies allow. And it all takes place in Cooperstown, where the sets and the workforce have to be imported (and housed) from all over the country and the world.

Mr. MacLeod’s job is to be the visionary who can also steer the boat. In his first season with complete control, he is gliding along smoothly. His decision to program operas all based on the myth of Orpheus — Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld,” Berlioz orchestration of Gluck’s “Orphée et Euridice,” Philip Glass’s “Orphée,” based on the Cocteau film, Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo,” and two concerts of Haydn’s rarely performed “L’Anima del Filosofo (ossia Orfeo ed Euridice)” — is innovative, risky, and paying off: The festival has sold more tickets at this point than last year, even though last year’s season included two well-likedworks:Gilbert&Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance” and Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.”

To find candidates to be his music director, Mr. MacLeod is trying out eight conductors during this and next year’s the eight productions. “The overriding requirement is the ability to deliver the goods, night after night after night, from the pit,” Mr. MacLeod said, adding that he’d be willing to hire a person who wasn’t as concerned with the administrative side.

Mr. MacLeod summed up his vision at a luncheon for Glimmerglass’s highest-level donors on Saturday.

“If the Met is the grandfather of them all, and New York City Opera is the father, Glimmerglass Opera is the precocious child with possibly more imagination,” Mr. MacLeod said.

It is also an opera company whose staff and talent come together to form a cohesive community. In other words, they are happy to be there, and that makes the experience so much more meaningful for those who come to see them.

The patrons attending gala weekend had one message for their friends back in New York: come to Glimmerglass. The chairwoman of the Glimmerglass board, Elizabeth Eveillard, suggested planning to see at least two operas and booking a room at the Otsego Resort or a bed and breakfast. Two singers in the Glimmerglass Young American Artists program, Caitlin Lynch and Brenda Rae, recommended eating at the restaurant Alex and Ike.

Of course, there’s more to Cooperstown than the opera: Besides the lake, the Farmer’s Museum has an exhibit about ice cream, the Fenimore Art Museum is showing exhibits on the American West, and there’s the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, which drew 50,000 visitors for its induction weekend last month.

Mr. MacLeod is visionary enough to see the relationship between opera and baseball.

“They are both theaters of dreams with extreme highs, lows, and passion,” he said.

agordon@nysun.com