Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
The inside story of San Diego Opera's demise
I have heard young performers scream incoherent nonsense to an untuned guitar, then leave the stage calling the audience idiots for not liking the act. This is not precisely what the Opera board did, but there are similarities. At some point they started losing audience, then blamed the audience and conditions for the failure. Ian Campbell deserves credit for running an Opera company for thirty years and leaving it with $15 million in assets, but if he doesn't think he can make it work he must step aside, and let another try. He must not be allowed to scuttle the ship. Now as to the future of Grand Opera....Try this, jump to the last act of *Turandot* in your favorite recorded version, and close your eyes, tell me you can't see the Prince and the Enchanted City. Opera doesn't need spectacle if the voices are spectacular. Opera may always be for the few, it's not about numbers, it's about those who love to sing, and those who love to hear them. If the money is gone, those who love Opera will keep it alive.— March 23, 2014 10:33 p.m.
The inside story of San Diego Opera's demise
At the rate the Opera's assets shrunk last year, it would take twenty years for them to sink to zero. Let's zero in on that figure, $15.7 million in assets, that the Opera Board intends to zero out. What do they intend to do with this? Why shouldn't those assets be devoted to more Opera for San Diego?— March 23, 2014 8:28 p.m.
Shocker: San Diego Opera to fold
Why haven't they resigned? Will we really let them eat the body of what they have killed?— March 23, 2014 11:09 a.m.
Shocker: San Diego Opera to fold
It's time for the board to resign and turn over the Opera to a liquidation specialist, or better yet someone determined to continue. Experience ruining a company doesn't qualify anyone to decide where the assets go. I don't know Mr. Campbell, but I know insanity, from this distance he seems a megalomaniac. If I'm right he believes the productions whose designs he controlled belong to him, and he wants to bring them with him to his next company. Wait and see. Why hasn't he resigned?— March 22, 2014 6:48 p.m.
Shocker: San Diego Opera to fold
My concern right now is for the millions in net assets that the company has on the books. In this order, the scores, with their irreplaceable markings, the costumes, which are replaceable, but expensive to make new, and the scenery, which matches the costumes. If these Items stay in town, a new company could perform in grand style very quickly. Should Ian Campbell pilfer them by selling them lowball to the Sultan of Dubai, or whatever hell he plans to leave us for, a priceless piece of local heritage will be lost. His grandiosity drove our Opera to the ground but if we can keep the productions, we'll get something.— March 22, 2014 3:55 p.m.
Shocker: San Diego Opera to fold
I'm waiting for those numbers, but I don't buy the story that Opera can't live here, simply because we can't pay people $800,000 plus yearly. My degree is Music History, and I can assure you that if Mozart's producers insisted on "quality" like our local productions, those operas wouldn't exist. They were cast and performed by small town people using sets and costumes on hand. Theaters weren't large, the musicians weren't professional virtuosos, but servants moonlighting with their masters sitting in. But the music was completely their own, the cadenzas weren't learned from a score, but came straight from the heart. The result lives today. More people attended San Diego Opera this year than lived in Mozart's Salzburg.— March 22, 2014 9:33 a.m.
Shocker: San Diego Opera to fold
Stop calling Todd Gloria "Toad", real toads, unlike Mr. Gloria, have a backbone, and resent the comparison.— March 22, 2014 2:02 a.m.
Shocker: San Diego Opera to fold
A second hand source claimed the Opera had $12 million net assets less than two years ago. And had twelve million yearly income. If someone can find full numbers please share them. Ian Campbell also worked for other companies while under contract with San Diego, I would find his fees while on loan interesting also, might be the Campbells were making over a million a year.— March 21, 2014 10:42 p.m.
Shocker: San Diego Opera to fold
That was satire about Faulconer supporting the Opera....Almost factual news.— March 21, 2014 4:21 p.m.
Shocker: San Diego Opera to fold
We can remember productions at the San Diego Opera that were hardly opulent. I remember Don Giovanni's descent into Hell expressed by an badly focused red spotlight. The stage action was puzzling, but the singing was credible, so who cares? This City's Opera paid the Campbells $800,000 a year, presumably because someone was suckered into believing that this town was ready for big time Opera, for Mr. Campbell to turn around and say this town can't support any Opera is hard to take, especially when it might be a cover story to cash out the long term bequests and put them in their own pocket. 'Horrific slander' might seem hot prose, but I avoid profanity.— March 21, 2014 2:51 p.m.