Brabson Library And Educational Foundation Full Grant Proposal Form

Thank you for your interest in the Brabson Library And Educational Foundation. Please return this Form to [email protected].

This is the template to be used for a grant application. Only after you have been assured by a member of the BLEF Board that you have passed the PreApplication level should you fill out this Full Grant Proposal Form. Unless you write like Gone With the Wind, your completed proposal should not be longer than five single-spaced pages. After the Foundation Board reviews your Proposal you will be notified of the results. Thank you.

0. DATE: April 4, 2013

1. INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR ORGANIZATION:

Year established: 1972

Name of Organization: Opera Southwest

Mailing Address: PO Box 27671 City/State/Zip: Albuquerque, NM 87125

Contact Person: Anthony Zancanella Telephone: 505-550-7941 Email: [email protected]

501(C)3 Organization: Yes ( X ) (The Foundation makes grants only to 501(C)3s.)

Current total budget: $550,000

2. NAME OF YOUR PROJECT: Amleto (Hamlet)

3. SIZE OF REQUESTED GRANT: $20,000 in first year, $50,000 in second year.

4. PERIOD GRANT WILL COVER (Generally, 1 July to 30 Jun. How many years?): 1 July 2013 – November 2015. Two fiscal years.

5. WHAT IS THE BASIC PURPOSE OF YOUR ORGANIZATION? (A short summary including history and major accomplishments.) • Opera Southwest (OSW) is a professional regional opera company with a forty year history of producing opera in Albuquerque. • Our mission is to produce quality, professional, enjoyable and accessible opera in an intimate setting for audiences of all ages. • OSW produces 2 major operas in their original languages each season with three or four performances and at least one open dress rehearsal of each in an intimate 631-seat theatre, at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. The scenery is designed and constructed in our own scene shop. Costumes are most often rented from other companies. • For many years, with the support of the BLEF, OSW has presented special educational programming. • The previous four seasons have been a time of tremendous artistic and organizational growth for the company – our annual budget has increased more than 25% over this period. Ticket sales have grown substantially, and with improved marketing, have become a more reliable source of revenue for the company (about 30% of operating income). Additionally, we have been able to hire more than 23 players from the defunct New Mexico Symphony Orchestra.

6. WHAT IS THE PROJECT TYPE? (You may check more than one category.) (x ) Arts (Creation) ( ) Arts (Education) ( ) Arts (Operating Support) ( ) Education (Creation) ( ) Education (Dissemination) ( ) Education (Operating Support) ( ) Other (Please specify ______)

7. WHAT DOES YOUR PROJECT PLAN TO ACCOMPLISH? This project will present the first performance of the composer Franco Faccio’s Amleto in more than 140 years, anywhere in the world. What is the problem? The MET in HD live opera broadcasts have dramatically reshaped the world of live regional opera. In a field where there were previously no significant competitors or alternatives, we find ourselves in direct competition with an ersatz version of a live opera experience. At the same time that it competes with us, it paradoxically increases the demand for opera experiences – provided that they are different and unique. In short, in a landscape transformed by the MET in HD, it is not enough to simply put on a lower budget, local version of the same classics. The companies that are able to meet this challenge and thrive must offer a unique value proposition to their community. Opera Southwest is able to meet this challenge in two ways: one, through the intimacy of our venue, which provides an experience quite different from most large American opera houses, and two, through the presentation of adventurous repertoire. How will your project address this problem? Presentation of Amleto will help us meet the challenges we face by offering our audiences and community an opera that is extraordinary and rare, while at the same time written in a familiar and popular musical idiom. What will be accomplished? Therefore, we plan to offer 4 performances of Amleto. Who will receive the funds from the grant? Funds from the grant will be used to pay our artists, singers, musicians and technical staff. Because this opera has not been done for so long, it faces much the same technical and artistic challenges as mounting a world premiere, including the need for slightly extended production cycles and significant score preparation by our artistic directors. Who will be affected by the results of your project? Our community and audience will be directly affected at the performance. Our artists will experience a unique opportunity for artistic growth and advancement. More broadly, the operatic field will benefit from the revival of an undeservedly lost work. How many will be served/affected? We expect to reach ~3100 patrons live in the theater, and a significantly larger number through the digital release of excerpts from the project. What are the geographic and demographic ranges of your recipients? Albuquerque is a city of 800,000. In 2008, the last time research was conducted, 87% of our DATA audience came from Albuquerque, 11% from the rest of the state, 2% from out of state. 78% were Anglo, 20% Hispanic, 2% Other ethnicities. The audience was comprised of 14% students and 38% were over 65. Since this survey was conducted, the company has shifted homes from the KiMo theater to the National Hispanic Cultural Center, a move that we believe has shifted the demographics of our audience to include more Hispanic members. New research is being conducted this month that we expect to corroborate this belief.

Because of our location at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, we try to focus on South Valley and central Albuquerque schools for our education programs, a population historically underserved by the arts and cultural sector. Some representative schools include: % % English % African % % % %Native Free/Reduced Language American Asian/Pacific Caucasian Hispanic American Price Meal Learners Rate Adobe Acres 1.8 0.6 5.8 89.2 2.7 87.3% 48.1% Atrisco 1.5 0.3 7.3 88.9 2.0 86.5% 31.0% Monte Vista 3.7 4.1 51.3 35.3 5.7 27.2% 7.1% Truman MS 1.7 0.3 6.1 89.6 2.4 88.1% 24.7%

8. WHAT NEEDS OR ISSUES WILL BE ADDRESSED? How do these needs and issues relate to the Mission Statement, Vision, and Values of the Brabson Foundation? This type of programming is certainly “Bold [and] Innovative” and gives our artists the “opportunity to excel within and beyond traditional artistic paths.”

9. HOW WILL THIS PROJECT BE SUPPORTED? How much of the project support will come from the Brabson Foundation? Approximately 28% What have you requested from other organizations? $7,500 from New Mexico Arts, $30,000 Garcia Foundation, $6000 Hancock, $3000 Bank of Albuquerque, $25,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts What efforts have you made to leverage your requests? Our NEA funding application requires that we match those funds with private giving, and our individual giving campaign is typically conducted as a “matching campaign” to match our foundation funding.

10. WHO WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR SEEING THE PROJECT THROUGH TO COMPLETION? Managing Director Anthony Zancanella joined the company in 2012 after receiving an MBA in Arts Administration from the University of Cincinnati. This appointment is a shared appointment with the chamber music organization Ensemble Music New Mexico, for which he acts as 1/4 time Business Manager. This unique partnership allows both organizations to be managed professionally and achieve administrative synergies.

Mr. Zancanella’s previous experience includes working as Operations Manager for the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Cincinnati and as a marketing/development intern for the Cincinnati May Festival. From 2009-2010, he sat on the board of directors of Opera Southwest as a representative of the chorus, and was Treasurer for the organization for that time. Mr. Zancanella holds a degree in Voice Performance from the University of New Mexico, and has studied on a short-term basis at the University of Hull in England (music) and Audencia Ecole de Management in Nantes, France (arts management).

While studying at the University of New Mexico, Mr. Zancanella began his involvement with Opera Southwest as an intern, as part of a collaboration in arts administration education with the University of New Mexico. The appointment of Mr. Zancanella as a paid professional manager represents an enormous leap forward in the company’s administrative capacity, and represents a significant return on the company’s previous investment in training the next generation of arts leaders.

Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Anthony Barrese, winner of the 2007 Georg Solti Award for young conductors, appears regularly as conductor of productions with the opera companies of Dallas, Sarasota, Boston and others. His wide experience and knowledge of singers has brought to Opera Southwest a series of outstanding casts for our productions.

Director of Artistic Operations and Principal Stage Director David Bartholomew has directed productions at Wolf Trap, and with the Boston Lyric Opera, Colorado Music Theatre Festival, Western Opera Theatre, and the opera companies of Fargo-Moorhead, Eugene and Mobile. He is former Department Chair for the New England Conservatory of Music, Artistic Director of Tacoma Opera, Rochester Opera at Eastman and head of the Opera Department of the University of Nebraska.

What is his/her relationship to your organization? SEE ABOVE What are his/her credentials? SEE ABOVE

11. WHAT IS THE BUDGET FOR THIS PROJECT? (Please include an itemized budget for this project, including a timeline with milestones.) See Attached Budget. August – October 2013 – Begin preliminary design work, create reduced arrangement and parts, finish typesetting music. November 2014 – Casting complete, scores to singers June 2015 – Design work complete, construction of scenery begins, contract orchestra September 2015 – Begin rehearsal cycle, move into theater October 2015 - Performances

12. HOW WILL YOU EVALUATE THE SUCCESS OF YOUR PROJECT WHEN IT IS COMPLETE?

As with past projects, we will ask participants to complete surveys and evaluation reports. We recently expanded our capability in this area by integrating our constituent database, email service provider and an online survey provider, and are digitizing and expanding our evaluation efforts.

13. ARE YOU A PAST GRANTEE OF THIS FOUNDATION?

When: 1999-2000 2001-2009 2010-2012 2013

Amount: $30,000 $40,000 $50,000 $75,000

Evaluate the success of previous grants from this Foundation:

For the past fourteen years, grants from the BLEF have enabled us to purse numerous artistic and educational initiatives, many with a focus of children and youth engagement with opera. Our most recent mainstage project supported by the BLEF, Rossini’s Otello, was an astonishing success. Our final report on that project goes into much greater detail on the subject.

You may include additional information sheets or brochures here. Enclosed ( x )

ARTISTIC STATEMENT – Anthony Barrese, Artistic Director, Opera Southwest Opera Southwest plans to present composer Franco Faccio’s (best known as conductor of the premieres of Aida and Otello) adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Amleto) in the spring of 2015. Premiered in 1865 with a libretto by Arrigo Boito (who went on to fame as the librettist for Verdi’s Falstaff & Otello), it was conceived as an anti-Verdi/pro-Wagner manifesto for the "music of the future." Amleto was a critical and audience success at its premiere, after which Faccio and Boito joined Garibaldi's forces. During their military travels, Faccio became more intimately acquainted with the music of Wagner, and made extensive revisions on his score in preparation for an 1871 La Scala revival. That performance proved disastrous due to the illness of the leading tenor. Faccio was discouraged by the incident, and unlike Puccini’s rather plucky response to the initial fiasco of Madama Butterfly, Faccio withdrew the work, never to be performed again. Contrary to standard practice, a piano vocal score of the work was never made, and it languished in obscurity for over a century. Part of my vision for Opera Southwest is the presentation of works outside of the standard repertoire. This was on display most recently with our production of Rossini's Otello which had not been presented in the United States for 20 years, and which had never been presented with the alternate "joyful ending" that Rossini once composed for it. Amleto has not been performed anywhere since its disastrous La Scala revival in 1871. Producing the work at Opera Southwest would continue our commitment to producing off-the-beaten-path works, and give the world a fresh look at an historically important and musically beautiful opera. I first became aware of an Italian Hamlet opera with a Boito libretto during my first season on the music staff of Sarasota Opera in the winter/spring of 2002. In 2003 I got in touch Gabriel Dotto, a musicologist living in Milan who had formerly worked with the Italian publishing house Ricordi. I had heard that many of the archives were destroyed during the war, and I wasn’t sure whether Ricordi would still have the autograph from Amleto. He replied: “As luck (and some rather heroic effort on the part of Ricordi management sixty years ago) would have it, no autographs of the historical archive were destroyed in the war, as the collection was secretly taken to a safe location.” (Though the “production copies” of scores, hire libraries, etc. were lost during the bombings). Since Ricordi was at that time moving into a new home at the Biblioteca Brera in the heart of Milan, he sent my letter off to Maria Pia Ferraris, the head archivist of the newly opened Ricordi Archives. It turned out that Ricordi did have a microfilm of the autograph, and when it arrived I began the painstaking task of transcribing the manuscript. At the same time, my wife found a copy (again a microfilm) of Boito’s libretto at the Performing Arts Library in New York. The libretto was especially important since Faccio’s handwriting was difficult to decipher, and the quality of the autograph manuscript was poor. I finished the process of transcribing every note from the manuscript a few days before Christmas 2003. Acclaimed American musicologist and Verdi expert Phillip Gossett was incredibly generous in helping me figure out the handwriting idiosyncrasies in the score. During the summer of 2005, while in Milan teaching a class on the Italian Futurist movement in music, I met in person with Maria Pia Ferraris, who allowed me to peruse the original manuscript as well as the only piano vocal score in existence: an autograph manuscript of Faccio’s own arrangement. That summer I spent hours looking at both autograph manuscripts, and returned to the United States to incorporate all of the new information into the score I was creating. I conducted the American premiere of Ofelia's Marcia Funebre with the Dallas Opera Orchestra in 2007. Opera Southwest's production will represent the final stage in bringing this important and unjustly forgotten work back to life.

AMLETO BUDGET FY2013-14 FY2014-15 Preparatory Work Direct Production Personnel Production Personnel Score Preparation, Arrangement $ 10,000 Singers and Dancers $ 40,000 Preparatory Staging and Design Work $ 5,000 Singers Travel $ 4,000 Design Work $ 5,000 Orchestra $ 40,000 Travel (Auditions, Research) $ 1,000 Artistic Staff $ 20,000 Total Personnel $ 21,000 Artistic Staff Travel $ 1,500 Production/Technical Staff $ 60,500 Non-Personnel Prod./Tech. Staff Travel $ 1,350 Score Printing, Postage, Misc. $ 2,500 Total Prod. Personnel $ 167,350 Tot. Non-Personnel Non-Personnel TOTAL PROJECT COSTS Year 1 $ 23,500 Rent (Rehearsal/Theater) $ 11,000 Set Materials/Trucking $ 10,000 Funding Audio/LX rental/Material $ 2,500 Brabson Foundation $ 20,000 Prop Materials/Rental $ 1,500 New Mexico Arts $ 3,500 SUBTOTAL S/L/AV/P $ 9,350

TOTAL PROJECT FUNDING Year 1 $ 23,500 Costume Material/Rental $ 5,000 Wig/Makeup Material/Rent $ 2,000 Misc. (Scores/Recordings) $ 1,200 Tot. Non-Personnel $ 28,050 Total Direct Production $ 195,400

Allocatable Administrative and General Costs $ 15,000 Marketing and Promotional Costs $ 20,000

Brabson Funding over 2-year life of project: 28% TOTAL PROJECT COSTS Year 2 $ 230,400

Funding Brabson Foundation $ 50,000 National Endowment $ 25,000 New Mexico Arts $ 4,000 Ticket Sales $ 75,000 Individual Giving $ 77,000 TOTAL PROJECT FUNDING Year 2 $ 231,000