JUST 10 years ago, the Dublin Grand Opera Society (as it then was) was bracing itself for the selection of an artistic director. It was looking for someone to steer a course away from the realm of amateur society and towards the world of professionally-run opera.
The appointee, Michael McCaffery, wrought immediate and major changes in production values, but didn't manage to stay the course; he resigned in 1989 without completing his full con tract. His successor, Kenneth Richardson, lasted a mere two" seasons, as the company lost its nerve over the non-traditionalist nature of what was presented on the Gaiety stage in the spring of 1991.
Elaine Padmore, then artistic director of the Wexford Festival, added Dublin to her list of responsibilities (having sampled the work by planning the seasons in the interregnum between McCaffery and Richardson). On her departure to greater things at the Royal Opera in Copenhagen she was succeeded in January 1994 by Dorothea Glatt, who chose to combine her work in Dublin with her ongoing commitment to the Bayreuth Festival.
The current season, however, is to be Dr Glatt's last in Dublin. ,Her work here has not been received with great enthusiasm, her failures being in general better remembered than her successes among the latter the heart-rending Gilda of Nicola Sharkey in the 1994 Rigoletto and the graphic Inga Levant production of Il Trovatore the following year. Incidents like last winter's row over Faust (when the board ditched Dr Glatt's chosen director) have retained far wider currency.
So, with yet another artistic director on the way out, the company finds itself in a limbo of waiting. The post of artistic director is to be advertised, and the winter 1996 season will be planned by two "artistic consultants", both conductors, who will work in tandem with the company's general manager, David Collopy, as artistic co-ordinator.
It's like a return to the preMcCaffery days, when packages for Dublin were put together by the Italian conductor Napoleone Annovazzi. In the meantime the Arts Cduncil's opera development committee will be carrying out its deliberations, and DGOS Opera Ireland itself will be engaging in some major undertakings.
In spite of the generally poor press elicited during Dr Glatt's reign, company chairman Frank O'Rourke is upbeat about the current situation. He highlights the achievements since he has taken up office.
"We have built a whole set of facilities technical, wardrobe, production, company manager - all Irish people, all in place," he says. "We've built in a marketing organisation which has raised a lot of money and which sells the seasons very effectively. One third of our annual expenditure is raised from individuals and corporations. As a percentage of our costs that's higher than Welsh National or Opera North or Scottish Opera.
"Our audiences have come up from being in decline to 85 to 95 per cent for each of the operas we have presented. I'm hoping this season for 90 per cent. We have transformed the organisation of the company from 15 committees to a small board of directors. That wasn't easy to do. You had to move out of the culture of a society into the culture of a professional opera company.
The level of spending has left the company with serious debts. O'Rourke is coming to the end of his term as chairman, and, he has set a short-term fund-raising target of £200,000 to turn the situation around.
"From now, we must move out and broaden the base of the company, which I'm hoping to do with a strategic alliance with RTE, whereby we will deal with their opera outputs, in co-production agreements." He also points to the professionalisation of the chorus (currently with members, of the National Chamber Choir as a core), and says an "audience development manager" will be appointed later this year. "We're beginning to have the pieces of the jigsaw that go to making a national company."
O'Rourke's is, understandably about as favourable an assessment as you could hope to come by. The Faust intervention was a strange move for a company which had already tangled uncomfortably with two of its three previous artistic directors. The early departure of Dr Glatt herself seems to signal ongoing difficulties with choosing a particular artistic course and then keeping to it.
And, as a budding "national company", it has to be said that DGOS Opera Ireland has shown negligible interest in harnessing the talent of Irish theatre directors or conductors. Its record with Irish singers is rather better (historically, the company's main concern has been with singers), though it has yet to find room in a production for Ann Murray, surely the most successful opera singer to come out of Ireland since John McCormack.
How is it going to look for the company if the spring season turns up trumps? Might Dr Glatt then get a reprieve? Or could a season without an artistic director turn out to be better than a season with one? (Don't forget, in 1992, when the straitened company put on a Fledermaus advertised as having neither sets nor costumes, it wasn't easy to tell the difference from a regular production.)
And there are fundamental questions to be asked about the wisdom of employing artistic directors. Since the board chooses the repertoire, there is a case to be made for doing as Opera Theatre Company did in its early days, and having a director of productions and a musical director. Whatever way you look at it, the problem really needed to be sorted out without the creation of yet another artistic hiatus in a company which so badly needs to sustain public confidence.
It's hard not to feel that, its chairman's achievements notwithstanding, DGOS Ireland is a company which lives in fear of change. The hasty break with Richardson, supports this view, as does the board's insistence on being warned in advance of modern-dress productions of works set in historical times. This may all make sense in keeping existing audiences happy. But it's unlikely to woo the potential audience which still, rightly or wrongly, sees DGOS Opera Ireland as hankering after the values of a bygone operatic age.
The proposed link-up with RTE is an intriguing one. It remains to be seen if RTE's poor operatic record that preposterous Aida at the Point and poor-man's semistagings at the Proms - will be upgraded by the new association. The potential certainly exists for DGOS Opera Ireland to be, dragged down by the more powerful RTE.
When I interviewed Frank O'Rourke on this page in 1992, he outlined his aspirations. "We have-talked about having perhaps a third season. We have talked about the possibility of doing a season in the National Concert Hall, a very high-quality concert performance, perhaps in dress but without all the other trappings.
"We would very much like to get out into the educational field. We'd very much like to get out into the audience-building field. And we'd like to get out of Dublin in some way and into the country."
There has been a lot of waiting since then. Let's hope the future will not take after that memorable stage direction from Waiting For Godot:
"Well, shall we go?" "Yes, let's go. "(They do not move.)
. DGOS Opera Ireland's spring season at the Gaiety Theatre opens tonight with Puccini's Tosca (director/designer Eric Vigie, conductor Martin Merry), with later performances on Saturday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday 19th and Sunday 21st). Mozart's Magic Flute (director/designer Michael McCaffery, conductor David Heusel) opens on Sunday, with later performances on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday 20th.
