(San Francisco, CA) - Esa-Pekka Salonen’s announced 2025 departure from San Francisco Symphony still stuns, even several months on. With this piece, OI aims to:

• Explore the known why behind the financial crisis

• Explain why we oppose the company’s devastating, short-sighted cuts

• Provide guidance on how this legacy brand could begin repairing its self-inflicted wounds

Given his stature as the Bay Area’s classical music journalist, we first relied on San Francisco Chronicle’s Joshua Kosman and his reporting. Kosman’s first piece laid out the situation, Salonen’s terse statement, SFS musicians’ vocal support of their Maestro, as well as their demand for audited financials from CEO Mark Spivey and Board Chair Priscilla Geeslin...

(Santa Fe, NM) - We first connected with Ulrike Köstinger via Instagram and Zoom during the pandemic. At the time, Ulrike was Chief Content and Partnership Officer for Operabase, CueTV and holding company Arts Consolidated. Operabase, the world’s go-to opera database, has documented global operatic activity since 1996, enjoying global brand recognition for decades. With over 600,000 performances on file, Operabase has recorded the work of artists in more than 3000 theatres, has 1.3 million business of opera and enthusiast subscribers, and publishes opera season information in 34 languages. After 2+ years in her previous role, Köstinger became Arts Consolidated/Operabase CEO on January 1, 2023…

(Santa Fe, NM) - On February 12th, The Santa Fe Opera announced that it had hired The Dallas Opera’s David Lomelí as its new Chief Artistic Officer, consolidating the roles previously held by Artistic Director Alexander Neef (now leading Opéra de Paris) and Director of Artistic Administration Brad Woolbright, who retired in December 2020…

The first time I met Ian Burns, he was a 2019 Santa Fe Opera Apprentice. He and his colleagues had just given a stirring concert performance at Four Seasons Santa Fe, an annual event that generally kicks off the Company’s summer season. It was wonderful to see him excel across four (4) different productions..

It started when The Santa Fe Opera tweeted about “Opera Hack”. We didn't know about this endeavor, so down the Google rabbit hole we went, followed by an email and phone chat with Opera Hack’s Angel Mannion, who got me up to speed. The top line from Broadway World…