By Catherine Cuellar, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-615744.mp3
Dallas, TX –
Karen Stone, who came to the Dallas Opera in 2003, said in a statement she is leaving "to focus more on the art form and less on the fund raising that's required to support the level of quality that Dallas audiences have rightly come to expect ." Her departure is timed so that a new director will be in place before the opera leaves its current home in Fair Park, according to board president Jay Marshall.
389 "It's certainly a challenge to replace someone of Karen's talent and skill, but it doesn't change the plan at all. Certainly the plan is in place to go to the Winspear Opera House at the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts and open in October of 2009. That date's fixed, and we have a plan to get there and we have a great management team at the opera that will continue to execute the plan."
The Opera joins several other tenants arts institutions with transitions in leadership, including the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas Museum of Art, and Dallas Theater Center. Dallas Center for the Performing Arts CEO Bill Lively says this trend doesn't affect the scheduled progress of the downtown Arts District.
387 "What I see happening here is a plan and unplanned transition. Ray Nasher's untimely death was of course a tragedy and that just happens. Jack Lane had a distinguished career and so the museum has a chance to fill that vacancy with a very distinguished academic scholar art historian, and that will be important. The Theater Center is completing its transition with a new artistic director and a very impressive young man at that. I'm sure the Dallas Opera will do likewise. I think we're seeing the district mature and prepare for what it's going to be in the next two years."
Board chairman John Cody will helm The Opera's transitional leadership team while a search for Stone's successor proceeds.