Madison's Overture - An Encore

Yesterday's post , noting the similarities between Madison and Miami's problems with their performing arts centers, brought a number of comments including, "What annoys me is the vitriol with which people are attacking a man who gave..."

The observer is correct - many do associate the problems at Overture with Mr. Frautschi, when he was not responsible for the crisis.

As another commentator noted:

Several people, going back to 2004 (before the grand opening), had been warning of what was coming - that overhead was disproportionate to earnings, and would continue to grow inexorably, while income potential, at its most optimistic, could never cover an increasing shortfall.

What went wrong occurred in the public sector. City officials were divided into one of two camps, those who wanted nothing to do with the project, and those who were too star struck by the magnitude of the gift to speak up and insist upon a proper management structure for Overture.

While there are empty seats at some events, Overture is a success. From September through May there as many events booked and tickets sold as might be reasonably expected.

Still Overture loses too much money and the cost to the resident companies is far beyond their resources.

Madisonians are tapped out. There is no more money to buy more tickets or pay higher prices.

When the city failed to play a public role in the design program and exercise its control and influence things went badly.

A realistic public discussion, greater city involvement in the design process, was not a guarantee that the present crisis could be avoided, but it certainly would have reduced the probability of the virtually impossible situation facing Overture today.

When the city council voted to donate the Civic Center to the project and then wash its hands of the entire affair, a flawed process created the inevitable, a flawed center for the performing arts.

And we have not approached the implications of A.J. Love's comment:

When was the last time Wayne Shorter or Branford Marsalis or BB King or Ari Brown or Ethnic Heritage Ensemble or Robert Cray or Joe Lovano etc etc etc played the Overture Center? That would be never.

Overture is not the old Civic Center. The design and the price tag made sure of that. Overture lost the very essence of the old Civic Center: a place to encourage public access to the performing arts, arts of the people, new art forms, innovation, arts that transcended economic resources of the ticket purchaser.

It is not lost upon many of us that one of the Overture cut backs is small but critical programs like the new version of  Kids in the Crossroads.

There is a solution but it will not be found in a structure that created the problem. There is a difference between inviting the public to comment and genuine public control.

Comments

[mandrake]

Andrew Statz in the Mayor's office had an elegant solution to purchase the whole shebang and avoid reliance on the stock market. His numbers added up, but the Council said nope.