Coronavirus impact

Dallas arts groups have lost nearly $100 million during pandemic, report says

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presented concerts via mobile concert truck in late 2020.

Photo courtesy of The Concert Truck

The first eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic affected the Dallas nonprofit arts and culture community to the tune of more than $95 million and 1,000 jobs, a sobering new report shows.

The third survey on the pandemic's impact conducted by a trio of Dallas arts advocacy organizations — The Arts Community Alliance (TACA), Dallas Arts District (DAD), and Dallas Area Cultural Advocacy Coalition (DACAC) — covered the period from March 13, 2020 (initial government-mandated shutdowns) through November 30, 2020. Results were detailed in a February 5 news release.

In total, the pandemic-related impact for the nonprofit arts community within the city of Dallas reached $95,545,710 in financial losses, including 3,145,209 in lost or deferred attendance, the report showed.

“The impact of the pandemic on the arts in Dallas — financial, human and cultural — continues to be staggering,” says Terry D. Loftis, president and executive director of the arts funding organization TACA, in the release. “We’re encouraged that our organizations are resilient and finding ways to engage the community. But these losses are not sustainable and no one is expecting a return to normal anytime soon.”

Seventy groups responded to the most recent survey, but a total of 91 organizations provided economic impact figures across all three surveys the trio conducted in 2020; those losses are aggregated as part of the total economic impact, the report says. Individual artists were not surveyed.

According to the most recent report, the 2020 closures of museums and performing arts venues caused:

Performing arts organizations to cancel or defer 2,088 performances
Visual arts organizations to close, collectively, for 2,142 attendance days
All groups together to cancel or reschedule 9,725 workshops, classes, and programs

Many performing arts organizations, such as The Dallas Opera, had to cancel or push back entire seasons into 2022, losing almost two years’ worth of earned revenue.

According to the release, since the initial shutdowns:

• 15 arts and cultural facilities have reopened for live, in-person experiences at a reduced capacity.
• 40 of the respondents said their traditional performance or exhibition space has not been able to reopen.
• 27 organizations have resumed presenting live, in-person programing.
• 37 respondents are using virtual platforms or streaming, or are presenting their work in new and alternative spaces, including parking garages, warehouses, storefronts, churches, plazas, parks, and outdoor performance venues.

Safety was the number one barrier to reopening, the survey showed. Groups said they didn't have the resources, rehearsal space, or blessing of their audiences to reopen safely. "Many of our long-term patrons are 65+ and have firmly stated that they are not interested in attending a live choral performance before a vaccine is widely available," one respondent said.

Fourteen groups cited union restrictions as their top barrier to reopening. The Actors' Equity Association revoked Firehouse Theatre's status as an Equity producer last fall when a COVID-19 outbreak forced the abrupt shutdown of a production at the Farmers Branch theater.

For arts organizations that have been able to present live and in-person experiences or virtual, 39 groups say they have been able to generate revenue through admissions or fees — but at lower rates than normal. Most say they have been able to fundraise to make ends meet, even when they can't rely on lavish galas and other large gatherings to do so. Funding from the city has also helped, they say.

“The fact that the City of Dallas was able to keep the funding for most organizations level with the prior year helps explain why most Dallas arts and cultural organizations have survived,” says Joanna St. Angelo, Sammons Center for the Arts Executive Director, in the release. “The next year will be a challenge, but we are fortunate our city leaders recognize the importance of the arts community to the economy, jobs, tourism and the quality of life in Dallas.”

Dallas arts groups will continue to innovate to survive in 2021 and beyond, they say. Besides presenting virtual shows, they have taken their performances into unique spaces, such as parking lots, drive-ins, and garages; the Dallas Symphony Orchestra even brought in a mobile concert truck.

“There is no question our arts community is creative, passionate and resilient, but limited resources only go so far,” says Lily Weiss, executive director of the Dallas Arts District, in the release. “These are small businesses sustaining major revenue and job losses. I worry that many of our organizations are reaching a tipping point. This is going to be a very difficult year.”

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A good listen

Dallas Symphony and Fabio Luisi release landmark Wagner 'Ring Cycle' set

Fabio Luisi conducting the Dallas Symphony Orchestra

Photo courtesy of Dallas Symphony Orchestra

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Fabio Luisi wanted his Ring Cycle to be heard and not seen.

Wagner’s four-opera epic Der Ring des Nibelungen, approaching the 150th anniversary of its premiere in 1876, has been reinterpreted and deconstructed by directors finding various meanings in the conflicts among gods, humans, giants and dwarfs.

While most new recordings are on video, Luisi led his Dallas Symphony Orchestra in concert performances that were released on 13 compact discs by Delos on May 22 and are available on streaming services.

“Wagner conceived this as a total immersion in visual and acoustic, but I could focus really only on the music, and this was the point actually — not to be distracted by staging and not to have to cope with maybe strange ideas of staging,” Luisi said. “I think the music tells everything.”

Luisi became DSO music director in 2020 and broached the idea while dining two years later with (the now late) Morton H. Meyerson, a longtime board member.

“Fabio came back from lunch sort of giddy but sort of sheepishly saying: `Do you think that this would ever be possible?” recalled Kim Noltemy, the Dallas CEO at the time. “So, I said, well, let’s give it a try. So, we called around to see if there were people who wanted to support it and did a budget.”

After securing a waiver from the orchestra allowing for the needed rehearsals and performance length, recordings were made during four concerts from May 1-5 and six more from Oct. 5-20. Each opera was performed two or three times.

Americans in cast fill big roles
American singers featured prominently, with Mark Delavan as Wotan, Lise Lindstrom as Brünnhilde and Sara Jakubiak as Sieglinde, part of a cast that included Christopher Ventris (Siegmund), Daniel Johansson (Siegfried), Deniz Uzun (Fricka), Tómas Tómasson (Alberich), Michael Laurenz (Mime) and Stephen Milling (Hagen).

Delavan sang Wotan at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2013 after Luisi took over from an ailing James Levine in Robert Lepage’s much-maligned production staged on a 45-ton set of 24 rotating planks.

“We’re accessible and they know that we’re hungry and we have a chip on our shoulders,” Delavan said. “What conductors like about American singers is their technique is sound. Even a European conductor would say: Well, I’m going to give up some of the communication skills, only one degree of separation with the language, but I’m going to get a solid technique, and I’m going to get pretty good acting chops.”

Lindstrom has been in Atlanta to sing in its production of “Götterdämmerung,” the concluding night of the tetralogy, leading to what is being billed as the first complete Ring Cycles in the America South in 2029.

“The wonderful thing about it is the intimacy between the orchestra and us, because we’re not separated by a chunk of stage or a chunk a scenery or a chunk of concept,” she said of the Dallas performances. “And for people like me, who have had the opportunity to perform the role before, I have all those iterations to rely on for my portrayal that I can sort of filter myself through.”

A younger Luisi listened to famous renditions
Luisi, 67, first heard a Ring recording in Georg Solti’s famous studio set with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1958-65. He also admires Karl Böhm’s live recording from the 1967 Bayreuth Festival and Marek Janowski’s 1980-83 studio version with the Staatskapelle Dresden.

He first conducted Ring when he was music director of Dresden’s Semperoper from 2007-10. Luisi’s Dallas performances include more legato and softer sound than his rendition a decade earlier at the Met. He tries to keep an arc from the first notes of “Das Rheingold” to the final strains of “Götterdämmerung.”

“I have a deeper understanding about the meaning of this piece,” he said. “I consider the ring to be a big Bruckner symphony. So we have the introduction, then we have the first movement, this is “Walküre,” which happens to be a slow movement, and then we have the scherzo, which is “Siegfried,” of course, and then the long, long, last movement. There is a unity.”

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