Making beautiful music together

Before, they barely needed to talk. Boston Lyric Opera, the city's largest opera company, could program the company's traditional productions for the Shubert Theatre. Opera Boston, the upstart, could focus on presenting more contemporary works at the nearby Cutler Majestic Theatre. BLO did ''Carmen on the Common." Opera Boston put on ''Nixon in China."

Then, earlier this year, a funny thing happened. BLO and Opera Boston -- which is supported in large part by two former BLO board members -- discovered a scheduling conflict. After announcing their seasons, they realized they would open their April productions on the same night. For companies that can't afford to take a single ticket-buyer for granted, this presented a dilemma. For one night at least, there would be too much opera in Boston.

''We decided it was time to talk," said Opera Boston president Randolph Fuller, once president of BLO's board.

From here on in, the two companies plan to coordinate their productions better. They'll need to. Boston's opera scene, once struggling for survival, is growing. On Friday, Opera Boston opens the first of three performances of Gian Carlo Menotti's ''The Consul," starring Joanna Porackova, the Boston-based singer who won acclaim four years ago in a Washington National Opera production of the 1950 work. On Friday and Saturday, Boston Baroque presents a semi-staged version of Handel's ''Agrippina" at Jordan Hall. Next week, Teatro Lirico d'Europa returns to the Cutler Majestic Theatre with ''The Barber of Seville" and presents Czech Opera Prague's ''Die Fledermaus."

Other groups are also staging opera. The American Repertory Theatre opened its season with a largely sold-out production of ''Carmen." The Handel and Haydn Society kicked off its own season with three performances of Purcell's ''Dido and Aeneas," closing this afternoon, and it will collaborate with the English National Opera to produce Monteverdi's three surviving operas, starting with ''Orfeo" in Boston next fall. And the Boston Symphony Orchestra is performing Stravinsky's opera-oratorio ''Oedipus Rex" in May.

''We don't have an opera season on the scope of Washington opera, Houston opera, Seattle, let alone Chicago and San Francisco, but if you put all of the opera productions together, we'd sort of get there," said Catherine Peterson, executive director of ArtsBoston.

More is probably on the way. The ART's success with ''Carmen" has the company considering opera in the future. ''In looking at the audiences that came, many of them were new to the ART, which said to me that they came from the music world," said executive director Robert Orchard. ''It just told me there's an audience for this kind of work."

That's no surprise to Mary Deissler, executive director of the Handel and Haydn Society. ''It's the whole spectacle," she said. ''Opera is visual. It's oral. You get to sort of touch all the senses. You add the element of acting and sets and lights and costumes . . . and you pull people in a very powerful way."

Gains, and blameHowever heartening, this opera boom comes with a qualification. Even with dramatic spending increases on opera in recent years, Boston is still playing catch up with comparable cities. In the 2003-04 season, Boston Lyric Opera's $5.3 million budget ranked behind the budgets of 26 other companies, including San Francisco Opera ($57.8 million annual budget), Seattle Opera ($21 million), and Dallas Opera ($9.8 million), according to figures compiled by Opera America.

''There was a moment in time when Boston really did not have any opera," said Marc Scorca, president of Opera America. ''This rapid growth is really a response to a vacuum that existed."

In a discipline in which money is king, though, those who can't spend it are bound to be held back.

''I think it's a disgrace that you don't support a major opera company," said Speight Jenkins, general director of Seattle Opera. ''Boston's a great city. You have a good conductor [in BLO's Stephen Lord], and you're dealing with a very small budget."

When asked about Boston's relatively low national ranking, local opera buffs generally offer three explanations. First, they point to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, which performed in Boston until the 1980s and remains close enough for many Bostonians to visit. With a $200 million annual budget, the Met is more than three times bigger than any rival nationally.

Second, some say the lack of a proper opera house may have held Boston back. Both the Shubert and the Cutler Majestic have pits too small to accommodate the orchestras required for larger operas. And because of the Shubert's acoustics, BLO has experimented with amplifying voices.

''We need a building that has the right sight lines for a ballet company and the right acoustics for a great opera company," said Peterson. ''And we don't have that building, and shame on us."

Finally, some blame Sarah Caldwell, the retired opera icon who is now in her 80s. Over the years, Caldwell's Opera Company of Boston put on some of the region's greatest productions on a shoestring budget. But she also struggled to pay her bills, eventually alienating donors, subscribers, and city leaders, local opera leaders say. Her final production at the Opera House was in 1990.

''She was brilliant artistically, but was a terrible nonprofit manager," said Kim Comart, who worked with Caldwell in the '80s while director of government relations for the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities (now the Massachusetts Cultural Council).

''People still get confused," said Carole Charnow, general director of Opera Boston. ''They say, 'I bought a subscription and you never did the season.' And I politely remind them I'm not Sarah Caldwell."

Caldwell was unavailable for comment, according to Jim Morgan, her longtime assistant at the company and current director of marketing and development for PCA Great Performances in Portland, Maine. But he said it's unfair to blame her.

''Oh, grow up," he said. ''Some of those companies benefited from the fact that thousands of people a year were coming down to the Combat Zone to see opera. When they came along, they didn't have to create an audience out of whole cloth."

Opera activismAt both Boston Lyric Opera and Boston Opera, growth is being managed carefully. BLO has increased from a $2.7 million budget and 3,200 subscribers in 1998 to its current $5.7 million budget and 5,100 subscribers. But this year, BLO had to pull back a bit from last year's $6.5 million budget after losing money on ''Flight" and ''The Little Prince," a collaboration with the Wang Center, last season. To balance its budget, BLO used $213,000 from a special growth fund. And this year, it has eliminated one performance for each of its three productions (down from seven to six).

Meanwhile, the scrappy Opera Boston is just thrilled to be growing. When Charnow took over in 1996, Opera Boston had a budget of less than $200,000. It is now almost $1.5 million. This year, it is mounting three productions with three performances (one more than last year) each.

Last month, Opera Boston also observed another milestone. On a Thursday night at the Cutler Majestic, the company held its first-ever gala fund-raising benefit. The company honored arts patron Joan Benard Cutler and Tufts drama department chairwoman Barbara Grossman for their contributions to the arts. Governor Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, showed up to make supportive speeches. Boston Ballet executive director Valerie Wilder mingled with guests, as did BLO's board president Hod Irvine. Mayor Tom Menino issued a proclamation declaring it ''Opera Boston Day."

And Charnow worked the room.

She moved through the theater, introducing herself to strangers with a set series of questions: ''Have you ever been to an opera? Really, where? How about one of ours?"

When she discovered a woman who was an Opera Boston regular, Charnow squealed and hugged her. When she discovered somebody who had never attended a production, she handed out her card. Charnow let Jill Goldweitz, already a board member at Boston Ballet and the Wang Center for the Performing Arts, know she was welcome. ''Will you come and be my guest?" said Charnow. ''I'll call and arrange it."

For Charnow, such opera activism, along with the company's steady flow of rarely produced works, is starting to pay off. The gala raised more than $350,000, along with the company's profile.

''I'm really excited about your season," BLO's Irvine told her at the gala.

''I'm excited about yours," she replied. ''We need more opera."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.