Aren Der Hacopian: the Making of a Modern Opera Administrator

Seattle Opera is an extremely well-run organization, financially almost always in the black, its artistic quality respected worldwide. The company’s harmonious tone, felt throughout the staff, comes straight from the top, from General Director Speight Jenkins and Executive Director Kelly Tweeddale.

But in the relatively near future, Jenkins, 75 in January, intends to step down.

To all intents and purposes, Jenkins is Seattle Opera, which he has led since 1983 and built to its current stature. Jenkins is not one of those commanders on an ego trip. All who know him know it’s the company, not himself, which is of prime importance to him. It makes sense to plan ahead for his departure, then, and it appears the company is quietly putting its ducks in a row.

While one wouldn’t describe him as a duck, in 2010, Aren Der Hacopian, now 35, was appointed to a position created for him, that of Artistic Administrator for Seattle Opera, and simultaneously Director of Seattle Opera’s Young Artists Program (YAP), which he had managed since 2007.

Der Hacopian has an office directly opposite Jenkins’. His duties as Young Artists director include overseeing everything to do with the program: auditions, tours, productions, staffing, care and nurture of the young artists themselves, and the budget. Much of this he does in close collaboration and consultation with YAP’s music director, Brian Garman, and artistic director Peter Kazaras, both of whom have years of experience with young artists in their respective fields. The budget is his alone. (YAP used to be under the company’s education department. Now it’s a separate entity under the artistic department.)

As Seattle Opera’s artistic administrator, Der Hacopian helps Jenkins with casting for the mainstage opera season, which nowadays always tries to include the current Young Artists in at least one production. Jenkins hires the stars for each opera several years ahead of time. It’s Der Hacopian’s job to whittle down the possibilities for the other roles to a couple of singers and then take those to Jenkins for final decision. Jenkins auditions singers in this country and abroad every year.

“The whole purpose of these two positions,” Der Hacopian says, “is to be devil’s advocate. We do all the auditions in New York and here together. If I see something wrong, I say so. But my job is regarding singers, not stage director choices, though [I do weigh in on] some conductors.”

When Jenkins steps down, Der Hacopian will be there with a few years under his belt in working closely with Jenkins. Whatever position he ends up with in a new administration, he will be an informed artistic administrative bridge between the old and the new.

It’s a good thing Der Hacopian is young, because the workload he describes with such enthusiasm is phenomenal.

“I’m heavily involved in choosing the young artists. In my living room, there are fourteen big mailboxes with 590 applications (for the YAP) for next year,” he says. Asked if he listens to every tape, he says that the only ones he listens to throughout “are the ones that grab you at the start.” He checks the resumes for performance history, listens to maybe four measures. “My ears are kind of trained, you hear the echoes that may have been added to cover any flaws in the voice, and there’s the rare gem of a singer who has done no performances. You have to balance it out.” He weeds out most, then consults with Garman and Kazaras to reach a small group of possibles, and Jenkins joins in for the final say.

At the same time, Der Hacopian has to be aware of what will be playing on the mainstage that season, knowing that each of the Young Artists is meant to have a role. He is listening for voices with the potential for the mainstage, but who are also young singers at the start of their careers.

“It’s a huge gamble, hearing them sing one or two or three pieces and hiring them to put on the main stage. We have an Armenian saying, ‘It’s not baked yet’”—which is a decision he has to make about some of the voices.

Der Hacopian says that he has basically set up the Young Artists Program as a small opera house.

“It functions with extreme help from Brian and Peter. I’m overall director. I basically have the say, with their agreement, but I stay out of the way as much as possible. If I see the budget going too far to left or right I step in. Brian has a vast history with YAPs. I’ve been blessed with these two helping me run this program. We do have disagreements, but if Peter explains, it’s my choice to accept his decision. He’s done a phenomenal job with Werther.”

(The latest tour, of Massenet’s opera Werther, ends Saturday with a performance at Nordstrom Recital Hall, having been seen in Bellingham; Kirkland; Ellensburg; Courtenay, B.C.; and Walla Walla over the past 16 days. This one has minimal costumes and props and has piano accompaniment. A full production of Don Pasquale, with orchestra, comes next spring.)

Der Hacopian makes all the arrangements for the tours, finding, inspecting and booking the venues, negotiating terms, hiring a tour manager, production assistant and design coordinator: “I have to find the right individuals who can do everything.”

He doesn’t usually go on the tours but a week after a performance, he contacts all of the venues, gets feedback and asks the all-important question, “Do you want us back?”

Part of the responsibility of the program is helping these young singers understand what they are getting into. “What is the real opera world like? You have to be ready, prepared, there is always someone better than you. You can’t have excuses or stage problems, your personality, body language, diva behavior, the way you sing which has to be beautiful and with taste, all come into it. Students come out of school not realizing they must do research, listen to CDs, captivate people from the very first moment they enter the room.”

Once accepted to Seattle Opera’s 21-week program, the Young Artists get a stipend, and for their mainstage appearance, they are paid AGMA (American Guild of Musical Artists) rates.

Der Hacopian began his new dual job on July 1, 2010, and immediately found himself up to his eyeballs. Omigod, he says he thought, we have to cast Porgy and Bess: “a challenge and an unbelievable joy.” They only had one year before the production, a very short lead-time in opera.

“Speight found Gordon (Hawkins, for Porgy) and Lisa (Daltirus, for Bess). I did everyone else, I’d say, ‘This one or that one?’, and he’d say, ‘This one.’ It was a great way to establish trust. Sometimes I’d say, I think this is an amazing voice but you may not like the stage presence.”

The new job relationship was as new to Jenkins as to Der Hacopian, who would like to shoulder more of Jenkins’ multitude of responsibilities for him. “Many times I think he should unload on me, but he hasn’t yet,” Der Hacopian says.

Der Hacopian was 31 when he was hired to manage the Young Artists Program in 2007, very young for what was already a prestigious program with young singers worldwide competing for a space. However, the unusual journey life had led him over the previous couple of years prepared him well.

In 2005, a graduate student, he was three weeks away from singing the baritone lead for Opera UCLA in a new opera by Ian Krouse, Lorca, Child of the Moon, and Guglielmo in Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte. He woke one morning, he says, with no voice in the middle, and just croaking top and bottom. Doctors found a black tumor on his vocal cords, luckily not cancerous. He was given specific exercises to do. “I didn’t speak for one month,” he says, and he resigned from the opera production.

Not wanting to have nothing at all to do with the production, he says, “I offered to help…. Lo and behold, I am really good at this! I had some connections and I was like the producers, and it was loads and loads of fun.”

Opera over, he went back to the ENT doctors, who found the tumor had disappeared, but his voice needed work. He was advised to see a heldentenor in Germany, William Johns.

“He’ll fix your voice,” Der Hacopian was told. “So I took all my savings and went. We did a lot of personal work. He taught me daily. I had to learn to hear ‘This is good singing, this is bad singing.’ And my voice is back.” Hacopian feels this time-out developed character he wouldn’t otherwise have had, and he also learned a great deal about listening to voices.

He returned to UCLA and completed his Master’s in Arts. He then got a call from Los Angeles Opera, which was starting its own Domingo-Thornton Young Artists program. Would he be interested in working for it?

Der Hacopian found himself being interviewed by Placido Domingo, general director of L.A. Opera, during which interview, he says, Domingo asked him why he might be interested in the job.

“If I can’t be a famous Verdi baritone,” Der Hacopian says he answered, “I want to be a general director.”  Domingo’s response, he says, was, “I’m impressed. You’re hired.”

Surrounded by great singers, Der Hacopian learned a great deal that year. It was an amazing experience, he says, but by the end of a year he decided it was not the right fit for him. He resigned his position, moving to Seattle without a job in order to continue a personal relationship that had been going on long distance from L.A. Maybe he could at least volunteer to ferry artists from the airport or otherwise help out at Seattle Opera, he thought, until he could land a job.

He mentioned all this to Peter Kazaras whom he knew. Kazaras suggested they go and have coffee with the late Perry Lorenzo, then education director for the opera, whom Der Hacopian knew slightly.

Not suspecting anything other than coffee, Der Hacopian enjoyed reconnecting, but gradually realized he was being interviewed.

Lorenzo ended telling him, he remembers: We’ve been interviewing for this job, you are well suited to it, the right candidate. You need to take this job. To which Der Hacopian asked: What job?

“It fell into my lap. I couldn’t say no. I came in to Seattle Opera and it felt like home.”