He was reasonably pleased with the production at Rosary but dissatisfied with having sold only 500 tickets. By founding AOG, Williams hoped to give talented young singers a chance to perform with a large orchestra (usually comprised of players from the Civic Orchestra of Chicago).
Williams had been involved in opera for over 30 years, doing artistic and managerial work for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the San Francisco Opera, Opera Theatre of San Antonio, and the Die Bühnen der Stadt Köln in Cologne, Germany. “Paul is very strong on the artistic end,” says board secretary Mae Cohen, “but it has been hard for him to attract the money people.”Ĭohen met Williams four years ago, when the company was performing Walton’s The Bear and Menotti’s The Medium at Rosary College. Williams says that he regrets waiting until the last minute but that he and his board of directors felt it was the prudent thing to do from a financial standpoint. Williams’s funding fell through,” says Robert Destocki, executive director for the center. “I didn’t want to take a chance on those shows not happening too, if Mr. But lackluster ticket sales forced Paul Williams, AOG’s founder and general director, to pull the plug on all four performances, and the Norris Center has reciprocated by canceling the company’s engagements for the remainder of the season. The company was scheduled to present Puccini’s Madame Butterfly at the Athenaeum Theatre on September 29 and October 1, with two more performances to follow this weekend at the 1,050-seat Norris Center in Saint Charles.
Since it debuted in 1996, the small, nonprofit American Opera Group has lived hand to mouth, but last week the hand came up empty.
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