CALGARY OPERA
Search is over for new CEO
After months of searching, Calgary Opera has hired a new general director from south of the border.
Keith Cerny will come to Calgary in January from The Dallas Opera, where he was general director and CEO.
“After an exhaustive international search for the right candidate to take Calgary Opera to next level of growth, we believe we have found the perfect candidate in Keith, given his wealth of experience from an artistic, business and operational standpoint,” Michael Brown, chair of the Calgary Opera board of directors. In his time at Dallas, Cerny worked to stabilize the company’s finances and grow the endowment significantly, leading to five consecutive balanced operating budgets — the first time The Dallas Opera achieved this in 23 years. A Harvard Business School grad and Fulbright scholar, Cerny also sat on the board of directors of Opera America, was recognized with an Arts Leadership award in 2016, and was named one of the 500 most powerful business leaders in Dallas-Fort Worth.
“When we began our search, we wanted to find a candidate that could champion and manage a multitude of areas, primarily artistically for the art form, but also with business acumen and the ability to grow the organization,” said Jacqueline Pyke, chair of Calgary Opera’s search committee. “Our search was international in nature and, in the end, we came to believe that having Keith on board serves Calgary Opera best in all of these areas.”
In Dallas, Cerny emphasized new productions, especially those involving the use of projections and computer technologies; commis- sioned late 20th and 21st century works; and less-familiar works, all in conjunction with popular classics.
Under his tenure, Dallas Opera presented new productions of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta with projections by Elaine J. McCarthy, and a production of Korngold’s Die tote Stadt using projections, as well as the contemporary operas Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse and Tod Machover’s Death and the Powers. In 2015, the company presented three world premieres that Keith commissioned: Joby Talbot and Gene Scheer’s Everest, Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s Great Scott, and Mark Adamo’s Becoming Santa Claus.
A search for a new CEO was launched after former CEO Bob McPhee retired after 19 years at the helm of Calgary Opera.