Ross' experience at the San Carlo convinced him that opera was where he wanted to work. In 1947 he returned to California and a year later was hired by maestro Gaetano Merola to stage-direct at the prestigious San Francisco Opera. Freelance directing engagements at New Orleans, Fort Worth and the Seattle-based Northwest Grand Opera followed. In 1959 he returned to Naples to stage-direct at the San Carlo. While there he received an intriguing offer--to create and direct a new opera company in Seattle. In 1963 Ross and his family traded sunshine for rain forests.
@rule:
@body:Ross knows how difficult it will be to mount a Ring cycle in Arizona. He estimates it will cost "a couple of million" to do it right. The first step is finding that kind of money in a recession-strapped economy that has been increasingly ungenerous to the arts. Last year the first grant proposal to the National Endowment for the Arts for $750,000 for the Ring was turned down. So far the Arizona-based Flinn Foundation has contributed a $200,000 grant, which must be matched on a three-to-two basis, and the opera has received an anonymous grant for $50,000.
Several major parts of the Arizona Ring are already in place. Henry Holt, Ross' maestro for the Ring in Seattle, will conduct. Ross is also in serious negotiations with a young German stage director named Klaus K”nig. Whether the German-language Ring will use the now-common practice of supertitles--translations projected over the stage--is still to be decided.
The most spectacular aspect of the production is the setting. Ross is considering several sites in northern Arizona, mostly around Sedona. He thinks that the spires of Sedona's famous red-rock country will make a perfect Valhalla.
"People keep asking me who I'm getting to do the sets and I keep saying it's already been done--by God."
Ross is also well-aware that many, even on his own board, think he's a little crazy to be mounting another Ring at age 77. "The first rule of venture capital is you must be sure the person you are investing in has more to lose than you do. Anybody putting money in the Ring, I have more to lose than anybody--my reputation." In applying for grant money, the opera has had to address the issue of succession should anything happen to Ross. But he won't discuss it, saying he'll take an early retirement at age 99. In fact, Ross is already looking down the road, beyond the Ring.
"Once we get the Ring up and running, I want to move on to my next project," he says with his patented toothy grin. "My really big plans are for the year 2000, the millenium. I want to do a festival made up of performances of the Orestia, the five great tragedies of Shakespeare, as well as classic dramas by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and then Wagner's Ring or maybe Parsifal. It will be a festival of tragic heights, a festival of exaltation."
THE GOVERNOR'S 800-POUND GORILLA... v7-29-92
