Virginia Opera terminates Artistic Director Peter Mark

NORFOLK

The Virginia Opera board announced Thursday that it had terminated the contract of its artistic director, Peter Mark, effective immediately.

Mark, who helped found the company in 1975, was dismissed through a letter sent to his California home on Thursday, said Stanley Barr, the opera’s counsel.

Mark was let go before his contract ended in May 2012 because of “violations of obligations under his employment agreement and the Virginia Opera Association’s employment policies,” President-elect Alan Albert wrote in an e-mail.

Albert said he would not elaborate because it is a personnel issue and therefore confidential.

Mark wrote in an e-mail that his dismissal “is not justified either on moral or legal grounds – or by common sense.”

He wrote that the “letter from President Joan B. Miller asserts that my termination is based on a claim of 'misfeasance or malfeasance’ in the performance of my responsibilities. That claim is without basis.”

If the decision is not reversed, he wrote, “then my attorneys will take the appropriate legal actions.”

His termination comes after more than a month of conflict between two factions of the opera’s board. The rift went public Oct. 10 when founding President Edythe Harrison stood on stage after a performance of “Rigoletto” at Harrison Opera House, named for her and her late husband, and announced that the opera board leadership was trying to oust Mark.

Harrison and about 10 other members of the opera’s various boards then mounted a campaign to gain support and collected more than 100 e-mails backing Mark.

Harrison did not return a phone call Thursday.

Mark has said that he did not learn until Sept. 23 that his current contract would be his last.

Mark’s lawyer, Robert E. Brown, said he scrutinized minutes from meetings going back to late 2007 of the board’s 19-member executive committee. That group has the power to hire and fire senior personnel. Brown said he saw no reference in the minutes to discussions of Mark’s contract being terminated.

Brown provided The Pilot with a statement from five former executive committee members who claim that, among them, they attended every closed session during that period, and none recalls any discussion or vote on the finality of Mark’s current contract.

Personnel issues at the opera are usually discussed in closed sessions.

Albert said Mark was told in 2008 that 2011-2012 would be his last season. Albert also has said the executive committee voted unanimously three times in the past year to terminate Mark, and reiterated that this week. The executive committee voted unanimously Tuesday night to end Mark’s contract, Albert said.

On Thursday, Barr gave The Pilot a timeline of events regarding negotiations with Mark. The timeline includes a reference to an e-mail dated March 17 from Brown to Mark and Barr. The e-mail, also provided Thursday by Barr, reads:

“For the record, this is the statement of the action which Stanley Barr and I agreed to recommend and pursue: 'Begin discussions now regarding modification of Peter Mark’s roles during the 2011-12 season with a view to facilitating transition to new artistic leadership after May 2012.”

The e-mail ends: “I have talked with Peter and he agrees.”

“We never got around to the discussion of his further roles,” Brown said Thursday, “which could have been an extension for another two years.”

While Brown said that Mark “knew that they wanted him to be out,” he insisted that Mark was not told that his contract would not be renewed.

Each side accused the other of blocking efforts to hammer out a transition.

“The executive committee has attempted for the past 10 months to negotiate with Peter Mark for a positive and constructive transition in artistic leadership that would be coupled with an appropriate recognition of his long service to the Virginia Opera,” Albert wrote in an e-mail Thursday.

“We regret that our proposals were all rejected.”

Mark is credited with bringing national and even international recognition to the company, partly through its premieres of operas by his wife, famed composer Thea Musgrave. Mark is known for discovering and developing gifted singers early in their careers, including Renee Fleming and Ashley Putnam.

In an Oct. 8 letter to the full board, the executive committee outlined its negotiations with Mark and mentioned “Peter’s history of difficulties in working relations with staff, musicians and board leadership.”

Some of Mark’s opera colleagues have said he is known for occasionally losing his temper.

When Mark is displeased with an instrumentalist’s playing, “he just acts like a child,” said Matt Frischman, a bassist who played in the Virginia Opera orchestra from 1994 to 1998 and is now with the Minnesota Orchestra.

“It’s just extremely unprofessional behavior. You can’t talk to a professional symphony orchestra like they’re your 8-year-old child.”

Mark was scheduled to conduct Wagner’s “The Valkyrie,” which opens in January. A guest conductor for that production and an interim artistic director will be announced by early December, Albert said.

“Virginia Opera is larger than one person,” Albert said on Thursday.

“We have thrived because we put a superb artistic product on stage. And nothing is going to change in that regard.”

Teresa Annas, (757) 446-2485, teresa.annas@pilotonline.com