From her earliest days in the hot seat as Opera San José’s general director, Khori Dastoor distinguished herself with forward-thinking ideas, not to mention adept crisis management. People noticed, and the inevitable happened: Dastoor has been tapped to become general manager and CEO of Houston Grand Opera, beginning in January 2022. The six-month window will allow her to oversee the OSJ’s return to the California Theatre and the beginning of the company’s 2021–2022 season, which Dastoor planned.
Dastoor’s service to OSJ stretches over 14 years, since 2007, when she joined the company as a resident artist. While maintaining her singing career, she extended her relationship with the company, serving as casting advisor to founder and General Director Irene Dalis. Dastoor joined the staff of Opera San José in 2013 as artistic advisor to the general director. Upon Dalis’s retirement, she became director of artistic planning under Larry Hancock, assuming primary responsibility for casting and artist recruitment.
As general director, Dastoor took the company in a vibrant direction and then, when the pandemic hit, immediately pivoted toward online content, using the recently completed Heiman Digital Media Studio. Reaching out to underserved audiences, she took the initiative to offer subtitles in Vietnamese and Spanish, two of San José’s larger communities. In the first days of the pandemic, she created, out of whole cloth, one of the country’s first artist and musician relief funds.
Though a midsize company, Opera San José under Dastoor pushed bravely into streaming opera productions, with Three Decembers in December 2020 being hailed by SFCV’s Steven Winn: “The adroit direction (by Tara Branham), simple but smartly conceived sets (Steven Kemp), telling costumes (Alyssa Oania), and period-perfect props all conjure, about as well as possible on a flat screen, the feel of opera as an intimate, immersive experience.” Dastoor followed that up in April 2021 with the Love and Secrets trilogy, another major success, hailed as a “knockout” by Joshua Kosman in the San Francisco Chronicle. And in September, another Dastoor streaming production, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri, will premiere.
“We have come full circle together,” wrote Dastoor. “During my time working with this company, serving this community, I have been a singer, a producer, an artistic advisor, an arts administrator, a general director. I have lived, from start to finish, Opera San José’s mission, and the company will forever be a part of my artistic identity.”
Dastoor finds herself with a lot of influence: the secret of her talent is out. She was recently appointed to the Board of Directors of Opera America, where she will serve as co-chair of the Leadership and Learning Council. She is also one of three inaugural mentors in the Mentorship Program for Leaders of Color.
At Houston Grand Opera, Dastoor will take over a company with a $27 million budget, two performance spaces, a world-class artist development program, and a principal guest conductor that SF Opera fans may possibly recognize: Eun Sun Kim. The company has a long history of world premieres, over 70 of them to date. It’s the big time, but Houston won’t regret this hire.
