Sarah Billinghurst at the April gala in her honor, with Peter Gelb and Danielle de Niese
Photos by Julie Skarratt/Metropolitan Opera
A prominent opera administrator with careers on both coasts, Sarah Billinghurst, 71, is retiring, according to The New York Times:
Ms. Billinghurst retires this summer after 20 years as assistant general manager for artistic affairs — otherwise known as second in command — at the Metropolitan Opera... One of the most important people in opera you’ve never heard of, Ms. Billinghurst — along with Jonathan Friend, the Met’s artistic administrator, and Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manger — is responsible for strategic decisions about the company’s repertory, watching out for artists at competitions and rival houses and producing more than two dozen operas a season: finding directors, filling roles major and minor, coordinating rehearsals.
It is a position of formidable power and influence. But Ms. Billinghurst has, by all accounts, remained humble and generous. “She’s one of the two women I’ve ever known in our field who have nothing but friends,” said Matthew Epstein, a veteran artist manager and opera house administrator. (The other, for the record, was Ardis Krainik, the general director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago from 1982 until her death in 1997.)
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...a long way from rural New Zealand, where Ms. Billinghurst was born. She conducted her school choir while a student, but her true conversion to vocal music came during a recital by the glamorous soprano Victoria de los Ángeles in Wellington. Ms. Billinghurst moved to San Francisco in 1966 with her husband, a structural engineer specializing in earthquake areas. They divorced in 1980.
Billinghurst and Howard Solomon at the Met gala
Starting at the San Francisco Opera as a volunteer in the general director’s office in 1972, she worked her way up to artistic administrator, a position she held from 1982 until 1994, learning from a succession of talented leaders — Kurt Adler, Terence McEwen and Lotfi Mansouri — how to deal gently yet firmly with singers, negotiate contracts and troubleshoot productions. She developed a particularly close relationship with the Russian maestro Valery Gergiev, who conducted his first staged opera in America in San Francisco.
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Ms. Billinghurst had limited means as she rose through the ranks at the San Francisco Opera in the 1970s and ’80s. “She was a single mother raising two young children on a secondary opera administrator’s salary, and she would make sacrifices all week so she could throw a dinner party for artists,” Susan Graham [then in the Merola Program] recalled.
But after arriving at the Met in 1994, Ms. Billinghurst met Howard Solomon, a member of the company’s board as well as the longtime chief executive of the pharmaceutical company Forest Laboratories (the revenues of which currently exceed $3 billion), a New York philanthropist and a recent widower. They married in 2003.
San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley knew Billinghurst while he was running the Houston Grand Opera, but their paths often crossed:
In this business it's hard to be universally adored and respected. Sarah Billinghurst is one of those rare people. Her capacity for thoughtfulness is boundless. She can even deliver bad news in a way that creates no grudges. To have risen from a secretary at SFO to the second most powerful person in American opera is a breathtaking accomplishment.
A colleague during her San Francisco days, Peter Somogyi, recalls:
She was a crucial administrative pillar during her tenure with the San Francisco Opera. I was the company librarian when we worked together during the mid-1980s. I remember the time when the Met was keen to recruit her it was not easy for the administration of San Francisco Opera to relinquish her to New York.
I greatly appreciated her as an extremely supportive colleague with always the utmost professional work ethic. She was often charged as the point person who firmly stood her ground for the benefit of the company when there were discrepancies (sometimes major ones...) with various guest conductors, directors, set and costume designers and the occasional Diva.
It was admirable to note that she was as devoted to her children as she was to her vocation. Her overall sense of perspective, balance of life and humor were exemplary.
