David DiChiera, an opera entrepreneur who established the only world-class caliber company in Orange County, died earlier this week.
DiChiera, 83, died at his Detroit home Tuesday evening. The Detroit Free Press reported that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in April 2017.
As the founding general director of Opera Pacific in 1985, DiChiera drew from various local opera support groups and financially well-heeled supporters of the art form throughout Orange County to establish the company and mount performances at the new Orange County Performing Arts Center (now the Segerstrom Center for the Arts).
Opera Pacific’s first performances, in February 1987 were of a shared production with 12 other regional companies of Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess.”
At its peak in the early 1990s, the company had a $5.4 million annual opera budget, a six-opera season with as many as six performances of the more popular Italian, German and French operas. The company also sponsored outreach performances for school children throughout the county.
Additionally, Opera Pacific sponsored gala concerts featuring opera’s biggest names, including tenor Luciano Pavoratti’s lone Orange County appearance in 1988, Dame Joan Sutherland (1989) and Placido Domingo’s first local recital (1991).
For a time, Opera Pacific was joined in underwriting its programming with the Dayton Opera and Michigan Opera Michigan Theatre. This awkward administrative organization failed to take hold and DiChiera left Opera Pacific in 1996 to exclusively focus on opera in Michigan.
Opera Pacific was slowly weighed down with a series of money challenges following his departure, and it finally closed for good in 2008, partially a victim of the financial crisis.
In addition to starting Opera Pacific, DiChiera is remembered for helping revitalize downtown Detroit in the mid 1990s by spearheading efforts to rehab a 2,700 seat theater that had fallen into disrepair and establish Detroit Opera. The company and building, now part of the David DiChiera Center for the Performing Arts, led to financial donors and corporations help coming together to invest in a blighted area of downtown.
DiChiera was born in Pennsylvania, but his family moved to Southern California and DiChiera studied music at UCLA. In addition to being an opera entrepreneur, DiChiera also was a composer. His most successful work was a 2007 opera called “Cyrano,” based on the tale of Cyrano de Bergerac.
Staff contributor Christopher Smith and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
