This interview was originally recorded on April 16th, 2024.
The Oral History Project is supported by the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation.

Patricia K. Beggs, arts administrator

Patricia K. “Patty” Beggs is the former general director and CEO of Cincinnati Opera. The hallmarks of her 36-year career were growing audiences through diversity, equity, access, and inclusion initiatives; innovative programming; and the commissioning of operas focusing on social justice issues. Fiscal responsibility and sustainable growth, including balanced budgets and building a $35M endowment, are her legacy. She is also committed to developing meaningful partnerships in the community and has served on numerous national and regional boards. In 2020, she was named to OPERA America’s Opera Hall of Fame and received the Rosa F. and Samuel B. Sachs Fund Prize from ArtsWave. She was a member of Leadership Cincinnati’s Class XVIII, and in 2015, she was named Cincinnati Regional Chamber of Commerce’s WE Celebrate Woman of the Year Nonprofit. She attended Radcliffe College, graduated from Stephens College with a B.A., and pursued an M.B.A. at the University of Cincinnati.

Transcript

Marc A. Scorca: Patricia Beggs. Welcome to our visit today as part of the OPERA America Oral History. It is an honor to be speaking with you, a pleasure to see you. Thanks for taking the time today. 

Patricia Beggs: It's an honor to be speaking with you, Marc - Mr. OPERA America. 

Marc A. Scorca: It's a team effort here. Family OPERA America, and you've been an incredibly important part of that family for decades. Now, if you've seen any of my other interviews, you know that there's always a question I start out with, which is, who brought you, Patty Beggs, to your first opera? 

Patricia Beggs: Actually, it was a family member. I was about seven years old, and I liked the dressing-up part. We lived in Dayton, and the Cincinnati Opera performed at the zoo, when I was a child. So, we would go down to join the animals and enjoy the opera. I often ended up sitting outside right by the sea lions, who made all kinds of noises during performances. So I don't remember that much about the performances themselves, but I remember it was fun to go.

Marc A. Scorca: I just wanna pause there, because we so often hear about those legendary years at the Cincinnati Zoo, when the Opera would perform there, and it was covered, but open, and supposedly the elephants would bray, and you're saying the sea lions would make all sorts of sounds. Was it really kind of a cacophony of opera over there, and animal sounds around you?

Patricia Beggs: I think all around you. I wish I remembered more, because as I got older, I wasn't interested in going - there was a different kind of music going on in my life then, The Beatles and other folk, so I didn't go when I would've had better memories, or at least more detailed memories. There were all kinds of animals and the peacocks all would strut around, and they make noise too. I don't know if you've ever been around a peacock. They're noisy and aggressive, as I remember.

Marc A. Scorca: The stories are just legendary, really legendary. So, what is the first opera you went to, where it made an impression as opera without an animal surround, and where you thought, "Wow, this is something I could like?" 

Patricia Beggs: I was in Boston, and we didn't have a lot of money, so we availed ourselves of the things that were cheap and available. The opera was one of them. Sarah Caldwell was there, then the famous Sarah. And I think the performance that I remember was a Barber of Seville, and Nick (Nicholas) Muni was in it. So - ironic that I have these memories and had no clue, either when I was sitting at the Cincinnati Zoo back when I was a child, or when I was at the Opera Company of Boston, and that I would ever go back and visit that thing called 'opera' in a big way. And we moved to Cincinnati, and I got a subscription. My husband really wasn't interested, so I just got one ticket, and I would go by myself and fell in love with what was going on. But I sort of did in Boston, too. And we'd also go to the (Boston) Pops (conducted by) Arthur Fiedler. I'm really dating myself with all these things. But Arthur Fiedler was doing the Pops concerts on the lawn by the Charles River. It was, you know, sort of magical. 

Marc A. Scorca: Your first work was in the commercial sector. So that you didn't go from college into the non-profit, college into the arts; you worked in the commercial sector. What did you do there, and what was it that got you to move from the commercial to the non-commercial? 

Patricia Beggs: So, I fell into public relations. I had an undergraduate degree in education and taught a little bit, but it was actually hard to get a job in teaching back then, and they were paying ridiculously a low amount of money. So, I took a job in PR for a bank, and I was working at a bank when I met my husband-to-be. I actually wrote a press release when he joined the bank where I was working. I'd gone home from Boston to get ready to get married to someone else; wrote a press release for this guy and ended up marrying him six months later. It was probably the most impulsive thing I ever did, but it worked out okay. 

Marc A. Scorca: It worked out very well. 

Patricia Beggs: We're celebrating our 50th anniversary this summer.

Marc A. Scorca: Fantastic.

Patricia Beggs: In the course of doing my commercial work, as you called it, I volunteered for the Opera and in Cincinnati, I’d done PR for a number of citywide events. I was involved in a group that was a part of the Chamber of Commerce when I first moved there. So, I was doing PR for these special events, and one of them was a pub crawl that the Opera put on. We look back on things like that now and think how misguided it was. At least they had a bus that drove people around to these different bars, because that's what we did to benefit the Opera, but then those people had to drive home, so, I'm happy to say that the Opera no longer supports or sponsors an event like that. But it was in the course of that, that I really just came to love opera, and love my volunteer work, and I remember walking into this great old building, Music Hall in Cincinnati. It was built in 1878, and I felt a frisson of recognition that “I belong here.” I just felt it in a way that I've only felt a few times in my life. When I met my husband, when I went to Cawdor Castle in Scotland - so I'm sure I lived in that castle somewhere in olden times. (I don't know if it was upstairs or downstairs). And I felt that at Music Hall, and a little bit later, a PR job opened up. It was the marketing job, actually. I applied for it. I had six P&G style of interviews, because P&G is locally based, and we were lucky enough to have these P&G guys on our board. So they ran it the way they ran Proctor and Gamble, and I got the job.  In the meantime, I'd gone back to work on my MBA, so I had really thought I was staying in the business world, but I was able to lay on this job, and it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Marc A. Scorca: And the rest is history. 

Patricia Beggs: And I got to work in that building for all those years.

Marc A. Scorca: Yeah, that wonderful building. And I guess it was Jim (James) de Blasis, the general director, who hired you?

Patricia Beggs: Jim de Blasis hired me, along with some wonderful board members who are still involved with Cincinnati Opera; we're so fortunate in the leadership we've had over the years. And I stuck around, and they kicked me up. 

Marc A. Scorca: And I remember back to my early years, even before I was here at OPERA America, I was working at an opera company, and I remember you as a marketing director. And in those days, marketing was a fairly new field within opera. Danny Newman always used to say, "Marketing is something you do in a supermarket". But you know, opera companies were learning how to really promote sales, build subscription audiences, and you had great success in that. When you think back to the early days, what were some of the fights you were fighting? What were the challenges of the day when you started as a marketing director? 

Patricia Beggs: Well, the biggest challenge, even though I was attending opera at that time, was not understanding the dire circumstances that that company was in. We were selling 54% of the house. That was it. Subscription base was about 35%. I had been doing marketing all of my working life, and I'd done a lot of promotional marketing for events. And what I had learned through all that was that the marketing that the Cincinnati Opera and many opera companies were engaging in, really didn't do what I'd learned to do, and that is sell the sizzle: to sell the experience, to communicate what the benefit was to the person buying the ticket. And the tickets were relatively expensive, even back then. And of course, there were a lot of barriers to it. When I started in the fall of 1984, we had just started using the title system, and not every opera had titles. Fortunately, after my first year, we began using them for every performance. But, in those days, the barrier was not even understanding what people were saying. I had taken a class at CCM (Cincinnati Conservatory of Music) when I was working on my MBA, called 'Music Appreciation', and the man that taught it was so engaging, I really fell in love with opera even more, learning about it through his eyes. And he encouraged us to go and get the recordings, read along to the libretto and study opera. Nowadays, you don't need to do that; you can just show up, and it's immediately accessible, but it wasn't then. So, the idea that I had was to change the whole way that we approached talking about opera. What I found as I was subscribing, but not working there was, first of all, an implication that I really should subscribe to the opera. It was good for me to do that. It was the right thing to do, instead of somebody trying to sell me on the concept that these are human stories that anyone can relate to, and that it will move you beyond your wildest dreams if you are lucky enough to hit one of those performances that are hitting on every aspect of what's being presented. So, that's what we did. Fortunately, again, it was a P&G-led board. They understand marketing in a way that many of us can even ever hope to. So, they got the idea about selling the experience and communicating the benefits to the consumer. So, the president and I went out and we raised money to build a marketing budget. There was no budget, and the first year we had tremendous success, and we soared up to 70% attendance, and then we finally hit the 100% mark two or three years later. I don't wanna sound like it was the most brilliant marketing ever, but it was marketing, and so we started reaching people who normally didn't think about attending the opera. I gave up on the classical stations and advertised on the popular station. I think for a while I was using these movie titles, or song titles, like one season was called 'Pretty Women'; one season was called 'Much Ado About Love'. Whatever was hot at the movies, I'd borrow those themes and then translate it into a communication about the operas that we were presenting. 

Marc A. Scorca: Yeah, I remember those themes. And the first time I attended a performance in Cincinnati, which would've been the early 1990's, I remember a packed house, and I remember commenting to myself that it was a younger audience than I was accustomed to seeing. And I felt that you had a pricing strategy that made the tickets accessible to a younger audience. And you were a go-to person in the marketing area before you crossed the double yellow line and became the general director of the company. How long were you marketing director before you became general director? 

Patricia Beggs: I was hired in the end of 1984. I was named assistant managing director in '91, and I became managing director and then general director in 1997. 

Marc A. Scorca: So you'd been with the company 12, 13 years at that point.

Patricia Beggs: And we had a crack managing director. At that time, we had a two-headed leadership model, so there was a managing director and artistic director. 

Marc A. Scorca: Right. 

Patricia Beggs: Our managing director had come from the board, and he was savvy and fun, adored opera, kind of an unexpected managing director. He was an amazing golfer, and very much a guy's guy, but on the other hand, he adored opera. So, we were a great team. 

Marc A. Scorca: And to this day, a good friend.  

Patricia Beggs: A good friend to both of us. 

Marc A. Scorca: So, you saw what it took to be a general director, and yet you thought, "I'll do it", because it isn't just a job. And I know the way you were a general director, it was a way of life that you chose, not a job that you chose, because of the way you inhabited the role as head of the company. How did you then, for the next decades, maintain some kind of work/life balance, as a general director who just owned the whole job, plus some? 

Patricia Beggs: Well, that's a good question, Marc. I'm not sure that I was that successful. 

Marc A. Scorca: I used to say "Hi" to Jim. I would thank Jim for sacrificing his wife to the opera field. 

Patricia Beggs: Poor man didn't have a home-cooked meal for about 36 years. First of all, having the support from my family was terrific. It's a tough job to run a company. And I think it doesn't matter whether it's a not-for-profit, or a for-profit. I didn't know any other way to be successful except to, as you said, inhabit the job. At the same time, there would be times when I just marked myself out, and we had fantastic staff. Every department was headed up by somebody that was so competent and multi-talented, that I could go away and not worry about things. But for the most part, it's tough to leave it at home. I wish I had a better answer to that for people. It's hard. 

Marc A. Scorca: Getting into that concept of just really inhabiting the job, you stopped dividing work from life - and your board members, your donors, your community activities, your showing up for other things in the community, that's just the way you led your life for those decades. 

Patricia Beggs: Again, I don't think I could imagine any other way to do it. The great thing about what we do, opera, is what it delivers on the other end, and I was at a Cincinnati Opera event last week, (for) a new society that the company is forming called the Figaro Society, and Chris (Christopher) Milligan, who is now the general director and CEO of the Opera recounted (that) sometimes we'd be out in the lobby during performances, trying to catch people who came late, or (check-in) if there were anything to worry about. But we’d rush back in for the end of a performance of Aida. And, as the final notes rang out, and people jump to their feet and they're cheering and they're excited and moved, we looked at each other and he said that I said, "This is why we do what we do". And that was why. It is that moment when everyone rises up at the same time, because you've shared this experience with 3000 other people, and it's extraordinary. It's a payback that I certainly never had when I was working for a bank, or in any of the other activities that I engaged in, back in college and in high school. It's so fulfilling to be a part of that. And even though I know that my part didn't have a lot to do with what was happening on stage, it was the actors and the musicians and the crew and the people that delivered that performance. But it's still amazing to think that you had a small role in it. That was it for me. That, and then the ability to, at times encourage people to think differently about subjects. One of the things I'm really proud about at Cincinnati Opera is how we embrace new opera. And we were able to present works that focused on relevant themes, things that we're all grappling with in our own society. The first one of those was Dead Man Walking, but we went on to commission and present other operas, or present operas that other companies had commissioned and presented, that spoke to our times. And I'm so proud of that work too. And Cincinnati Opera is carrying it on in such an amazing way. 

Marc A. Scorca: I wanted to talk to you about that, because when you first joined the company, it was a very traditional company, in terms of repertoire and style of production, and yet when you left the company, it was a leading producer of new work, whether new or recent work; you were commissioning in a dynamic partnership with CCM, around Opera Fusion, and the workshopping of works with CCM. You essentially changed the DNA of the company, and that's not an easy thing to do. How did you go about turning the ship in a different direction? 

Patricia Beggs: That's a good question, but it was strategic. We, and I'm speaking of Gus (Paul A. “Gus”) Stuhlreyer III (who was the managing director) and myself - we had done everything we could do in the areas that we controlled, (which were not the artistic), to really change the face of the company: to be very outward looking; to be very transparent; to manage ticket prices so that it was accessible; to communicate what we were doing, we hoped in an accessible way, in an interesting way; to change the look of everything that we did, so that it was more modern and, again, relevant, but tried to convey what was possible in attending the Opera. But we couldn't control the artistic product. The then artistic director, who was very highly recognized and appreciated over the years that he was involved in opera (about 40 years), was a traditional artistic director, and his forte was traditional works. We strategically chose to hire someone that was more production focused, so that our productions would become more enhanced and more exciting. There was so much going on in technology that we weren't taking advantage of, and so we hired an artistic director that met that criteria, and he helped lead the charge to change the artistic face of the company with new works, and very innovative productions. Not every one of those was a great success, I have to say, but it really gave us the appetite to do more and more in the way of new works. And we had a tremendous crew. We could build our own sets in Cincinnati. We did build many of them. We had all these amazing resources in Cincinnati, like CCM as you mentioned, but we were also close to IU (Indiana University), and they had a wonderful music program, and there were other music programs around our area that we could draw from. Unfortunately, in the early days when I started, we were not close to CCM. We had all this incredible talent there from the leadership of CCM, professors, the leadership, and then the artists themselves. So once we had brought on Nick (Nicholas) Muni, who was the artistic director that really helped turn the company around, in terms of the quality and the impact of the productions we were doing, we built a bridge to working with CCM and other local entities, which did nothing but enhance our organization. We established a program where we would hire CCM-er's staff and faculty and artists, and now there's probably 40 or so people in a season that come and work with us in all varieties of jobs - all different capacities from crew all the way up to principal artists. And of course, doing that, you build great relationships, and those relationships pay dividends in the future. So, I'm very proud of that too, that we really became a very outward facing organization.

Marc A. Scorca: Of course, you have the longstanding partnership, if you will, with the Cincinnati Symphony, the wonderful orchestra that plays for the opera. 

Patricia Beggs: Yeah, maybe the longest professional collaboration.

Marc A. Scorca: It may well be.

Patricia Beggs: As we're the second oldest company. 

Marc A. Scorca: But Patty, you created this change, and yet I know so many board members at Cincinnati Opera who have been there for decades. So, you were able to create change, and yet retain the devotion of long-serving board members who had been brought up in a different era of production. Did that take some real skill person by person? 

Patricia Beggs: As I look back on it, I think that they loved the journey. Our board became more and more supportive as we went on. We had a big board. At one time, it was about a hundred members, but they fueled the growth of the company. So what happened is, we went from being a company of under a million dollars to one that is now around eight and a half, 9 million. I think it was a little over 10 when I left, but then the pandemic came along and so (there was some) belt-tightening that went on. But the board was really a big part of it, and I think they enjoyed the successes; they enjoyed the fact that they played a role in that. So, it's so wonderful to see how many of them are still involved. Actually, all of our former presidents are still involved - those that are still alive. We have what's called the President's Council, and we just started this new group called the Figaro Society, which includes the past presidents and past board members and other longtime supporters. 

Marc A. Scorca: And if I remember correctly, early on you would travel with board members to go see productions, in order to broaden their horizons beyond what they'd experienced at Cincinnati before then. 

Patricia Beggs: We went to see the premiere of Dead Men Walking, and decided in the van, on the way back from the opera house that we were gonna present it. And people stepped up right then with pledges to make it possible, and we were able to seal the deal before we left San Francisco. So, what we actually ended up doing was developing a consortium of 10 other companies. We built a new set that worked for our mid-size companies, and that's what we did. I can't stress enough how important a good relationship with our board, a partnership with our board was in fueling the growth of the company. 

Marc A. Scorca: Yeah. And I know how, despite the size of your board, how personal you made that. Your incredible people skills enabled you to give everybody your full attention when you were with them. It was a real gift of yours. 

Patricia Beggs: Well, thanks for saying that. Again, I can't say enough about the great team that we had at the Opera. Many people have been there a long time. 

Marc A. Scorca: How do you nurture a team? Because I agree. You have incredible longevity in the staff and a loyalty and a spirit at the company that's really admirable. How do you build that, Patty? 

Patricia Beggs: Well, I've learned some lessons along the way in my life, from the way other people managed companies that I was involved in. And I have to say that some of the lessons were based on bad behavior, (and some) based on admirable behavior. But one of the hardest lessons I ever learned, was understanding that when you get right down to it, it's just opera. I missed going to see a relative who was dying, because of all things, we had an Opening. There's no reason I couldn't have gone, but I didn't, and I never will forgive myself for not going to say goodbye. So at that moment, (and I wasn't running the company then, I was still the marketing manager), it was 1988, I learned then that everyone who works in an opera company is a person who has a family and another life, and that we had to make room for those other lives in the lives of our staff. If we didn't, we were gonna lose people; it was just that simple. We performed in the summer, so it was tough on people who had children, because of course, that's vacation time, and that's the time that families spend with their children. So we try to be as adaptable as possible in making it available for people to do the things that you need to do when you have children or families. And we required an awful lot of people, and a lot of long hours, but when we could, we also made it possible for people to take personal time. And I think that helps. If you can have a work/life balance, my hope is that people would stay and work as hard as they did, which people did. 

Marc A. Scorca: Patty, you were one of the first women to lead a company. Were you aware that you were breaking new ground? Did you feel barriers to your progress as a general director because you were a woman? 

Patricia Beggs: Marc, I think I was at sort of the leading edge, but not the bloody edge of the women's movement. So I was very lucky, even when I was in the banking business, that I had wonderful mentors, and I think people looking for someone with decent table manners. I was invited to join the bank. I was the first woman to be a member of the Banker's Club, and there were some other firsts that came in my life. So, I'm grateful to all the women whose shoulders I stood on, and I was able to enjoy the benefits of the work that they did. And the board at the Opera was exactly the same way. Just great mentors, champions in a way that I couldn't have asked for more from them. But I was certainly aware. Ardis Krainik was my hero, she-ro. And I'll never forget, I went to my first OPERA America meeting, and I think Ardis might have been president. 

Marc A. Scorca: That would've been my earliest years - my first board chair in 1990, '91, '92. 

Patricia Beggs: So I think it must have been about then, and she gave one of her inspirational speeches, "Everyone, jump to your feet, put your hands together, and give yourself a round of applause". You know how she was, when she did a speech, something really fun and almost evangelical in the way that she inspired all of us. But she took time to come and talk to me, and wish me well, and "Don't let the turkeys get you down". I don't think she said 'turkeys', but something along those lines. But I was so amazed that she was aware of who I was and then was so generous. So, I learned a lot about Ardis and Carol Fox before her at the Lyric (Opera of Chicago). But there were very few women in leadership roles in those days. 

Marc A. Scorca: So true. And it's funny, Patty, in all of these oral histories that I've done over these last several years, probably the person cited most frequently is Ardis, - just a force of nature and a caring, supportive ally (that) she was. A remarkable woman. 

Patricia Beggs: She was a remarkable woman. And I certainly never felt like I was another Ardis, but I enjoyed knowing her, and learning about her, and modeling her whenever I could. 

Marc A. Scorca: So Patty, you've got to be asked for advice all the time. You are out and about; you go to CCM for whatever events you do, you run into people in the lobby of Music Hall. What is at the core of your advice for the next generation of leaders? What do you tell them is a key to success in running an opera company? 

Patricia Beggs: Well, I tell everyone who's come to me for advice, to take accounting: understand how to read a spreadsheet. That it is one of the most important things that you'll do. And because a number of people who are interested in a career in the arts, generally are coming from the arts themselves - they may be singers; they may have been in music education or some other field. Now, of course, there are many more MBA arts admin degrees, and that's not such new information to people. But I can remember in my early years where people just didn't think about that, but it helped me all my life because it gives you a grounding in how things work. And if you don't understand that spreadsheet, then it's easy to fail. And we've watched a lot of people make those mistakes over the years. You still, at the end of the day, have to balance the budget. But you do, in between them, that's up to your ingenuity and all the people around you and the talent. And that's another thing I'm proud about for our company, that we have maintained a manageable, sustainable budget over the years and not grown too rapidly and not been able to support it. We were blessed with a wonderful place to perform, but we also perform in smaller venues now. Again, that came out of the creativity of our team. The other piece of that pie...so one is: understanding the numbers, two is: partnerships. There are so many opportunities, and if we don't take advantage of those partnerships in our communities, then we're leaving ideas and money on the table, frankly, because when you share costs, then you can do more, oftentimes.  And the third thing was diversity, and it was something that I had been aware of and involved in, before I came to Cincinnati Opera. I was on the board of the Girl Scouts, and they were way ahead of a lot of people. It was very early '90's, maybe 1990, and there was already an appreciation of it in that industry, and I loved how our industry, the opera industry under your leadership, also started carrying the standard for appreciating diversity in all the ranks, whether it's board, on stage, staff, it makes a difference. And we're better for that.

Marc A. Scorca: It does. And again, Cincinnati Opera was, you know, a real leader in that. I remember all the incredible events you did around the Margaret Garner production, when you were a co-producer of that - that work by Richard Danielpour and Toni Morrison, and it was a whole community event.

Patricia Beggs: Around 1998, we knew that there was going to be a Freedom Center built in Cincinnati on the river, and we were involved in that the very beginning. So we partnered with them. We commissioned this work in celebration of the opening of the Freedom Center, and we worked with them and the community, as you said, leading up to the story. The story was local. The woman, Margaret Garner just lived about 20 miles south of Cincinnati, and the story of Little Eliza, that was also written about in Toni Morrison's book, Beloved. So, she indeed did walk across the Ohio River to freedom, and then the rest of the story is pretty sad. She was recaptured and killed two of her own children, rather than let them go back into slavery. We told that story in a way that was, I think, amazing and authentic. But what we did in the community was a tremendous effort for us, I think. And really the whole community then embraced it. 

Marc A. Scorca: Yeah, for sure. So, you have a season at Cincinnati Opera coming up. What opera are you most looking forward to? You have to choose one, which are you most looking forward to? 

Patricia Beggs: Well, I have to say it's Liverpool Oratorio. 

Marc A. Scorca: Okay. 

Patricia Beggs: This is the brilliant idea of Chris Milligan, the new general director and CEO of presenting the first stage version of Paul McCartney's, Liverpool Oratorio. So that's coming this summer. We're very excited about it. The music is quite wonderful. I remember when he premiered it, back in 1991. I remember listening to it and thinking, "That guy's got chops; he really does", writing that somewhat classical piece of music. So that's pretty exciting. 

Marc A. Scorca: Oh, I should say. I hope I can get out for it. We'll see if I can. Well, Patty Beggs, it's so wonderful to see you and to speak with you, to capture a little bit of the great skill, mixed with magic that led you to success for 35 plus years at Cincinnati Opera. It is really an honor to talk to you today. And thank you. Thank you for taking the time, and thank you for everything you've done for opera, for Cincinnati Opera, and for OPERA America. 

Patricia Beggs: Thank you, Marc. But I wanna say that right back at you - that I was so lucky to have you among my circle of friends and acquaintances, and over the years, we relied on you and OPERA America so much. I remember the retreats that you gave our board. I remember the advice you gave me when we were looking for a new artistic director, and thank goodness I called you, because Evans Mirageas is now celebrating something like his, yikes, 19th (season).

Marc A. Scorca: I think it is. It's not quite 20, but it's closing in on it. 

Patricia Beggs: It was 2005 when we officially hired him as artistic director. But that was you, in 2004, who gave me that great bit of advice. That'll be on my tombstone. "She hired Evans Mirageas and Marc Scorca is the one that recommended him".