In 1980 Darren K. Woods was a tenor in the chorus of the Houston Grand Opera with visions of heading to Broadway before starring in his own television sitcom. Fate and the music world had other things in store.
Following recommendations of friends, he spent that summer in the young artists program at the Seagle Music Colony outside the little Adirondack village of Schroon Lake in Essex County about 90 miles north of Albany. Founded in 1915 by renowned baritone Oscar Seagle, the colony has offered generations of young singers a haven to study and grow before venturing on to professional careers. It’s transformed Darren Woods’ life at least a couple of times now.
Woods did go on to a respectable singing career, performing with the New York City Opera and numerous other companies. But it was the role of J. Pierrepont Finch, the deft wheeler dealer in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” which he played during that one summer at the Seagle Colony, that really pointed to how Woods would ultimately make his mark in the operatic world.
First, in 1996 Woods returned to Schroon Lake to take a one-season appointment as general director of the Colony. He has remained its guiding force ever since and is widely credited with transforming an organization that was on the brink of closure.
Next, in 1999, Woods ended his performing career to become head of the Shreveport Opera in Louisiana. In a tenure of just 24 months he also saved that outfit from near extension. And as general director of the Fort Worth Opera since July 2001, Woods has again brought vigor to a company once written off as provincial and moribund. In a profile of Woods in its July issue, Opera News Magazine referred to his “national presence” and called him a “turnaround master.”
In addition to his duties in Fort Worth, Woods regularly gives master classes at universities across the country and frequently serves as a judge of auditions for the Metropolitan Opera National Council, the Richard Tucker Foundation, and other organizations. But he still summers at the Seagle Colony, where he now holds the title of artistic director. We spoke recently over coffee in Sarataga Springs.
“Opera is in me to the corps of my being,” he says. “I’m a servant to the art form.”
Such lofty language might suggest that Woods is working from some lyric libretto and longs to be back on stage. But his pronouncements are given with a sincere and matter of fact tone and spill out of him as fast as a Rossini overture. Whether its identifying and encouraging good singers, knowing the vast operatic repertoire, or finessing rich folks out of their money, Woods seems always on his game. His respective companies are the beneficiaries.
The year he took the reigns of the Seagle Colony, it gave three staged productions over five weeks, and operated on a budget of roughly $30,000. This year, there are six productions, a nine-week season and a budget of nearly $575,000.
One of Woods’ first outreach efforts for Seagle was to churches — offering free music on Sunday mornings. “Mr. Seagle belonged to the Community Church and we provided soloists there since time immemorial,” explains Woods. “I thought, well why not sing in the Catholic Church too? I walked over and there were like a 1,000 people, while the Community Church had about 40. Soon the priest was announcing our performance schedule. Now we sing at so many churches, everywhere from Putnam to Keene Valley, we can only provide (each congregation) about two Sundays per season.”
Education was Woods’ first focus in Shreveport. “I dreamed up a program to take opera to little kids in the sticks where there were no arts,” he recalls. “I made up a study guide and a brochure and we got literally $300,000 worth of bookings. So then I hired three singers and a director and we had the ‘Piped Piper’ and ‘Little Red Ridinghood’ and did everything I had laid out in the brochure. And it underwrote the mainstage productions.”
Though the job in Louisiana paid considerably less than he had been making as a singer, Woods thought the experience could serve as the equivalent to a masters degree in arts management. By the time Fort Worth came calling, he had developed considerable confidence.
“I went through a four-hour interview and was blatantly honest about what I knew of the company. The quality was in the tank,” he says. He went back to Shreveport thinking that was that.
Some six weeks later, in the midst of a summer at Seagle, he got a call back. This time, he spoke not just of impressions but gave assessments based on research. “I said your repertoire here is old school and boring and if all you want to do is the top 20 operas just send me home now. You’ve not done Handel or Britten or anything 20th century except ‘Turnadot’ and that hardly counts. Plus you can’t afford the season you planned.”
In addition to the tough talk, he also passed around copies of a five-year plan. And he got the job.
Woods has countless stories, both amusing and horrific, about rebuilding the board and the nearly 24-hour charm offensive it takes to raise enough funds to keep an opera company in the black. But his results speak for themselves. He’s grown the company from a $2 million budget to the current level of about $4.5 million.
In 2007, with support from the local chamber of commerce, the Fort Worth Opera abandoned its traditional spring and fall seasons and concentrated its efforts into a compacted two-week “festival season.” This past May, the lineup featured Bizet’s “Carmen,” Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” and “Dead Man Walking,” an acclaimed 2000 adaptation by Jack Heggie of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Sr. Helen Prejean about counseling a death row inmate.
After the season concluded, Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News (former staff writer for the Times Union and a notoriously tough critic), wrote, “Fort Worth Opera has become one of the country’s premier opera festivals. No kidding… Give the credit to Darren K. Woods, who eight years ago took over the fragmented mess that was Fort Worth Opera.”
The recent Opera News article about Woods went further and voiced something that others in the field also foresee: that in the coming years, Woods will likely be heading up one of the country’s major opera houses, such as Seattle, San Francisco or Houston.
While not dismissing the talk, Woods puts it as only a singer could: “There are some high notes I’ve still not hit.”
Yet he assured me that his connection to the Seagle Colony will endure. With its centennial coming up in six years, some in Schroon Lake are talking of building a new theater. Woods wants to build an endowment that will keep the program’s focus on young singers. And as the saying goes, he’s put his money where his (very active) mouth is. “This place is in my will,” he says.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Times Union.
I of all people realize Darren’s talent for organization. I am his Mother and remember how he loved music as a little boy. I bought records of the great music classics and he loved to listen to them. When he was a freshman in Luling High School he organized a small band. They were so good they were invited to perform at other churches. Darren also had the lead in the musical Oliver Twist while he was a freshman. One of the top businessman who traveled extensively remarked after he saw the play, that he predicted that Darren Keith Woods would be a “stage presence” in the music field some day. I am proud to say that he was correct in his prediction, Darren is indeed a Presence in the World of Opera”.
Sincerely,
Loretta Adler
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