landed a job in the San Francisco Opera’s business office. Soon after getting his Ph.D., he moved to music administration, where he has remained ever since. He describes his job as the “how” and “when” person who manages the music side of the opera. That can mean everything from working with conductors to commissioning new operas to making sure there’s a cannon to fire off during a production. The San Francisco Opera is the secondlargest company in the U.S. in terms of budget and schedule, meaning that wide-eyed junior high student watching “The Barber of Seville” in Devils Lake now works at the top of his profession. “I think about that all the time,” Cranna says of his small-town beginnings. “When I first got the job here, I was really in shock. I would drive by and look at the building and think ‘I can’t believe I’m going to work there!’” And he says he still gets that thrill today. “There are times when it’s a struggle, especially nowadays when the economic climate is tough,” Cranna says. “It’s always a challenge to meet the budget or to cut the budget. But when you have a good show and the curtain goes up and the audience is enjoying it, that’s always a wonderful feeling.” The stature of the San Francisco Opera means Cranna has worked with some of the world’s most famous singers including Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and Renée Fleming. Cranna says his job “is not the caring and feeding of singers,” but he does get to work with them on various aspects of their performances. “That part is exciting,” he admits. “You find that opera singers, even the very famous ones, are pretty diligent and pretty professional. The idea of the temperamental, hot-headed diva is the exception that proves the rule. They are mostly pros who are hard working, who show up and do their job, and are cooperative — most of the time.” Cranna says when he finished up a “great experience” at UND, he figured he’d end up teaching music. All these years later, he teaches a class on career development at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. “One of the things I tell them is to be aware that their career path will not be a direct line from where you are now to where you expect to be,” he says. “Life presents you opportunities you had no thought of considering and you have to be open to those and take advantage of them when they do.” By Milo Smith
A scene from Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung.”
‘The Ring’ The San Francisco Opera is presenting one of the most challenging operas ever written this summer, and Kip Cranna, ’69, is right in the middle of it all. Richard Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung” is a work of extraordinary scale and complexity; a 16-hour, four-day event. “It’s a daunting experience because the operas are difficult and long and have huge performing resources required — big orchestra, lots of top-notch singers and normally a lot of technical feats of stagecraft that have to be accomplished,” Cranna says. He says many companies have tried to tackle what’s known as “The Ring Cycle” only to give up. The San Francisco Opera, though, is staging it for the fourth time. “We’ll get people flying in from all over the world,” Cranna says of the Wagner fans he calls “ring fanatics.” “They’ll make it their vacation.” On the Tuesdays before the start of the three cycles of “The Ring” at the San Francisco Opera, Cranna will be part of a symposium for those attending. His role is to moderate a session on what aspects of the production are unique to San Francisco. For information on this show or the San Francisco Opera in general, visit www.sfopera.com.
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