SKYLIGHT OPERA PERFORMS "DRAMA IN CATALANO SQUARE"

NEW INTERIM PRESIDENT ATTEMPTS TO ALLAY CONCERNS
COLIN CABOT ARRIVES FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE, BRINGING FARM WITH HIM

Special to the Readers of Milwaukeeworld

By Michael Horne

And The Milwaukee World Hound Dog Team

[ABOVE: TERRY KURTENBACH, INTERIM PRESIDENT SKYLIGHT OPERA THEATRE]


More than 50 people gathered at Catalano Square this morning, Friday, July 24th, 2009, aria-ing their concerns about the manifold plights of the Skylight Opera Theatre.
The evening before, in a four-hour meeting, the Skylight's board elected a new president and accepted the resignation of current president Suzanne Hefty. She will be replaced by Terry Kurtenbach, who will serve as Interim President while auditions are held for a new one, to take office in September.
The board also elected Tessa Bartels as Vice President of Artist Relations. You could make an operetta out of the problems she had with a florist on her wedding day!
At the Catalano Square meeting, Kurtenbach pledged to keep open lines of communications with staff and artists. He said, though, he had a full-time job to attend to, and in fact would be out of town in the Nation's Capitol next week. Kurtenbach is the U. S. Tax Process and Industrial Products Leader for Deloitte Tax LLP. He is also a Certified Public Accountant.
Adding some gravity to the meeting was the presence of Colin Cabot, who is generally credited with the rise of the Skylight from an occasional company playing in rented quarters to its recent status as a full-fledged theatrical operation with its own building and a theater that bears his family's name. He lives in the 174-hectare, 18th Century Sanborn Mills Farm in Loudon, New Hampshire and was last in Milwaukee for a July 7th Skylight board meeting. He has also participated in teleconferences on the Skylight's plight.

Lanky Cabot, dressed in mud-streaked jeans and the same shoes he wore when he slaughtered a pig yesterday, gave every appearance of having travelled to Milwaukee by tractor.