The Glimmerglass Festival Loses Two Valued Friends

By JOAN DESENS
COOPERSTOWN

Within a week this February, two friends, whose professional contributions to the Glimmerglass Festival helped propel the opera company forward during an era of significant growth, passed away on opposite coasts, both as a result of Parkinson’s disease. Music Director Emeritus Stewart Robertson, 75, peacefully passed away at his home in Carmel Valley, California, surrounded by his family; and former Director of Press and Public Relations Michael Willis, 81, serenely passed away at his home in Pierstown, with his husband, Bill Oliver, at his side.

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Robertson studied piano in London and conducted at the Mozarteum Academy and Vienna Academy. He became the youngest conductor at the time to lead a performance at the Cologne Opera. He went on to become music director of the Zurich Ballet and Scottish Opera Touring Company, until, in the 1980s, he was appointed conductor of the San Jose Symphony Youth Orchestra, which brought him, his wife, Meryl, and their family to America.

A Dream Opening

In 1987, the year the Alice Busch Opera Theater opened, Robertson and his wife spent the summer in Cooperstown when he was invited to conduct that season’s stunningly memorable production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The opening of the theater was a grand occasion and an organizational turning point for the company, which was then known as the Glimmerglass Opera. A year later, Robertson was appointed Glimmerglass Opera music director, a position he retained until 2006. In addition to continuing his vibrant international conducting career, Robertson also served as artistic director and principal conductor of the Florida Grand Opera in Miami, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra in Stewart and Vero Beach, Florida, and Opera Omaha.

In 1988, his first year as music director, Robertson established the company’s Young American Artists Program, which became renowned as one of the finest professional training programs in the country for emerging American opera singers. In the 2000s, the program evolved to include directors, conductors, and pianists alongside American and international singers, and “American” was dropped from the program’s title.

The ‘Triumvirate’

Glimmerglass Opera’s long-standing artistic director, Paul Kellogg, formed what was amusingly referred to as a “triumvirate” throughout the 1990s, with Robertson and then-Director of Production John Conklin collaborating with Kellogg on the shaping of each summer’s festival at a time when the music world began paying extra attention to what was happening in Cooperstown—in part attributable to the opening of the architecturally noteworthy theater and its beautiful setting as a tourist destination, and in larger part attributable to the level of artistry brought to bear by these three creative leaders.

This era of growth also attracted substantial support from the National Endowment for the Arts at a time when the NEA made large institutional advancement grants, as well other major foundations and individual contributors. One such award enabled Glimmerglass Opera to expand from an average 21 performances of three-to-four operas each summer, performed one after the other, to what ultimately became more than 40 performances of four operas presented in rotating repertory. This expansion and scheduling change enabled out-of-towners to see all four productions during a single visit, while also exploring Cooperstown and other area attractions.

Along with this growth came the need to expand the small, full-time staff, which resulted in the hiring of Willis as director of press and public relations in 1995.

Wooed and Wowed

Willis and his husband, Bill Oliver, were life-long opera fans when they discovered Glimmerglass Opera through friends who summered in the Cooperstown area, at a time when the company was still performing in the high school and producing seasons with the tremendous help of a community of volunteers, alongside professional musicians and performers. As Metropolitan Opera regulars, Willis and Oliver approached their first evenings at the opera with a touch of skepticism, but were delightfully surprised and wowed by the quality of the singers and productions. Wooed by the beauty of the area and the fact that they could see opera in the summer, they bought a second home in Pierstown in 1985, and along the way were introduced to Kellogg and his partner, the painter Raymond Han.

When the time came to expand the staff, in 1994, Kellogg hired Oliver—who had been director of development for Columbia College and was at the time director of alumni and university relations for Columbia University—as the opera’s first full-time development director. A year later, in 1995, Kellogg brought on board Willis, whose work in publishing, notably as associate publisher and director of subsidiary rights at E.P. Dutton and Company, made him the ideal individual to liaise with the national and international press that was beginning to take a keen interest in the festival.

Road Signs and International Notices

Among Willis’ accomplishments for the festival was his extensive campaigning and frequent phone calls to the New York State Department of Transportation to get Glimmerglass Opera road signs established along Route 20 in both directions. But his greatest achievement was the cultivation of the national and international press, which resulted in extensive coverage for the festival throughout the U.S. and abroad, attracting visitors from nearly every state and typically 10 foreign countries each summer, an important factor in the opera’s explosive growth in attendance and as a world-renowned cultural attraction.

Willis and Oliver retired from Glimmerglass in 2004 and were married on September 17, 2011. At the time of Willis’ death, they had been a devoted couple for 64 years, having met as freshmen at Columbia University in 1960. Robertson planned his departure from the opera to coincide with Kellogg’s retirement in 2006. Mr. and Mrs. Robertson met at the Bearsden Burgh Choir, near Glasgow, in 1969, and Mrs. Robertson recalls being “immediately smitten”—she was a mezzo-soprano in the choir, and he was a student in his last year at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. They married July 8, 1972, nearly 52 years ago. Until his struggle with Parkinson’s became overwhelming, Robertson continued his conducting and music director career for a few more years.