Dale Franzen: Multi-Hyphenate Talent

A Pali Noisemaker

Dale Franzen is a busy, fizzy fountain of artistic achievement from El Medio. She is a lyric soprano, a founding director of the Broad Stage in Santa Monica and the latest recruit to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s City Library Commission. And did we mention she is also producing a folk rock musical in Canada?

Franzen, who is currently lecturing on the arts business with her husband at the Berklee College of Music in Valencia, Spain, spoke with the Palisadian-Post’s John Harlow.

Ladies and gentlemen, the indomitable Dale Franzen.

Harlow: Firstly, Dale, tell us about your background.

Franzen: I was born in Ohio and moved out to Hollywood when my father joined ABC as general manager in the ’50s. I was raised in a musical home: My mother played piano and flute. My father had perfect pitch, and when we came home from a concert, he would play back the entire thing by memory on the piano.

Harlow: What was your first musical experience outside the home?

Franzen: My first theatrical experience was around 7 when my dad took me to see “Carmen” but I was already a performer. There are family films, sadly not with sound, where I was Shirley Temple in “The Good Ship Lollipop.”

Harlow: Who were your early musical idols?

Franzen: Then it was Julie Andrews, like me, a high sweet soprano. I had short hair but I did not want to be a nun. Later I played the Abbess in “The Sound of Music,” which is the best role. I was on stage for 12 minutes. I would bring down Act One with “Climb Every Mountain” and Act Two [with its reprise of “Climb”], and in between would eat M&M’s and play poker with the stagehands.

I did not grow up listening to [Marie] Callas, ours was a [Renata] Tebaldi house. You had to pick a side. My husband is a Callas [fan], and we have had many discussions about it over 35 years, but we don’t feel we have to pick a side these days.

I was listening to Diane Durban and Jeannette McDonald rather than opera singers.

I never was a fan of [Joan] Sutherland because of her terrible diction, that drove me nuts. I was into musical theater, so the lyrics were very important to me. But I discovered her emotion and the beauty of her voice later.

Beverly Sills was inspirational to me, not just because of her voice but because she went on to run New York City Opera and sit on the board of the Met. She did everything.

In my early 20s, I studied at Cal Arts under Marni Nixon [the “ghost singer” on films such as “The King and I,” “West Side Story” and “My Fair Lady”]. I was her first voice department student, which was amazing because she had the same kind of voice as I did. I had a year, fell in love with a Canadian, moved to Montreal and started singing professionally.

Harlow: How did you turn professional?

Franzen: I did my first TV show when I was 7, replacing the Easter Bonnet Girl [who got sick] on ABC’s “Name That Tune.” My first $200 was in the chorus of Mahler’s “Resurrection” under Zubin Mehta in Montreal. And then I started getting work from jingles to Gilbert & Sullivan—“Yum Yum” in Jonathan Miller’s “The Mikado” with Dudley Moore at The Wiltern—which, by coincidence, was saved by my uncle, Harvey Perloff: he has a plaque there—Dudley never really learned his lines but would improvise on stage for 20 minutes. He was brilliant.

Harlow: How was Canada?

Franzen: I was there for eight years, a country that still supports its arts. [Prime Minister] Justin [Trudeau] is amazing—I sometimes think we don’t make the right argument here that art is not a luxury, it’s essential—and, science increasingly proves, good for your health.

There about how studying music changes your brain, increasing empathy and so reducing crime. They are actually quantifying the benefits. This should be shown to police departments.

Harlow: Why did you come back to Los Angeles?

Franzen: In around 1978 my husband got a job here in the industry and I had a 1-year-old child who is now a dual citizen—good for him—so it was time to come home.

It was also time to focus on becoming an opera singer. I was around 26 and I had a scholarship to study at USC for two years. There I worked the hardest in my life under Natalie Lamonick, who produced some great singers.

I didn’t have the greatest voice in the world, but I was the package. In those days, singers were heavier and I was unusually thin, like a ballet dancer. I could finish an aria with a cancan or the splits. Nowadays, everyone has to be that versatile, which is harder. By 10 years ago, you had to be thin, now you have to be HD TV thin.

You audition and you get to do what your voice can do, which were light lyric and coloratura parts in opera that I loved and performed for over 20 years. I did Susanna, Zerlina, Despina—all the “ina” roles, all the Mozart. I based my last “Gretel” at LA Opera on my then 3-year-old daughter, Olivia. I don’t know if she knows that.

Harlow: You met your second husband, Don, a classical music talent attorney. Then you started taking on film roles. How did that happen?

Franzen: I had three kids and a good, middle-level career, but I was starting to feel I was never going to do the big roles like Tosca and it was time to take a break and be my own captain rather than be on someone else’s ship. I went out to 10 random people and asked them for ideas.

Then I got calls, offers: One was to do a ragtime album, which was a total blast, then I was technical advisor for opera on a Faye Dunaway/Showtime movie called “The Twilight of the Golds.”

And then a film I loved, “The Annihilation of Fish,” about [Lynn Redgrave, with James Earl Jones] who is obsessed with the ghost of Puccini. I did “Madam Butterfly” scenes in that. It never got distribution but it’s a really amazing film.

Harlow: And then you transitioned into management when you helped create the Broad Stage in Santa Monica?

Franzen: In the late 1990s I got a call from Santa Monica College to help them put together a school in entertainment and digital effects. They partnered me with a bright woman out of Washington, Joan Abrahamson. It was very strange, at first, she was very intellectual and I was transitioning (laughs).

But we got that school set up, changed lives, won awards and it’s still running very successfully.

[Abrahamson is currently president of the Jefferson Institute, having previously worked in the White House under George H. W. Bush and the United Nations Human Rights Commission.]

And 18 months later, I was contacted by Santa Monica College [then-President] Piedad Robertson, who became a great mentor, who said: “Meet me at 11th and Santa Monica. I have a great idea for you.” And that is how the Broad Stage began.

[Since it opened in 2008, the 499-seat Eli and Edythe Broad Stage, to give it the formal moniker, has put on some famed performances, from Sir James Galway and Lil Buck to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Patti LuPone. Many Palisadians are season ticket holders.]

It’s funny because it seemed so random and strange. Then I look at Beverly Sills’ life and the many skills you need as a performer, winning over people and being confident and fearless—I had all those skills.

I would ask [Joan] why she had hired me, because I had no experience and she said: “I hire creativity.” I have trained so many people to raise money now. People have this crazy idea that when you are raising money it’s about you. It’s about the passionate idea that I want to build an arts center; it’s not being rejected personally.

And I believe “no” means “not now” but there may be another time when you will say yes. People get on board at different times: Some get on board early because they believe in you, others when the train is leaving the station, others when it’s clear it’s going to be a success.

Eli Broad turned me down in year three but I kept the door open, and in year eight, he gave me $10 million.

After being an opera singer, which was really hard, raising money was easy.

Harlow: Going to a party where you don’t know anybody with your hand outstretched?

Franzen: No problem, because I am a performer. I had a couple of days at the very beginning, when I had two $50,000 “asks,” which were very difficult. I went to lunch with the father of a friend of mine, who tore me and the project to shreds. I sobbed in my car, told my husband I could not do this … and the next day he called me and said: “I am going to send you money.”

I learned that Ed Stotsenberg of the Mary Pickford Foundation loved dark chocolate, so when I invited him for lunch at my tiny hot office, I had some brownies out on a plate. I made up some BS story, saying in some cultures they eat their dessert before the main meal, and he ate it up.

Then he said: “I have never sat next to a real opera singer before—sing me something.”

And so, without missing, a beat I gave him an aria from “Butterfly.”

He was the first to ask me hard questions, such as “I go downtown to see theater. Why do we need one on the Westside?” And I replied, you are not a single mother, are you? And, over time, he gave the project $400,000.

Harlow: Singing for your supper. What were some of your favorite nights at the Broad?

Franzen: Mikhail Baryshnikov appeared in several productions. And was magnificent. The “Our Town” production directed by David Cromer starring Helen Hunt was stupendous. And when Placido Domingo directed the debut of new opera “Dulce Rosa” [based on a short story by Isabel Allende]. F. Murray Abraham in “The Merchant of Venice.”

And there were the new artists, like the debut of [jazz bassist] Esperenza Spaulding in recital in LA and [world folk siblings] Rising Appalachia. And Neil Patrick Harris directing the magic show “The Expert at the Table” from London.

Harlow: So why, in September 2014, did you step down?

Franzen: Between building it and running it, 17 years, I was exhausted. It was nine to midnight every day. My last child had just gone away to college and I felt that there was something else. I took Roman history courses at UCLA, I picked up the ukulele again, I remodeled my home in the Palisades and had dinner parties. But …

I raised over $120 million for that project, and I wanted to transfer those skills to the next passion project. I was going to take a year off, but “Hadestown” came along.

[“Hadestown,” a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, was a “folk-opera” concept album by Vermont-based Anaïs Mitchell released in 2008. In 2015 it was work shopped as a musical in New York, before transferring with Franzen’s help for sell-shows in Edmonton, Canada.]

Harlow: So how did you first hear the work?

Franzen: I started developing “Hadestown” at the Broad Stage when I was sent the concept album, and fell in love with the music and story. I came in as producer, which came naturally. In April we shall be announcing the next step. It will end up most likely touring to Los Angeles after a commercial run.

Harlow: Is it filmable?

Franzen: Absolutely. Maybe a cartoon. There are huge amounts of fan animation that are being made. Not by my marketing people. The soundtrack has had more than 1.2 million streams. I will take it across the finish line, hopefully not long now, and then I may be looking for something else.

Harlow: Earlier this year Mayor Eric Garcetti nominated you to join the City Library Commission.

Franzen: I am honored, my mom used to take me to the library every Friday at four, so I have always been a reader.

With 73 libraries it’s one of the biggest systems in the world. I have just had my tour with the head librarian, the murals and the Hollywood poster archive and the children’s theater and the puppet collection, you only see the tip of the iceberg.

But it’s at a real turning point: What is the purpose of a library when everyone is turning digital? How can I help with that? Also, with its motto “everyone is welcome,” it’s an intersection of social issues such as homelessness and drug use.

The commission happens to be five extraordinary women right now, and I will be there until 2020, so I have plenty of time to learn.

It’s a very different skill set for me: I have never been part of a commission, that kind of a team player. But I realized I had deep concerns about the direction my country was heading and I wanted to see what I could contribute to that.

So, ask me again in a year what is happening. I am curious to learn where I find myself too.