Spotlight On: Artistic Administrator Mark Lear

Born in Dickinson, Texas, “sort-of-native” Houstonian Mark Lear always knew he wanted to do something he loved, but it still took him a while to figure things out. From a young age he loved music, and he grew up to attend the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in New York, receiving his bachelor’s degree in oboe performance. At his parents’ urging, and because he was also interested in science, he double-majored, earning a bachelor’s in molecular genetics as an “insurance policy of sorts.”  

Mark moved to Chicago and went to work as a biochemist, playing oboe on the side. Then, with music continuing to call him as a career, he moved back to Texas, earning his master’s degree at Southern Methodist University and a spot as principal oboist with the Dallas Opera Orchestra. Nevertheless, he was still finding his way. He decided to pursue a law degree at the University of Texas, passed the bar, and became a lawyer. But, you guessed it: he missed music.  

Mark came home to Houston, got a job at HGO, and finally found his place in the world. Admittedly, his position as the company’s Artistic Administrator doesn’t involve molecular genetics, but it does draw upon his meticulous mind, love of music, and training as a lawyer. Now in his 26th year with the company, Mark is not just an invaluable resource to everyone in the building, but is also, in many ways, the heart and soul of HGO. 

Here’s Mark on his life and career, in his own words: 

When I was at Eastman, I fell in love with the human voice through opera. The trained voice, the acoustic voice, how it projects, how it phrases—it’s the ultimate instrument, right? I was an instrumentalist, so I had to use that to express myself musically. But as soon as I discovered good singing, which I did at conservatory, that, to me, was how to make music. That’s why I gravitated to singing so much. So, I went to all the voice studios and approached the director of the opera program and said, assign me to any opera you have. I developed a  goal of playing professionally with an opera orchestra one day.  

Once I graduated, I moved to Chicago to see what I wanted to do next with my life. By day I worked in a biochemistry lab, and at night I tried to gig as much as possible in the Chicago music scene, playing with different groups. After a year, I decided to continue pursuing oboe and thought that studying at Southern Methodist University in Dallas with the principal oboist of the Dallas Symphony would be a good next step.  

My dream of playing with an opera orchestra finally came true while getting my master’s. There was an opening in the Dallas Opera Orchestra for principal oboe, and I took that audition and won it. I was the youngest principal player. I played four seasons with the Dallas Opera and had an amazing time.  

Toward the end there, the orchestra almost went on strike, which was nerve-wracking. Here I’d established my dream, and then the business of what it means disrupted my idyllic little image of life as a musician. While this was going on, one of my colleagues in the orchestra, who also worked as a paralegal, said to me, oh, you should just take the training to be a paralegal, and then you don’t have to worry about anything.  

Once I started researching, I sort of became fascinated with the law. I ended up going to UT Austin, to get my law degree. I went through that program, did well, passed the bar, and started working for a large firm in Dallas, and thought, where’s the music? I loved the substance of what I was studying, but my being didn’t vibrate as much as in an artistic environment.  

So, I scampered back to Houston and said, Mom, I need to figure out my life now. She’s like, oh my God. I saw an ad in the paper for a foundation and government grant writer for HGO. I said, well, I love opera, I know opera, and I certainly know how to write by now. I’ll do it. I came to HGO in February of 1999, and tried a bunch of different things before starting in artistic administration in 2001. That became my niche. It involves contracting, and after law school that was right up my alley. I was in the music world, but still using some of the skills I learned along the way. I’ve been here ever since. I’ve just passed 25 years. And so finally, after all this studying and, you know, what am I going to be? I guess I decided.  

I’m on the casting team and the artistic planning team. I do contracting for singers, guest conductors, directors, designers, choreographers—that sort of thing. I help arrange auditions in different places, like Paris and New York for West Side Story. When anybody on our artistic panel hears singers, observes productions, or even talks about directors they like, I keep a database of that so when we start brainstorming, I can bring it out and say, remember that director you saw in X? I see myself as the waiter who knows the menu by heart and says, this is the special this evening.  

In terms of casting and menu serving, unless there’s a specific role that we’re aiming to utilize as vehicle for a certain talent, typically we make our own lists. Each person on the panel will make a list of names that they think would be perfect for a role, and then we get together and powwow and discuss the pros and cons of each, and usually one or two will jump out as our preferences. Then I go back and check with their agents. Are they available in this period? Would they be interested? From there, we move forward through the contracting process. 

As a nonprofit, we’re all in this together for the same purpose. I very rarely run into tough negotiations because interests align so much. I’m friends with so many agents, and they’re friends with me. We’re all working toward the same goal. That is something that I find different from the business world. At HGO, we work together. A lot of cross-department collaboration happens. 

To succeed in this role you need absolute, absolute, absolute attention to detail. You’re always thinking about what could happen and what your plan Bs are, because sometimes you contract artists three years ahead and suddenly, at the last minute, they get pneumonia and pull out. And because you’re dealing with contracts and dates, you’ve got to absolutely triple-check everything, because even the smallest mistake can cause a big ruckus. Some of the contracts are plug and play, some are detailed drafting. Knowledge of contracts and contract law is good, because sometimes—especially if unusual situations happen—the agents will think one thing, and contract law will think another. 

My favorite opera for a long time has been Salome. You can listen to it a thousand times, which I have. I have probably about 30 different recordings of the full opera and lots of recordings of the extracts. In live performances I’ve been to, you’re always hearing something new. There are other operas like that too, but that was the first one I latched onto that I thought, I will never get tired of this. I cannot ever get tired of this, because it’s so complex and so rich and has so many colors and so many dramatic choices that can be made, and musical choices that can be made, that every time you hear it, you’ll hear something different and get a new perspective.  

The people in our opera world are what’s kept me here. There’s nothing like artists and those who support artists. It’s just a different kind of person, who places a different kind of value on what in life is important. Obviously, we’re not here to make the most money you can ever possibly make, you know? It’s got to be something else. For me, that something else is being among my people. 

The people, especially the people I work with here at HGO—have always been people I’ve admired as professionals but who would, if we’d found each other some other way, still be my really good friends. It just happened to be at HGO that I found these people. I have 25 years of friends all over the country and the world. When you see them again, it’s just like no time has gone by.  

My mother passed away in January, and we were extremely close. I had a dream of what her memorial service would be like. I posted about it, and friends came out of the woodworks asking, what can we do? I asked three former Butler Studio alums who are accomplished opera singers now if they were available to sing at her memorial. It’s Tamara Wilson, Joshua Hopkins, and Alicia Gianni, with my dear friend, boss, and mentor Richard Bado at the piano. I mean, royalty shouldn’t ask for these people to perform at a memorial service. And their immediate answers were all yes. That’s incredible to me, that my idols are also my friends.  

Opera is the deepest, deepest expression of the self through music, done by the most incredible people in the world. There’s drama. There’s heights of emotion. You have these very internal moments that you’re expressing musically and textually, and then you have these dramatic moments where you just feel the thrill of that sound ringing in your ears in the theater. It’s transcendent. That’s the word I’m looking for. It transcends what it is, vibrations and sound, and the whole experience just lifts you out and moves you to someplace else. That’s what I’m seeking all the time. That’s why I need to be in this environment, because it happens more frequently here than in a law firm.