“Instituting change in a 400-year art form hasn’t been easy. Grand opera is the most complex and complicated of the performing arts since it involves a full-size symphony orchestra of 90 or more players, a full-sized chorus of 80 or more singers, and scores of principal singers dancers and supernumeraries,” Gelb said. “It’s no wonder that one of our board members is fond of quoting an aphorism he attributes to Winston Churchill, that ‘the only endeavor more complicated than grand opera is war.’