MA Top 30 Professional: Annie Burridge

General Director & CEO
Austin Opera

In recent years, Austin Opera has seen record attendance—an industry anomaly—and record fundraising highs. Those achievements can be traced directly to the leadership of Annie Burridge as general director and CEO. Apart from lifting the company’s artistic profile internationally, her fundraising prowess has secured the funding to strengthen ties with the region’s rapidly growing Latine population. The monies enabled the appointment of a curator of Hispanic and Latine programming and a special partnership with the Consulate General of Mexico.

In her eighth-anniversary season, Burridge’s most recent coup is a new venue, announced in October. The 16,000-squarefoot space retrofits a landmark building at 5811 Trade Center Drive to include the company’s rehearsal spaces, studios, costume shop, outdoor event space, and administrative offices. Previously, the company had rented its rehearsal and office space. 

“I became aware of how reasonable office inventory happens to be in the Austin market right now—I just saw a study that said Austin has the highest percentage of work-at-home employees. But opera cannot be accomplished via Zoom,” she says. “It’s a very fortuitous time to take over ownership of a secondary venue for us. Austin as a city is in dire need of more performance and rehearsal space.”

When the new home base opens in October 2025, the company will also rent some of the space to other local organizations, a much-needed revenue stream for an arts group facing the same mounting costs as every other in the country. 

“It is a very, very tricky time for the performing arts, and what is unique about Austin is that virtually all of our funding comes from individuals. We don’t have  government funding; we don’t have foundation funding. There isn’t that generational wealth that traditionally funds classical music in a city. We’ve always had to
work hard to keep the audience in mind with our programming and to partner with other organizations throughout the city… we’re not doing anything in isolation.”