Deborah Sandler traveled many roads before finding her niche: She sang, played the piano, studied mathematics, worked on a doctorate in musicology, wrote grant applications. But when she started working in opera, she knew she’d come home. “Producing opera is really my passion,” says the Philadelphia native, who on July 1st becomes the Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s new General Director — succeeding Evan Luskin,who will retire after 26 years with the company. Deborah’s arrival here marks a new beginning not just for the Lyric and Our Town but for her personally, as she takes on a company that is more than twice the size, budget-wise, of that of her previous post at Kentucky Opera. She can’t wait to get started. “The Lyric Opera has a very fine reputation among its peers,” she says, “and with the opening of the Kauffman Center the wattage on the light has gotten brighter. … Its education programs have long been admired by its peers, and the Opera Guild has always been a phenomenal resource and the envy of many a company.”It’s a long way from Northeast Philadelphia, where Deborah spent her formative years soaking up that city’s rich culture. Because she always did well in math and science, she says she was always being slotted in those fields. “And I finally said, that’s not what I want to do! I want to be in music.” She took music lessons, sang in the All City Choir and enrolled at Temple University — initially as a math major and later as a music major. While earning her B.A. in music she sang in choruses — including the Temple University Choir and the venerable Mendelssohn Club — that performed and recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy and Riccardo Muti. “It really set a bar for me,” she says. “It was formative to be around that … listening to that sound, getting that sound in your ears, it stays with you. It makes you always aspire to make it as good as it can be.”

Deborah’s initial experience with opera was an unconventional one: She sang in an opera workshop production at Temple ofThe Devil and Daniel Webster by the American composer Douglas Moore. But it was not until she began studying the Mozart operas that she fell in love with the art form. “It was just breathtaking,” she says. “There’s something about Mozart, and to some extent Bach, that makes my brain just sort of click into gear.” Finally, the first professional opera she saw was a New York City Opera production of The Marriage of Figaro. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that production captured the epitome of all that’s possible in opera,” she says, “but I saw what could happen and I understood the potential of opera.” After Temple she attended graduate school in musicology at New York University, where she earned an M.A., completed her doctoral coursework and was poised to write a dissertation on French Baroque Opera. “I always loved the intellectual/research part of music,” she says, “and I was fascinated with cultural history.” That’s when the arts-administration bug bit: She began writing grant proposals for the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, “and before I knew it I was running the company — and I was having fun, and I really liked the action.” During that period the Concerto Soloists (now the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia) was growing into a vital part of the city’s cultural landscape.

Deborah has a reputation, in fact, as someone with a knack for growing companies. During her decade as General Director of the Opera Festival of New Jersey she expanded the budget from $500,000 to $1.6 million, doubled the audience and saw the opening of a new opera venue. Likewise at Kentucky Opera, where she was General Director from 1997 to 2005, she increased the audience more than 43 percent, increased individual giving 136 percent, and built extensive educational programs. She says her first conversations at the Lyric will be about “who we want to be as a company going forward, and what our values are, building on everything that’s happened before.” She feels lucky that she’s been handed such a fine company, she says. “It’s a remarkable group of people.”

It was the culture of excellence drew her to the Lyric, which she felt immediately was a good fit. “I’m very focused on quality, and as the company continues to grow I want to build on the momentum of what they’ve already achieved.” Board president Richard Bruening agrees. “Deborah joins the Lyric Opera at an important time in our company’s evolution,” he said in a statement released when Deborah was appointed in March. “She will build upon the success we have enjoyed during the first season performing in the Kauffman Center, will expand our robust educational offerings … and will continue the Company’s tradition of responsible fiscal leadership as we complete the capital campaign for our Opera Center complex.” Artistic director Ward Holmquist, who has conducted for Deborah’s previous companies, praised her “knowledge,  insight and passion for the art form.”

Deborah, who is married to radio announcer Wayne Perkey and has two grown children, says one of her goals is to get opera on the radar screen of more Americans. “I mean if somebody’s been to the opera and says, it’s not for me, I understand. … But if you’ve never experienced it … then we have a lot of work to do.” Because at its best opera is “a feast for the mind and for the ear and for the eye.” An example, she says, is the arrival of the presidential jet at the beginning of Nixon in China, which formed part of the Lyric’s recent season. “Whether you like the opera or not, I think everybody got a chill when they saw that,” she says, “and that’s the kind of thing that gets people excited. Whereas Opera might have a reputation of being strongly mired in what happened 200 years ago, the ability of an opera to … make connections to what’s happening today is really exciting.”