For sale: Three-story office building with rooftop garden attached to a one-story building with classrooms and large hall. Centrally located – south of Downtown and convenient to the Long Center. Designed by Lake|Flato. Eleven years old. Just one owner, a large nonprofit performing arts organization.

In the latest drastic move to address its seven-figure financial crisis, Austin Lyric Opera has opted to sell its headquarters on Barton Springs Road and sever ties with the Armstrong Community Music School which has operated in that facility since its founding in 2000. In the series of harsh measures that ALO has taken this year – having Kevin Patterson resign as general director, downsizing performance runs for all ALO productions, eliminating in-house box office services, and canceling its silver anniversary gala – this is the harshest yet. After all, this facility was the home that ALO built for itself, designed – by one of the state's most prestigious architectural firms, mind you – with the community music school in mind. And just last year, the opera was celebrating the school's 10th anniversary, touting it as the only community music school on the planet affiliated with an opera company.

The ALO board is working to incorporate the Armstrong school as an independent entity, but even if it's successful and the school survives, the opera's separation from the school and sale of the Heller Opera Center, however necessary those moves may be, diminish ALO. As in the 2002-03 season, when company co-founder and general director Joe McClain was fired, the Young Artists Program was eliminated, and seven staff members were laid off, some actions compromise the identity of an organization. Austin Lyric Opera has mounted many memorable productions in recent years, but the revolving leadership and repeated financial crises and staff layoffs over the past nine years have also chipped away at the idea of what ALO is and what it stands for. The current moves may well save the opera, but what will that opera be?