The leadership tandem that brought financial stability and some controversy to Opera Colorado is leaving the company.

General director Peter Russell and artistic director James Robinson announced Thursday they will step down after shepherding the organization into a new opera house while boosting its national reputation and annual budget.

Russell's tenure will end Sept. 1, but he will stay on as an adviser until January. His successor will be Greg Carpenter, Opera Colorado's development director, who will become executive director.

Robinson will remain until September 2008, when he will become artistic director of another American opera company, unnamed due to contractual obligations.

Reached at his home in New York, Robinson expressed satisfaction in the accomplishments he shared with Russell at Opera Colorado, beginning in 2000. During those years, the company's budget increased from $3 million to more than $5 million, while its endowment grew from $275,000 to more than $1.5 million.

But some of Robinson's boldly conceived productions — a modern-day setting for Handel's Julius Caesar or Doug Varone's '50s-flavored Barber of Seville — displeased longtime operagoers who preferred traditional approaches.

"I wouldn't change a thing," he said. "If there were arguments about a staging of mine, that's what an arts organization should do. People discussed these productions like it really mattered, which is fantastic."

Russell, who served six years as president and general director after stints with the Metropolitan Opera and the Wolf Trap Opera Company, cited health issues as an "indirect" reason for his departure.

Last summer he received a cornea transplant in his ongoing battle with glaucoma, and said that his vision has improved markedly in recent months. But the after-effects of his surgery led him to rethink his work.

"This is more a psychological thing," Russell said. "There's a fatigue I'm feeling. I kept soldiering on (after the operation), and maybe it was unwise not to take time off. It's time to make a fresh start somewhere else."

Each man helped raise the profile of Opera Colorado. According to Opera News editor-in-chief F. Paul Driscoll, "Peter and Jim have done an enormous amount for opera nationally and in Denver. Jim has become one of the most persuasive directors, and his ability to broker partnerships (with other companies) has helped opera reach new audiences."

Russell, he said, enjoyed "an extraordinary reputation nationally, bringing a breadth and depth to the company with his knowledge."

A highlight of their tenures, Russell and Robinson agreed, was the gala opening in 2005 of the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, featuring Renee Fleming and other prominent artists.

Still, Russell said, it was time to move on.

"It's important that you don't let the grass grow beneath your feet. At some point, you look at your career path and how much time you've been in a certain place."

Opera officials also announced that Jeremy Shamos will succeed Sheila Bisenius as board president.

Describing Russell and Robinson's departure as "bittersweet," Bisenius praised them as "the team that brought us access to a new base of (opera) stars. And they helped develop a new audience for Opera Colorado."

Carpenter, 45, the new executive director, began his operatic career in college as a bass-baritone, spending summers in Central City as an apprentice artist in 1993-94. After working as an arts administrator at the University of Maryland and the Kennedy Center in Washington, he was named Opera Colorado's development director in 2004.

While admitting that he doesn't have the reputation that Russell has earned in the opera world, he stressed that he will bring an insider's knowledge of the job.

"I know what it is to be a singer," he said. "I speak the language of opera."

While Robinson will be joining an opera company, Russell's future is less certain.

"I'm not ruling anything out," Russell said.

shulgoldm@RockyMountain News.com or 303-954-5296