American Lyric Theater

American Lyric Theater will offer its Composer Librettist Development Program (CLDP) with significant enhancements, including the creation of an apprenticeship for an emerging opera dramaturg and stipends for all first-year resident artists. The CLDP was the first full-time mentorship initiative for both opera composers and librettists in the country. A tuition-free, multiyear training program with a highly credentialed faculty, the CLDP has a proven track record for developing the skills of gifted writers, incubating successful operas and fostering lasting collaborations.

American Opera Projects

Music-theater students will have the opportunity to compose for operatic voices through a new initiative from American Opera Projects at several institutions. Students will create six new site-specific works on the theme of “New York Stories.” This curriculum will provide training that is underrepresented in academic music-theater programs, serving as a potential model for other schools and conservatories.

Anchorage Opera

Anchorage Opera will present the Alaskan premiere of As One, the powerful chamber opera by Laura Kaminsky, Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed that chronicles the experiences of a transgender protagonist. This project is courageous in Alaska, which has no state laws to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination and does not address hate crimes based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Through the presentation of this socially relevant work and a partnership with Identity, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization, Anchorage Opera seeks to attract new audiences and actively engage in an important community issue.

Arizona Opera

Arizona Opera will use learning from its Arizona Bold initiative, launched in 2014 and focused on creating connectivity between audiences and the art form of opera, to continue its evolution. The company is seeking opportunities both on and off the main stage to maximize its civic impact through expanded programmatic offerings and performance experiences. A more sustainable season model will be achieved by internalizing the civic spirit of Arizona Bold into the central strategy of the company, engaging new areas of the community with each production and program.

The Atlanta Opera

Undertaking its first-ever commission, The Atlanta Opera will premiere 2020, an opera inspired by the real-life experiences of Chad Foster, who lost his sight as a young man. Incorporating accessibility technology and feedback from focus groups of target audiences, 2020 will create an environment that simulates the experience of living without sight.

Austin Opera

Placing audience experience at the forefront of its operations, Austin Opera will create a new senior staff position: director of audience experience. Ensuring an excellent audience experience from the ticket-buying process through the performance promises to create long-term improvements in audience retention and frequency in participation, and ultimately stronger annual fundraising.

Beth Morrison Projects

Beth Morrison Projects will launch a DISCOVERY competition aimed at broadening the organization’s commissioning program by identifying and cultivating early-career artists who are interested in writing opera. Through open submissions and juried semi-finalist presentations, the process will result in the award of a full commission. Beth Morrison Projects will work with the chosen composer from initial idea through world-premiere production. Eight to ten semi-finalists and two finalists will each receive a public presentation at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust, providing early-career artists with the connections needed to build the future opera-theater and music-theater canon.

Central City Opera

Central City Opera will offer productions outside its traditional summer festival during the early fall and late spring. This new initiative, called Central City Opera Presents, is part of a long-term strategic plan focused on diversifying the company’s revenue and improving the visitor experience. The project ultimately seeks to revitalize Central City as an arts-based community and cultural destination, and to strengthen its economy.

The Dallas Opera

Michel van der Aa’s Sunken Garden is a stunning celebration of art and technology, featuring 3-D film, projections, spoken word and opera. The Dallas Opera will mount the American premiere of this ambitious work in 2018. Through behind-the-scenes tours and lectures on projection and film technology, the company will offer learning opportunities for local science and technology communities.

Fargo-Moorhead Opera

In its 2017–2018 season, Fargo-Moorhead Opera will launch a new chamber opera series featuring works that range from the contemporary to the Baroque in order to attract more diverse audiences. Straddling the state border between North Dakota and Minnesota, the company has the opportunity to perform in Minnesota by creating small, intimate and diverse performances for smaller venues.

Florentine Opera Company

Florentine Opera Company’s Carlisle Floyd Recording Initiative will seize the opportunity to produce recordings by America’s most revered opera composer during his lifetime. Archiving Floyd’s works will expand and enhance the depth and quality of the recorded canon of American opera, which contributes to the artistic vitality of the opera community as a whole.

The Glimmerglass Festival

Harnessing the power of art to respond to current challenges, The Glimmerglass Festival will present Breaking Glass: Hyper-Linking Opera & Issues. Comprising five podcasts and eight national forums inspired by contemporaneous Glimmerglass repertory, the project will connect opera to issues in people’s lives while raising important questions for the industry on race, community development and other pertinent topics.

HERE

HERE, in collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects, will present PROTOTYPE: Out of Bounds. Moving opera beyond traditional performing arts venues to bring commissioned, original, site-specific works to public streets and spaces in New York City, this initiative will connect new audiences to the next generation of opera creators.

Houston Grand Opera

Houston Grand Opera’s new six-year artistic initiative, Seeking the Human Spirit, celebrates the deep connection between music and humanity. It will feature a set of new and rarely produced mainstage opera productions that fosters discussion of deep spiritual questions. The company hopes to create a blueprint for other performing arts companies to use art as a platform to forge partnerships and ask big questions of their communities.

Michigan Opera Theatre

By investing in the creation of an evaluation toolbox, Michigan Opera Theatre seeks to better measure the impact of its community education and engagement programs. A comprehensive menu of standard templates with interchangeable metrics will be shared with the field, enabling companies to be more responsive to their communities.

Minnesota Opera

Minnesota Opera will launch a new community engagement model that supports consensus-based programming to expand, diversify and empower its constituents. Work on this project will be guided by a community engagement matrix to determine metrics for accurately assessing audience empowerment and to shape community programming.

Opera Maine

Motivated by the belief that the power of creative expression can change communities and prepare youth for future success, Opera Maine (formerly PORTopera) will collaborate with local partners to launch An Opera is Born of Our Community. Youth participants will write their own libretto, which will be performed as a one-act chamber opera composed by Dan Sonenberg, composer in residence at the University of Southern Maine, where students will premiere the work.

Opera Memphis

Seeking deeper engagement with people of color, Opera Memphis will undertake a number of initiatives organized around the legacy of African-American soprano Madame McCleave. Through facilitated community conversations, performances, and the creation of a McCleave Fellowship for singers, directors and coaches of color, Opera Memphis seeks to move beyond the “opera bubble.”

Opera Omaha

Opera Omaha will launch the Holland Community Opera Fellowship, the centerpiece of the company’s strategic vision for the future. The fellowship provides a new model for community engagement, directly linking arts programming to neighborhood needs. Representing a cross-section of the city, a Community Artist Panel will empower residents to select community-minded opera singers to live and work in Omaha each season.

Opera Philadelphia

Seeking to increase attendance, amplify human connectedness and propel the genre, Opera Philadelphia will debut a dual-format season, launching with Festival O (September 14–25, 2017), a 12-day, six-venue urban opera festival featuring three world premieres. This will be followed by two new productions in winter/spring 2018. The company’s reconfiguration from a traditional season will be informed by consultancies in hospitality, telemarketing and human-centered design.

Opera Saratoga

Leading with the presentation of Grétry's opera-ballet Zémire et Azor in July 2017, Opera Saratoga's Opera in Motion initiative will foster participation between dance and opera audiences. Based on the outcome of this summer's production, Opera Saratoga and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center will develop a joint artistic, marketing and evaluation plan for future Opera in Motion programming. Companies exploring other collaborative synergies across disciplines will benefit from their findings.

Pacific Opera Victoria

Pacific Opera Victoria will launch The Co|Opera|tive, a platform for community engagement to address the cultural and social needs of diverse constituencies, including First Nations and immigrant communities. The company will develop a suite of community programming and partnerships, including dialogues, exhibits, performances and youth workshops, to articulate opera’s value as a tool for social relevance, justice and advocacy.

San Diego Opera

Reimagining its existing scenic studio as a non-traditional performance venue and arts incubator space, San Diego Opera will host two new events. The first, Opera Hack, aims to stimulate the creation of new works by providing neighborhood artists with the opportunity to conceive of new projects that explore their own cultures and experiences. The following year, new works will premiere at a street arts festival celebrating cross-cultural storytelling and attracting new audiences.

San Francisco Opera

To support the continued development of San Francisco Opera’s adaptability, risk-taking and experimentation, the company will launch SFO+. This initiative will implement design-thinking methodology across the company, extending the experimental approaches used to form the company’s alternative programming arm, SF Opera Lab.

The Santa Fe Opera

To reach, entertain and inspire audiences of all ages, The Santa Fe Opera and San Francisco Opera co-lead Opera for All Voices, a consortium of seven North American opera companies. The group will be committed to commissioning and producing new American operatic works for all ages.

Seattle Opera

Breaking from tradition, Seattle Opera’s Opera Up Close series will present chamber operas in intimate venues throughout the region at a significantly lower price point than mainstage operas. An expanded 2017–2018 season seeks to reach new audiences and inspire civic dialogue.

Tulsa Opera

To address the impact of arts education budget cuts in Oklahoma, Tulsa Opera will pilot an unprecedented partnership with the Tulsa Public School District through Raise Your Voice, a vocal music after-school program. Implementation in six economically disadvantaged middle schools will provide students with access to quality music education.