I, for one, share Cage’s delight in working on the periphery — for most innovations in all other fields begin from an outlier position. If you look at opera in America, it is on the peripheries where you find radical change brewing. Composers aren’t waiting to be commissioned by one of the major opera houses; instead, you see them behaving like entrepreneurs, starting ensembles to perform their own music. This industriousness is a hallmark of the most experimental of American composers — I think of Robert Ashley, Meredith Monk, Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, Philip Glass, to name just a few who either created their own ensembles or their own instruments to realize ideas that had never before been attempted. Of those names, several are indeed making inroads into the center — and this is what happens to those on the periphery. Over time, they become tradition.

— Yuval Sharon, Founding Artistic Director, The Industry

There’s a danger that opera will become increasingly irrelevant unless it finds a stronger public voice. It currently sits on the perimeter of the wider arts debate. Opera is struggling to be heard alongside the excitement of shows like Hamilton, movies like Moonlight and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and television shows like Homeland. The weight of our cultural heritage will work against us all if we just keep talking to ourselves.

— John Berry, Artistic Director, Opera Ventures

The concept of legacy has to do with the range of expectations for an art that has been constantly shaping its identity for the last 420 years. That identity has always ultimately been shaped on the basis of changes to the accepted conventions and aesthetic codes for each era. Those changes have often been traumatic and have always encountered resistance, even if the process might seem to have been fluid and calm when viewed from the distance of the present day. That was certainly not the case.

The fact is that challenging status quo is always one of the basic aspects of any “aesthetic information.” That’s the main legacy of tradition: a range of accepted aesthetic codes that can be altered in a way that achieves new possibilities, new meanings. That’s why legacy is an incredibly valuable asset. Obviously it must be an “asset,” never a strict agenda for a theater. Legacy should be the springboard that impels us to conquer the “art of today,” never a set of rules.

— Joan Matabosch, Artistic Director, Teatro Real

In the words of the theater director in Capriccio by Richard Strauss: “Where are the masterpieces that touch the heart of the people, that reflect their souls?” Where are they? I cannot find them, hard though I search. Only cold-blooded scholars stare at me: They ridicule tradition yet bring nothing new.

— Anna-Christina Hanousek, Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe

Over the last 50+ years, our relentless pursuit for excellence and perfection in opera performance has unintentionally created calcified institutions. These focus largely on existing repertoire, using strict performance practices and systems. Approximately 90 percent of our existing resources are used to create existing repertory. That leaves only 10 percent for new forms of expression.

To survive, we need healthy enterprises placing equal effort into honoring and preserving core values, heritage and tradition, while simultaneously stimulating creative and innovative progress focused on wholly new outputs. To be relevant in today’s world, I believe we have to devote 50 percent of our output to work by living artists, artists from within and outside opera. Artists empowered to be fully creative in representing our period of history. Artists making use of different performance practices, spaces, theatrical construction, musical production and contemporary practices from other forms. If we can’t or won’t commit to something on this scale, then yes, the richness and weight of this heritage will kill opera.

— David Devan, General Director and President, Opera Philadelphia

We are talking about a canon that is 420 years of white men. The definition of “opera” needs to be expanded to include a larger definition of music theater.

— Daniel Kramer, Artistic Director, English National Opera

In an increasingly diverse world, new work is essential, but I do not think we necessarily need to abandon the core repertoire. What is the existing narrative about the standard repertoire, and how do we change it?

— Lidiya Yankovskaya, Music Director, Chicago Opera Theater

Stop making excuses. It is every opera company’s obligation to present new work. It is our obligation to audiences and the art form. Our emphasis on established repertoire has created an enormous obstacle to opera’s long-term vibrancy. When we plan seasons where revivals significantly outnumber premieres, we are telling our audiences that new opera doesn’t matter; that new operas aren’t as good as older works; and that we are preparing opera for its extinction.

— Lawrence Edelson, Founder, American Lyric Theater

Too many operas are full of brilliant instrumental invention, with nothing particularly memorable, musical, brilliant or thrilling to sing. It’s not enough to commission the most exciting composers in the world if they’re not also great opera composers.

— Jonathan Dove, Composer

To be new is to be revolutionary: To be in dialogue with the past but not to repeat the past. To embrace new work, opera companies might look to the film world and the Safdie brothers, filmmakers who work in what they call “the hyper-now.” The hyper-now isn’t 19th-century dramaturgy. The hyper-now isn’t a reworking of the same narratives. Art that doesn’t address formal inventiveness cannot move us forward.

— Donna Di Novelli, Librettist

I would advise composers to be open to other forms of contemporary art. If more composers were to collaborate with the librettists, choreographers and visual artists of our time, the broad audience of contemporary art, literature and dance might well find an avenue into opera.

— Jan Vandenhouwe, Director-Designate, Opera Vlaanderen

The surest sign of a healthy musical art form is a close connection between composers and performers. In many forms of music, the composer-performer distinction simply doesn’t exist. A jazz musician who can’t improvise isn’t a jazz musician at all. And in rock music, if your band only performs music written by others, you’re merely a “cover band,” and nobody takes cover bands very seriously. From the composer’s perspective, most of the world’s opera houses are primarily “cover bands.” We need a new model: an opera company that is really a company, a group of artists — composers and performers — who work together to develop a shared artistic language over time.

— Matthew Aucoin, Composer

Those of us who love opera know that our emotional response to music has the power to connect us deeply to the characters we see onstage. But, particularly for younger audiences who are not familiar with the form, this connection can be tenuous if these stories don’t actually reflect the values of our current age. We tell stories in order to both understand and to create who we are, both as individuals and as a culture. Inevitably, we have evolved over the course of history. Slavery was common and accepted in the time of Mozart. Women could not vote in the time of Verdi. And Jim Crow was in full effect during Puccini’s career. We have changed as a global culture, and thus our stories must also change. This is not to say that we should not perform the older work, but we can no longer perform a Così or a Carmen without asking what we are really saying.

We have such an opportunity, as storytellers and empathy-makers, to contribute to the shared sense of story. In our current world, characterized by polarization, disconnection and feelings of isolation, this becomes increasingly important. Let us embrace our role by creating work that reflects the stories we believe in, the world that we believe in and the world we want to see.

— Kamala Sankaram, Composer

New work is tolerated as long it stays somewhere at the edge of our seasons, to intellectually adorn them. Let’s face it, creativity and opera do not go together today anymore.

— Sofia Surgutschowa, Artist Manager

Diversity is; it’s not something you do. To say “We’re going to do diversity” is like saying “We’re going to do breathing.” What we mean is racial and cultural equity.

— Keryl McCord, Diversity/Community Arts Consultant

For too long, music from different cultures has been called “world music” or “ethnic music.” When you do that, you’re on top of the mountain and then you look around. Everything else is a flavor.

— Huang Ruo, Composer

It is not enough to invite a couple of people of color to serve on your board; you have to make space for their voices. You can’t invite people to stay in your space and then say “Shhh!”

— Nadege Souvenir, Trustee, Minnesota Opera

If you want to change, you will. You have to roll up your sleeves and say, “This is what should happen.” But if anyone in this room thinks they’re doing well enough, then they’re wasting their time.

— Graham Vick, Artistic Director, Birmingham Opera

That [Chineke!] concert showed me that we aren’t even close to where we should be, because
we still have to get a whole bunch of people together who look like us to make our own orchestra in order to survive.

— Carlos Vicente, Marketing Director, Sarasota Opera

I was born in Cape Town in the distant years of apartheid. I saw my first opera, The Magic Flute, when I was six, and I was too young to understand that everybody onstage was white, even Monostatos. When I was in high school, Nelson Mandela had been freed, and within those 10 years, about 80 percent of the people on stage were black.

— Matthew Wild, Artistic Director, Cape Town Opera

I keep hearing at this forum about opera’s “450 years of heritage.” I think that’s an obstacle. Look at what Ryan Coogler did with Black Panther, or Bill T. Jones with Fela! on Broadway. We need new stars like these to take a 450-year-old art form and reimagine it from a different perspective.

— Keryl McCord, Diversity/Community Arts Consultant

To advocate for opera and make the case for its public value, we have to let go of the notion that it holds inherent value for everyone. Some people will never value opera. That’s okay. But there are many people who aren’t currently part of our audiences, boards or funders who could be, and whose participation we desperately need. ... To advocate for opera, take action and earn public value.

— Cayenne Harris, Vice-President, Lyric Unlimited, Lyric Opera of Chicago

Opera is one of the most versatile forms of art. It illustrates the increasing convergence between heritage and creation. Opera is rejuvenated by the digital revolution, which creates enormous opportunities for a form of art that some people consider elitist, obsolete, unable to survive without public support or disconnected with our societies.

— Michel Magnier, Director of Education and Culture, European Union

Can we imagine opera as so appealing to general audiences that it’s as normal as going to a ball game or out to dinner? Or is opera too special for everyday use?

— Tracy Wilson, Director of Education and Engagement, Cincinnati Opera

Our programming must be topical, resonant, human and culturally sensitive in representing all walks of life. Which stories we tell, who we choose to write and perform them, and how we then tell those stories are the most critical factors in the survival of our art form.

— Anh Le, Brand Manager, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis

Some people don’t come not because they don’t like opera, but because they don’t know it. We have a children’s opera in Cologne, and I’ve never heard the question “Why are we here?”

— Birgit Meyer, Intendant, Oper Köln

Opera is an engine for empathy, a way to invite us to feel what other people are feeling. At Three Decembers, we had very conservative patrons, deeply opposed to gay marriage, who were brought to tears by a man weeping for his dead lover. That’s something opera does better than any other art form.

— Ned Canty, General Director, Opera Memphis