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Just spotted nice comments about us from a couple of folks, and, in my great excitement, accidentally red-flagged esphd1. Can that be undone? Thanks!!

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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Really frustrated I missed hearing this show, and wish, also, I had made it in on this conversation sooner!

I'm the artistic director of Opera Theater Oregon, whose mission is to help hook up new audiences with opera. We perform in a bar (Someday Lounge), keep our tix at about what it costs to see a live band ($15), and rework the material to make it more accessible to a wider audience.

Our Opera Cinema series pairs up silent films with live opera performance and live sound f/x (example DeMille's 1915 'Carmen' paired up with the Bizet opera); last year we cut and rescripted Donizetti's 'L'Elisir d'Amore' to take place in a mall in the '80s, run about 75 minutes and include an ice skating scene and a karaoke version of 'Up Where We Belong' sung by two drunken party guests.

Though we often mess with format pretty shamefully, we do our best, on the budget we have, to deliver the musical goods untarnished, and we've gotten a really good response from our audiences (last 8 of 10 shows sold out with standing room only).

There is a growing barroom classical music scene in Portland, with groups like ours, the Cello Project, Classical Revolution PDX and the Wordless project bringing in growing crowds. It bothers me a little to have been left out of a discussion on how to reach younger audiences with opera, when that's what we've been doing, very successfully, for the past couple of years.

It's my hope that our work will support the bigger houses, and bring in new audiences for the amazing work they are doing. I don't want big opera to come down to our level (other than maybe some judicious editing - there is a lot of chaff, especially in the bel canto operas). I do feel very strongly, though, that opera needs an entry level, and it has to be a comfortable, engaging and at least somewhat familiar one for newcomers.

Katie Taylor
Artistic Director
Opera Theater Oregon

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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