Opera ATX
Opera ATX, powered by Austin Opera, brings groundbreaking new works, emerging artists, exciting composers, and dynamic directors to Austin. By tapping into our city’s live music DNA, Austin Opera will continue to reflect the spirit of the city and the pioneering image it’s known for. Opera ATX explores alternative venues and partnerships around town. We create the conditions for operatic experiences completely new to Austin, and perhaps completely new to the art form. Driven by Austin Opera’s love of opera, love of audiences, and love of Austin, Opera ATX shows how Austin is shaping its opera company and inspiring innovative experiences.
Ryan Speedo Green in Concert
Internationally acclaimed bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green returns to Austin Opera in November for a concert at the new Austin PBS Media Center. Austin Opera’s groundbreaking Opera ATX program partners with Austin PBS to present and record the concert live for national distribution PBS.
In demand at the world’s leading opera houses and concert halls, Ryan Speedo Green has most recently received praise for his featured roles at the Metropolitan Opera in Terrence Blanchard’s Champion and Fire Shut up in my Bones and Gerswhin’s Porgy and Bess, an opera for which he won a Grammy Award.
Adam Nielsen, pianist, coach, chorus master, and assistant conductor for Juilliard’s Marcus Institute of Vocal Arts will collaborate with Mr. Green on the program.
Saturday, November 11th at 7:30 PM
Opera ATX Residency for Latinx Creatives
Beginning in the 2023-2024 Season, the Opera ATX Residency for Latinx Creatives will provide a unique workshopping space for Latinx composer/librettist teams to advance projects that will ultimately extend the scope of operatic storytelling. The residency will provide a composer and librettist team a ten-day residency in Austin to advance a new work or an existing work in progress through workshops with the Austin Opera artistic team, members of the Austin Opera Orchestra, the Austin Opera Teaching Artists, and members of the Austin Opera Chorus.
Beethoven in Virtual Reality
Beethoven in Virtual Reality
in collaboration with Washington National Opera Pop-up installations throughout Austin January – May, 2023
This immersive experience will drop you into two scenes from Beethoven’s operatic masterpiece, Fidelio. Following installations at the Fusebox Festival and Austin Beerworks, stay tuned for our next location this season!
The first scene features American soprano Tamara Wilson as Leonora, in her Austin Opera debut, performing the aria “Komm, Hoffnung, lass den letzten Stern.” Leonora has disguised herself as a guard named Fidelio, and participants can peer in to watch as she vows to rescue her husband Florestan from unjust imprisonment.
The second scene features the aria “Gott! Welch Dunkel hier!” by American tenor and fellow Austin Opera debut, Russell Thomas. Participants find Florestan in his prison cell, struggling with his current situation. He is dreaming of Leonora as an angel sent to rescue him when she appears outside his cell door.
These scenes were directed by the visionary Francesca Zambello and are accompanied by the magnificent sounds of the Washington National Opera Orchestra, conducted by WNO Principal Conductor, Evan Rogister.
Beethoven in VR is a project of Washington National Opera, a program of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and was created in collaboration with TimeLooper, Inc. and Austin Opera.
Support for Beethoven in VR provided by:
Opera ATX Partners
LOLA is committed to cultivating the future of opera by offering new approaches to this art form and classical singing. Our mission includes integrity to our approach to opera, to the Austin community, and to each other. We stand with our Black colleagues and all who are working toward radical change, unity, and justice. Our projects give artists unique and interesting outlets for their work, pull in diverse audiences, and propel opera out of the grand hall, flowing into the larger community.
LOLA is born: In the summer of 2014, LOLA was created by professional opera singer, arts administrator, and long-time Austin resident Liz Cass and opera director and Austin resident, Rebecca Herman with the idea of creating an all-female production of Puccini’s classic opera, La Bohème. They called this production La Femme Bohème. Liz and Rebecca assembled a team of highly skilled local talent and a show was born. La Femme Bohème opened to sold out houses. This production won 3 Austin Critics Table Awards.
Part of the LOLA mission is to meet people where they are and introduce them to opera. Our productions have attracted longtime opera aficionados and a large number of people having their first experience with the art form. In the Austin community and the world at large, it is very easy to go our respective ways and encounter not only our limited daily existence but also only those who exist in it. As an immediate and global community, it is vital for people from all walks of life to sit in a room and have a larger shared experience together.
One Ounce Opera (OOO) is dedicated to re-imagining opera in unexpected spaces. We create rogue, vaudevillian-style entertainment that celebrates the voice, punctuated by exciting cross-genre collaborations.
From premiering a vaudevillian transgender operetta in a Hyde Park Neighborhood living room to rogue bits of Verdi in a Red River club, OOO presents opera as accessible, contemporary, and mainstream through thoughtful programming in non-traditional locations.
The company truly believes the classical voice is a timeless vehicle for inclusive, powerful storytelling. OOO’s team of diverse singing artists incubate, create, and produce opportunities to inject “ounces” of opera and classical references into the social consciousness, utilizing cross-genre collaborations, pop-culture references, a bit of improvisation, and the simple beauty of the human voice.
Founded in 2012 by Julie Fiore, OOO has been featured on KVUE, KMFA, KUTX, KOOP, and KVRX, in the Austin Chronicle, Statesman, and TRIBEZA magazine, and performed as part of Fusebox, SoundSpace at the Blanton, Beerthoven, EAST, HONKTX!, SXSW, PRIDE Austin, and the Downtown Tree Lighting.
OOO has become a champion of new works and emerging composers & librettists, founding an annual new music competition series with an open international call. Fresh Squeezed Ounce of Opera (FSOO) is the first micro-opera showcase in the state of Texas. Produced in an East Austin warehouse aptly named the “Museum of Human Achievement,” FSOO 2020 received five B. Iden Payne award nominations, including Best Stage Director, Best Musical Director, and Outstanding Production of Musical Theater.
