Opera Orlando is looking to the future of the musical genre on two fronts — and making progress on both.
For the first time, Opera Orlando will launch a public school tour, with the children’s opera “Frida Kahlo and the Bravest Girl in the World” introducing the next generation to the art form. Meanwhile, a new partnership with Stetson University is helping train the opera performers of tomorrow.
With multiple new projects, Opera Orlando’s education department has added Brittani Alphonso as Youth
Company instructor and John Korczynski as Youth Company pianist. They join Youth Company associate director Sarai Goley, who came on board last season.
In addition, Opera Orlando has a new resident pianist and chorus master, Nathan Cicero.
All the growth is part of an overall expansion of the company, which ended its 2022-23 fiscal year in the black, collecting about $2.1 million in income and spending about $1.9 million, according to the organization, leaving $300,000 in cash reserves.
Showing that audiences are responding, for the first time since its founding in 2016, Opera Orlando earned more than a half million dollars from ticket sales. And its Mozart Dinner gala fundraiser sold out three months ahead of time and raised roughly $250,000 for the organization. The 2024 Mozart dinner is already sold out.
The company hopes to build on that fundraising success with the addition of Glorivy Arroyo to the staff as development manager. Arroyo will focus on grant writing, donor cultivation, special events and the company’s annual giving campaign.
‘Tosca’ at Steinmetz Hall: Let’s talk about love, baby
“From just two productions in our first season to now six productions between our MainStage and On the Town series, growing from a staff of two to now a staff of 14, and with the opening of Steinmetz Hall — an architectural wonder of an opera house — the opera is and will continue to be an arts organization that our
entire community can take pride in,” wrote general director Gabriel Preisser in an email.
The expanding educational offerings are a key part of that growth.
“Education is paramount to our organization in that we have the profound opportunity and privilege of perhaps unlocking an unknown musical gift or even just an appreciation for the arts in our next generation,” Preisser said. “With arts funding in the schools always at risk, our continued education efforts will always be needed and will be inherent in Opera Orlando’s identity.”
The touring production of “Frida Kahlo and the Bravest Girl in the World” is a precursor to the company’s January production of the opera “Frida,” also about the life of the famed Mexican artist.
In addition to free public performances in Mount Dora and Orlando, the show will also be staged for home-schooled students at the Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando and for third graders at eight Osceola County Public Schools with English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) programs.
It’s a full production, points out the opera’s education director Sarah Purser: “We have sets and costumes and the whole nine yards.”
Also, each teacher gets a copy of the book on which the opera is based to add a literary component to the art and music educational angles.
“You’ve got to go out to the community,” Purser says. “You can’t just expect people to show up at the opera house.”
The opera also did outreach, sponsored by United Arts of Central Florida and Orange County Public Schools, to middle and high school students for its current production of “Tosca.” About 200 students are expected to attend the production’s dress rehearsal.
The opera presentations can lead to more opera practitioners: Both Preisser and Purser say their interest in the artform was piqued by school experiences.
This year’s Opera Orlando Youth Company has a few more members than usual, up to 29.
“It shouldn’t surprise me, but it does,” Purser said. “It pleases me so many young people are interested in the art form.”
The Youth Company, for years led by Robin Jensen before she stepped down in June, has traditionally been a strong part of the organization and its predecessor, Orlando Opera, which closed in 2009.
“Even when Orlando Opera went under, the Youth Company did not,” said Purser, paying tribute to her former colleague. “Robin kept that alive.”
The Youth Company is designed for singers age 8-18; the opera also offers a Studio Artist program for post-graduate singers just starting their professional careers. The latter program also continues to grow in popularity, Purser said, with almost 600 submissions this year for four positions.
And it’s not just the number of applicants that impresses Purser, “but the quality has gone up as well,” she said.
In between the two programs there had been a gap for undergraduate college students, which will now be filled by the new partnership with Stetson University in DeLand.
Through the Stetson program, two Apprentice Artists were selected and will receive college credit toward their degree as they work with the opera. They receive coaching and are afforded performance opportunities, as well. Purser said the program may expand in the coming years.
All the educational initiatives work together to strengthen the art form for the future, she said: “That’s how you keep this genre’s beautiful legacy alive.”
‘Frida Kahlo and the Bravest Girl in the World’
- What: 40-minute children’s opera
- In Mount Dora: 2 and 4 p.m. Nov. 10 at Mount Dora Center for the Arts, 138 E. 5th Ave.
- In Orlando: 11 a.m. Nov. 18 at Broadway United Methodist Church, 406 E. Amelia St.
- Cost: Free
- Info: operaorlando.org/town2023-24
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