Opera Las Vegas // Enthralling Stories. Exhilarating Music. Exquisite Singing.

Enthralling Stories. Exhilarating Music. Exquisite Singing.

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"O" Is For Opera!

Opera Las Vegas Presents “O” is for Opera!

In keeping with Opera Las Vegas’ commitment to ensuring our events and programs are welcoming and accessible to all in our community, we recently launched our newest project, “O” is for Opera!

The classroom opera pilot program was launched in the Fall of 2022 and took place at Elbert Edwards Elementary School in East Las Vegas, featuring the beloved Bremen Town Musicians opera. This story of friendship, kindness and inclusivity is a valuable teaching tool for elementary school students and, combined with the beauty and joy of opera, provides an excellent way to teach language skills, creative problem-solving, and cooperative learning. “O” is for Opera! offers a bilingual version of the program to further engage diverse, underserved audiences of children and their families, allowing us to share our passion for opera with people of all ages.

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Who’s Afraid of Opera?

Ongoing Virtual Visits - Resumes March 2023

No one! At least not after experiencing OLV’s 30-minute introduction to opera’s rich and varied history, an art form that combines music, comedy, drama, dance, instrumental accompaniment, technical theatre arts, and most significantly, unamplified singing.

Who’s Afraid of Opera? is an instructional and entertaining Informance (Information + Performance), that teaches youth about opera, and demystifies how to appreciate the beauty of operatic singing in its many manifestations.

Two young professional singers perform selections from opera, operetta and musical theatre. The Informance is designed to educate students in lyric theatre performance traditions, acquaint them with famous arias and duets, and to make the opera performances accessible, with presentations in a style relevant to modern life.

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Christopher and Anita Murray, Opera Las Vegas Sustaining Trustee

Quarter-Million-Dollar Gift from Chris and Anita Murray!

Opera Las Vegas (OLV) is thrilled by a quarter-million-dollar leadership gift commitment from long-time Sustaining Trustees, patrons, opera lovers, and friends Chris and Anita Murray to secure the future of the company through increased staffing, expanded programming and strategic planning initiatives.

“The scale of this philanthropy is formidable for its magnitude alone and is all the more noteworthy coming from two people who have become close personal friends over their many years of support”, remarked General Director Jim Sohre. “This gift will greatly help sustain OLV’s unique position as Nevada’s professional company member in OPERA America. We are deeply grateful.”

Chris and Anita bring to Opera Las Vegas a keen sense of fiduciary responsibility. Drawing on their successful business practices and considerable experience at other non-profit organizations, the Murray's have worked closely with the board of directors assisting with the company’s planning and management of its financial affairs.

To make a donation of any amount, visit our Donate Now page, or contact Jim at [email protected]

Opera Las Vegas is committed to equity and diversity.

Diversity Statement

Critics are raving!

From first-rate lead characters, clever staging, and a delightful women’s ensemble, this production was highly entertaining and enjoyable.

Opera Today

Of Opera Las Vegas's production of Donizetti's "Elixir of Love."

Photo by Richard Brusky

Word on the street...

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Opera Las Vegas receives $10,000 grant from the Jechart Yoo Charitable Trust!

Thanks to Jechart Yoo Charitable Trust for Recent Support

We are tremendously grateful to Tomas Yoo and the Jechart Yoo Charitable Trust for the recent support of Opera Las Vegas, with a presentation of a $10,000 grant.

As we are midway through our 2022-2023 Twenty-fourth Anniversary Season, we are extremely thankful for such considerable financial support which will help greatly in growing our community outreach and educational programming. This will allow us to share the wonder and promise of opera and the performing arts with all ages, neighborhoods, and communities because we believe our connections enrich all our lives. OLV’s most recent exciting development in our educational outreach is “O” is for Opera!”

It is heartening indeed to acknowledge this significant backing from the Jechart Yoo Charitable Trust. This generous gift will assist greatly in sustaining programming to the benefit of fellow citizens throughout the Las Vegas Valley area.

"O" Is For Opera!

Opera Las Vegas Presents “O” is for Opera!

In keeping with Opera Las Vegas’ commitment to ensuring our events and programs are welcoming and accessible to all in our community, we recently launched our newest project, “O” is for Opera!

The classroom opera pilot program was launched in the Fall of 2022 and took place at Elbert Edwards Elementary School in East Las Vegas, featuring the beloved Bremen Town Musicians opera. This story of friendship, kindness and inclusivity is a valuable teaching tool for elementary school students and, combined with the beauty and joy of opera, provides an excellent way to teach language skills, creative problem-solving, and cooperative learning. “O” is for Opera! offers a bilingual version of the program to further engage diverse, underserved audiences of children and their families, allowing us to share our passion for opera with people of all ages.

Announcing Our 24th Anniversary Season!

Opera Las Vegas’ Twenty-fourth Anniversary season features Verdi’s timeless classic La traviata, contains four exciting West Coast Premieres, and will begin with a full-throated celebration of female contributors, with a jubilant Women Composers Festival, 23 September – 8 October 2022.

Conceived as three separate spotlight productions, the series leads off with one of the most acclaimed one act operas of recent years, Proving Up. In it, composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek compel you to discover the brooding heart of the American Dream. With a chilling investigation into the physical and emotional hardship of settling the West, this piece is a riveting counterpoint to the often overly glamorized backward glances.

The Homestead Act of 1862 — by which settlers, mainly west of the Mississippi River, could acquire public land they’d farmed, or “prove up” — contained an odd provision: To be considered for the land grant, the homesteads, among other requirements, had to include a glass window. Based on a true story, Ms. Mazzoli conjures aural bleakness with an uncanny, confident mixture of instrumental savagery and eerie lightness. The shadowy sound of guitars drifts through the music; chaotic refractions of hoedown fiddling occasionally explode within a landscape of jittery unease. Mazzoli’s colorful, fragmentary, and evocative contemporary score perfectly complements Vavrek’s terse, cogent texts.

Proving Up performs at UNLV’s innovative Black Box Theatre on 23, 24, and 25 September 2022. The Festival continues the next weekend with the World Premiere of a staged workshop presentation of Letters to Lily by Emily Clements, an LGBTQ coming of age story that asks: How far would you go to be your true self?

Helms Helps Foundation matches $20,000 of donations! Thank you all.

Opera Las Vegas is thrilled to announce that they have matched the $20,000 on offer during the month of June, thanks to the generosity of Helms Helps Foundation.

Jim Sohre, General Director, noted: “This was the most substantial foundation grant our company has received to date, and we are so grateful for this infusion of resources which will greatly assist in executing our 2022-2023 Twenty-Fourth Anniversary Season. To qualify, OLV had to raise $20,000 by the 30^th of June, which Helms Helps will now match. Thanks to our many generous new friends, the campaign will ultimately enrich the operating coffers by just over $47,000.”

In addition to next year’s five staged operas, including three West Coast Premieres, and the Verdi classic, La Traviata, OLV notably sponsors various education and outreach programs that teach youth and young families about the beauty of opera, and demystifies how to appreciate the glories of operatic singing in its many manifestations. In partnership with Thurman White Academy, the company also sponsors the OLV Youth Chorus, now in its sixth year.

Opera Las Vegas to Receive $20,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts

Opera Las Vegas has been approved for a $20,000 Grants for Arts Projects award to support its acclaimed ongoing Living Composers and Librettists Initiative. OLV’s project is among 1,125 projects across America totaling more than $26.6 million that were selected during this second round of Grants for Arts Projects fiscal year 2022 funding.

“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts and cultural organizations throughout the nation with these grants, including Opera Las Vegas, providing opportunities for all of us to live artful lives,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “The arts contribute to our individual well-being, the well-being of our communities, and to our local economies. The arts are also crucial to helping us make sense of our circumstances from different perspectives as we emerge from the pandemic and plan for a shared new normal informed by our examined experience.”

OLV General Director Jim Sohre noted: “We are overjoyed and humbled by this affirmation of our commitment to presenting new productions of recent worthy works by contemporary librettists and composers, and we hope we can help cement their stature and presence in the operatic performing canon.”

In the 2022-2023 season, this project will present its first Women Composers Festival, including Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Proving Up; and the West Coast premiere of Evan Snyder and John Riesen’s murder mystery A Capacity for Evil. The season will also include the postponed West Coast Premieres of D.J. Sparr, Mark Campbell, and Davis Miller’s Approaching Ali and Emily Clements’ Letters to Lily (Act I Workshop), as well as the classic Main Stage production of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata.

For more information on the projects included in the Arts Endowment grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.