Latest News

Opera Las Vegas is thrilled to announce that it has appointed acclaimed Mexican-American soprano Cecilia Violetta López as its new General Director and CEO, effective July 1, 2025. López, who began her professional career with the company in 2012, returns as only the fifth person to hold this leadership role in OLV’s 27-year history. Recognized […]

Opera Las Vegas announces the establishment of the Christopher and Anita Murray Opera Las Vegas Studio at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with the start of its 2024-2025 Twenty-sixth Anniversary season. The two premiere Studio Artists in this prestigious new initiative are soprano Claudia Affan and tenor Christian Shelton. Claudia Affan is pursuing a […]

Opera Las Vegas announces its 2024-2025 Twenty-sixth Anniversary schedule, billed as a Season of Smiles. General Director Jim Sohre says:  “Given the occasional turbulence of the times, we figured everyone would welcome a good laugh, and with a slate of comic operas and uplifting events, we hope to play a part in filling that need. […]

“'Behold the Man' is an engaging opera. It outlines the ever-developing story of Borja’s near fall and eventual rise to fame with a rare combination of excitement and forgiveness. Along with an easy-to-follow synopsis, Cecilia Giménez is a relatable lead character and her heart of gold makes for an interesting character development that supports a […]

"‘Monkey Christ’ opera makes a hero of woman who botched Spanish fresco" "Cecilia Giménez, now almost 93, achieved unwanted global fame in the summer of 2012 after attempting to restore a small fresco of the scourged and thorn-crowned Christ in the Santuario de Misericordia near her home town of Borja. Her incomplete efforts to save the Ecce Homo (Behold the man) […]

An elderly woman in Borja, Spain, attempts the restoration of a little-known fresco. Discovered before she can finish, the image is posted online and goes viral. Shamed on social media and shunned by her neighbors, she falls into despair. But soon curious tourists begin to arrive, restoring her place in the community, and reversing the […]

Dear Attendees: As Mayor of the great City of Las Vegas, I welcome you to the 25th Anniversary Season of one of our City’s cultural jewels, Opera Las Vegas. When tenor Mark Thomsen, educator Paul Kreider, and soprano Gloria Marinacci Allen founded the company in 1999, little might they have imagined during its modest beginnings […]

Opera Las Vegas announces its milestone 25th Anniversary Season, led off by the World Premiere of a comic opera, Behold the Man, with music by Paul Fowler and libretto by Andrew Flack. General Director, Jim Sohre notes “Although our company has presented a number of West Coast Premieres of several other recent works, it is […]

An elderly woman's attempt to restore a long-forgotten fresco of Jesus backfires, instead going viral on social media. She faces online shame and community rejection, but finds redemption when curious tourists arrive, revitalizing the struggling town. On September 30th and October 1st, Opera Las Vegas will kick off its 25th anniversary season with the world […]

Thank you to everyone who supported Opera Las Vegas in our award-winning 2023-2024 season. A real high point of the year just came in June, with the first sold-out stage production in our company’s twenty-four-year history, for Giuseppe Verdi and Francesco Maria Piave’s immortal classic, La Traviata. This stunning achievement really embraced the three pillars […]

Opera Las Vegas has been approved for a $25,000 Grants for Arts Projects award to support its acclaimed ongoing Living Composers and Librettists Initiative.   OLV’s project is among awards for projects across America totaling more than $103 million that were selected during this second round of Grants for Arts Projects fiscal year 2023 funding. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“We are different.  We are one.”  So sang two unlikely friends and colleagues, Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  That’s right, they “sang,” at least in OLV’s roundly cheered production of Derrick Wang’s chamber opera, Scalia/Ginsburg, which performed 8-11 July 2021 in an actual courtroom, namely the Thomas and Mack Moot Court of UNLV’s […]

When General Director Jim Sohre greeted the audience for the premiere of Donizetti's comic opera, Don Pasquale on 11 and 12 June, and welcomed them to "our first live performances in sixteen months," it was met with unbridled enthusiasm and applause. Opera-hungry fans were ready to be entertained and a starry quartet of solo singers, […]

Opera Las Vegas will kick-off its 22nd Anniversary Season on October 1st- 3rd with The Ghosts of Gatsby, a chamber opera inspired by the Jazz Age and infused with operatic madness by composer Evan Mack and librettist Joshua McGuire. Based on true events, The Ghosts of Gatsby is a compelling psychological journey into the marriage […]

Opera Las Vegas recently closed out its successful run of Derrick Wang’s Scalia/Ginsburg with a surprise ending: A fifty thousand dollar gift. Scalia/Ginsburg is a serio-comic chamber opera about the unlikely friendship between two philosophically opposed Supreme Court Justices, Antonin Scalia and the “notorious” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who were drawn together by their mutual love […]

Opera Las Vegas has been approved for a $16,000 Grants for Arts Projects award to support its acclaimed Living Composers and Librettists Initiative. In the 2021-2022 season, this project will present the West Coast premieres of three chamber operas: Ricky Ian Gordon and Royce Vavrek’s The House Without a Christmas Tree; D.J. Sparr, Mark Campbell, […]

Las Vegas, NV — Opera Las Vegas (OLV) today announced 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. This gift comes as the Company not only re-emerges from the […]

OPERA LAS VEGAS PRESENTS THE WEST COAST PREMIERE OF  THE NEW OPERA HIT Scalia/Ginsburg MUSIC AND LIBRETTO BY DERRICK WANG “We are different. We are one.”  So sing two unlikely friends and colleagues, Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Yes, that’s right. They “sing.” Delightful surprises unfold as Opera Las Vegas proudly presents the […]

Do conniving old bachelors like Don Pasquale deserve love?  Opera scholars seem unaware that the scurrilous old suitor ever visited Sin City, but that hasn’t stopped Opera Las Vegas from cooking up a whole new localized scenario for a hilarious version of this world-famous romantic lyric comedy.  When it comes to combining beautiful melodies and […]

Wine and song go together so naturally that Opera Las Vegas merrily served up both, with Opera Uncorked on Saturday, 16 November 2019 at 6:30 pm in the Las Vegas Artists Guild Gallery in the Henderson Galleria Mall.Delighted patrons were treated to timeless tunes paired with exquisite wines, as OLV’s spirited songbirds and full-throated troubadors […]

After six years of serving on the Opera Las Vegas board, President Stephanie S. Buntin is stepping down. The company presented her with a gold-edged acrylic pentagon plaque that reads: Presented with Appreciation to Stephanie S. Buntin For Your Dedicated Service, June 2020. Thank you for your consistent, steady leadership!

Although our in-person production schedule is still on an extended intermission, rest assured Opera Las Vegas has not been idle. At last week’s annual all hands board meeting, a new set of officers was elected. OLV welcomed Paxton Fleming as its new President, and renewed Bonita Bunt’s status as Secretary. Although I rotated off the […]

Las Vegas, Nevada—National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Mary Anne Carter has approved more than $84 million in grants as part of the Arts Endowment’s second major funding announcement for fiscal year 2020. Included in this announcement is an Art Works award of $10,000 to Opera Las Vegas for its Living Composers Initiative. This is […]

To safeguard the company’s artists, staff, volunteers, audiences and supporters, Opera Las Vegas has canceled the remaining productions of the company’s “Magical  20th Anniversary Season.” With the COVID-19 crisis shuttering facilities and restricting public gatherings throughout the Las Vegas Valley, venues are no longer available to stage Derrick Wang’s Scalia/Ginsburg, soprano Angela Meade’s recital, John Davies’ The Bremen Town […]

Dear Friends, As much as Opera Las Vegas was looking forward to presenting a truly first-class production of Derrick Wang’s Scalia/Ginsburg, 19-22 March, we value even more the health and well-being of our patrons, artists, staff, and community at large. Therefore, we feel it prudent to cancel these performances of Scalia/Ginsburg at this time, with […]

The musically thrilling, theatrically compelling production of composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Royce Vavrek’s “27” was a great step forward for the company. The piece tells the story of the famous artistic salons held by American ex-pats Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas at their Parisian address, 27 Rue de Fleurus in the mid-20th […]

Opera Las Vegas presented Opera Legends in Black at West Las Vegas Library Theatre to a highly enthusiastic response from an audience of 120 people on Sunday, 24 February 2019. Raising their voices in celebration of Black History Month, sopranos Sheronda McKee and Moriah Berry, tenor Albert Rudolph Lee, and bass-baritone Aaron Pendleton were expertly […]

Thanks to all our friends and supporters this year’s Love Potion No.9 Gala was a hugesell-out success. Our goal was a memorable night of non-stop entertainment, “sin-sational” food, quality service, and light-hearted fun. Thanks to all our outstanding auction donors and bidders, the company more than doubled its anticipated goal. Bravo! We’d like to salute […]

Opera Las Vegas partnered with the Mario Basner Gallery to present a festive and song-filled Season Reveal party on August 16th in Tivoli Village. Seventy-plus revelers helped the company (now in its nineteenth season) to celebrate the diverse line-up of operas, concerts and events that are planned for the 2018-2019 line-up. General Director Jim Sohre […]

“Informance” is a hybrid word that combines “information” and “performance” into one song-filled, instructive 40-minute program. Each year Opera Las Vegas takes “Informances” to as many Clark County Schools as can be accommodated in a two week period to explain and expose the art form of opera to students, many of whom have never experienced […]

On Sunday, 25 February, OLV celebrated African-American History Month with “Opera Legends in Black,” a tribute concert to legendary black singers and composers who achieved international acclaim. The narrated program celebrated the success of singers Martina Arroyo, Simon Estes, Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price, George Shirley, Grace Bumbry, Shirley Verrett, Denyce Graves, Marion Anderson, Roland Hayes, […]

Opera Las Vegas’ annual major fundraiser took over the lavish Liberace Mansion on Saturday evening, 20 January, and raised the roof. “Cinderella’s Diamond Ball” was the chosen theme, as a run-up to June’s planned production of Rossini’s “Cinderella” (La Cenerentola). The evening began in the unique Moroccan room, where VIP attendees were treated to canapés […]

On Sunday, March 25th Opera Las Vegas returned to the Smith Center to join in the worldwide centennial celebration for legendary composer Leonard Bernstein by presenting Bravo, Bernstein! in Myron’s Cabaret Jazz. Leonard Bernstein is one of the most popular and successful American composers, conductors, and educators of the 20th Century. “Lenny” is being feted […]

The mobile Opera on Wheels outreach program went into overdrive with a successful tour of Benjamin Britten’s one act opera Noah’s Flood (Noye’s Fludde). For a free will offering, nearly five-hundred audience members were able to experience live opera at Grace Presbyterian Church (17 November) in central Las Vegas; Green Valley Presbyterian (18 November) in Henderson; and […]

Both Oktoberfest and opera got their due with Beer and Baritones at Biersch on October 15. The Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant provided the venue and vittles – and three exciting young baritones offered full-throated, accomplished singing along with the beer. Phillip Harris communicated vocal joy, whether presenting the signature baritone aria from Don Pasquale, Mozart’s Magic Flute tune, or Broadway’s If […]

¡Latin Fiesta! officially opened the season on September 29 with a celebration in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month at the West Las Vegas Library Theatre. General Director Jim Sohre narrated stirring tributes to superstars like Placido Domingo, Montserrat Caballe, and Jose Carreras, while introducing a good dose of Zarzuela (Spanish operetta).  The spirited audience cheered every selection.  And why not, […]

At a festive Season Reveal Party at the Classic Jewel on September 10, Opera Las Vegas announced a wildly diverse 2017-2018 season of operas and events.  The company plans to “present with passion” one biblical flood, two ugly stepsisters, three little pigs, beer and baritones, a Latin fiesta, a holiday on Broadway, legends in black, music at the […]