Last week, Vanessa and I held the second of our online conversations about opera. This one was about engaging new communities with opera, and was chaired by the wonderful Krysztina Winkel, formerly embedded community producer at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, and currently at the Vienna State Opera where she is trying to set up a new community department for opera education. How brilliant is that?
We had over 60 people booked onto the Zoom call (though not everyone turned up, as seems to be the way with Zoom), and it was a vibrant conversation full of different ideas and stories of how people had explored opera with their groups and taken it into their communities, and how every experience was very different as indeed every community is different. We once again touched on the idea of ‘opera buddies’… (this is something we’re definitely going to be picking up on) and ‘tastemakers’. Tastemakers are basically influencers… (with taste… I wonder..?)
There was no one conclusion that came out of the conversation but what was certain was how passionate people are about opera, about what it can give to people and how it can bring people together. Click on the link to read more about our journey in creating Her Day Opera for 2022. Sayan Kent
BOLDtext Playwrights 