Accessible Opera Project

2019 Base-Level Project

Accessible Opera Project: The Fourth Opera's Access Problem Rarified venues, a foreign language, unaffordable productions and an army of "expert" musicians; why is it that this set of parameters has somehow become the unspoken rules for what makes opera, well...opera?

Here at the Chinquapin Center for the Arts, we are developing a new repertory of operas that can truly move operatic thinking into our age, and by this effort make it more resonant, relevant, available and thus accessible.

Creating Access: Our Principles Three guiding principals help us to modernize and bring opera forward: 1. Modern Forces – bringing the sonic world of opera up into the now 2. Mobile and Affordable Productions – bringing opera within reach 3. Contemporary Themes – finding operatic intensity and timelessness in english and with modern themes From inception to production, these four prinicpals guide us in creating exquisite, complex and virtuosic operas that – get this, are by their very nature accessible.

First, let's tour through are three principles, showing how they work to create modern, accessible, virtuosic opera for our age. Then we can look at The Fourth, an opera project we have had in development for three years, a project you can help us bring into the world.

Let's begin!

Creating Access: Our Principals 1. Modern Forces Opera has always been the most formidable of forms: The most powerful voices, the biggest of orchestras, the most spectacular and wrenching dramas. Opera has always been, and will always be, the medium of intensities. Yet, why is it that the most intense, incisive and immersive instrument available to us today, the instrument truly of our times is all but absent from the medium?

What is this absent instrument?... The electronic speaker.

The speaker is the main and most ubiquitous way we receive aural art and information today. Can you imagine the contemporary world without it?

We live our lives through these instruments: cellphones, TV, YouTube, the stereo in your car, dance music, an amplified band, music piped into a bar... we often listen to our favorite masterpieces from the other side of one of these tools.

And yet in typical, reflexive, antiquarian fashion contemporary opera insists on shying away from this primary and potent mode of modern aural communication.

Our thought here at the Chinquapin Center for the Arts is not about simply discarding live musicians for synthesizers or simulating an old form without regard to the specific needs of the newcomer. We approach the speaker with the same degree of finesse, creativity and mastery that any traditional composer would treat a newcomer, be it clarinet, castrato or celesta.

This is not about doing away with our masterful group of classical players either. We make our expert group acoustic virtuosi louder and wilder – raising them up to the sonic level of an orchestra and then weave them into the overwhelming, and now fully immersive orchestral world of electronic sound.

We do not simplify – we do not dumb down – we approach our electronic sound and the scheme for amplification with the same eye, ear, heart and mind that any traditional master would have applied to new arrivals to the medium.

At Chinquapin, we create operas that not only use amplified forces and electronic sounds but we structure our operas from conception, to inception and to execution around using these modern sounds.

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2. Mobile and Affordable Productions At the Chinquapin Center for the Arts we design productions that can be moved into unexpected and accessible venues, always without sacrificing the artistic integrity of each piece.

st Amplification and an abundance of electronic sounds allow our chamber group of virtuoso musicians to achieve a complexity of compositional thought and sonic heft that rivals traditional operatic means.

Each one of our group of musicians is a virtuoso. Working as a nimble ensemble, like a rock band or a traveling theater troupe, they can easily tour to unexpected and inviting venues...venues that open the doors of opera to whole new groups of people...venues that cost significantly less. Our numbers help create the intensity of chamber music while at the same time drastically lowering ticket prices well within reach.

Our team of designers and our director create productions that move quickly from space to space. We don't have to wait; we can bring opera to the people. We can go into schools, churches, wineries or theaters, bringing opera to places that might attract those that would never think to seek the medium out; our productions seek the audience.

Quickly, within the course of an hour's sound-check our sound designer can make the work sound polished, full and powerful despite the acoustic properties of any given space.

At the drop of a had our ingenious minimalist sets and portable lighting rigs transform any space and fully create the theatrical experience.

Here at Chinquapin, we create operas that are entirely built around these distinctly contemporary forces, forces that travel, bringing affordable and genuinely operatic productions to entirely new constituencies.

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3. Contemporary Themes Think about the stories of our age: Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Arrested Development, 30 Rock, and The Handmaids Tale. These are not stories made in a time when people need less intensity, sophistication, or a smaller narrative arc. We are living in a golden age of narrative, a golden age of provocative and sophisticated storytelling – stories with wildly different logics and styles.

So far, the Chinquapin team has created two such English-language stories, stories that capture, with operatic intensity the stories and themes of our times. Just as La Bohème was a modern story in it's time, at Chinquapin we are focused on creating an repertory that can bring the operatic narrative into the now.

Let's talk about one of these stories now: The Fourth