Renegade Opera Takes Portland by Storm

Upstart company innovates immersive, accessible approaches to an age-old artform

Photos by Tom Lupton

The audience arrives at the funeral of Euridice. Orfeo, a 21st century musician, is overcome with grief and hallucinates a trial-filled journey to retrieve Euridice from Underland. Reflecting on the collective trauma brought about by the pandemic, “Orfeo in Underland” grapples with communal loss and asks what moving forward looks like.

So began Renegade Opera’s first live production staged at dusk in the First Presbyterian Church of Portland’s outdoor plaza in Summer 2021. Madeline Ross (Phi Lambda, Portland Alumni), executive director of Renegade Opera, co-founded the company in January 2020 with Danielle Jagelski, music director, who directed and arranged music for ‘Orfeo’; and Elliot Menard, grants director, who created the puppets and masks for the show along with Arcadia Truehart.

“I actually started another company similar to Renegade Opera while I was studying for my Master’s in Opera Performance at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts,” Ross said. “When I moved back to Portland, I knew I wanted to be doing that work in the city where I grew up and where I have built so much community, so Renegade Opera was born. We had our first meeting as a team in January of 2020 and we had a plan to audition singers in March for a summer 2020 production. We moved forward with those auditions and created an online virtual opera production — ‘The Secret Diaries of Pennsylvania’ — over the summer of 2020 while we were all locked down.”

Ross brainstormed a few different names for the troupe with close friends and Renegade just seemed right. The term aligns with the company’s mission to promote institutional reform in the performing arts community through the creation of accessible and immersive opera. With a small budget and no designated office space, much of the work planning a production is done remotely and the entire city of Portland is the troupe’s stage. The company has flourished since its founding, thanks to the generous financial support of a community of individuals and institutions that keep a vibrant arts community alive in Portland.

WATCH ONLINE

Renegade Opera’s first virtual production, “The Secret Diaries of Pennsylvania Avenue,” a collection of videos, images and documents, can be viewed online for free. Donations encouraged. The performance is based on Leo Balkovetz’s original adaptation of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, titled “Justice or Mercy.” Exploration time: —90 minutes (experiences vary). renegadeopera.org/secretdiaries

“Opera is often considered the most expensive theatrical discipline, because it’s really several artistic disciplines in one — vocal music, orchestral music, technical theater design, stage performance, costume design, etc.,” Ross said. “We’re grateful for all the amazing support we’ve received so far and hope to continue to offer exciting productions that garner support from a wide range of people in the Portland metro area and beyond.”

In addition to serving as Renegade Opera’s executive director, Ross is the music administrator for the Celebration Works concert series at First Presbyterian Church of Portland and a section leader/soloist for its church services. She sings with the Portland Opera chorus and the vocal groups Resonance Ensemble and In the Pocket. A frequent performer of solo recitals, other operatic engagements and ensemble-based performances nationally, she also maintains a private studio of voice and piano students.

“I love to make music with wonderful collaborators,” Ross said. “My goal is to better the world by creating community and understanding through music. I hope in five years our world will be more accepting of people on all sorts of different paths and that we will only improve our support for creators of all kinds.”

A New Approach to Opera

There is some crossover in audience members who attend more traditional productions put on by Portland Opera as well as Renegade Opera shows. The upstart company strives to dismantle systems of racism, patriarchy, homophobia, ageism, ableism and financial gatekeeping in the opera industry.

“The folks who are excited to see our work are people interested in new, more-inclusive stagings of these classic operas,” Ross said. “We’re excited to show folks a different side of opera than what they may have seen before. My favorite comment from an audience member at our most recent performance was ‘I don’t like opera, but I LOVED this!’ We are hoping to invite new audiences who haven’t felt welcome at the grand opera house, whether because of the cost of tickets, the historically classist elite reputation of opera or simply because they didn’t feel like they had nice enough shoes to wear to the opera. All are welcome and all are invited to experience Renegade Opera’s productions.”

Renegade bucks the typical structure of larger companies that often use the same — or very similar —costumes and staging for their productions year after year. Instead, the company is more experimental and seeks ways to innovate its productions with the help of the performers and creative team. This makes the productions both more familiar to the modern audience — often set in contemporary dress and with English dialogue — and more complex.

“At Renegade Opera we’re almost never going to give you a ‘traditional’ night at the opera, and we like it that way!” Ross said. “We strive to engage our audience tangibly in our productions, which traditional opera doesn’t do. For example, we are planning an opera this summer that will invite the audience to move from room to room during the action of the story and vote to decide the end of the opera!”

Renegade’s production of “Orfeo in Underland,” directed by Joellen Sweeney (Phi Lambda) with costumes by Ophir El-Boher, took Gluck’s 1762 opera and set it in modern times with a lesbian relationship, use of recreational drugs, neon costumes and larger than life puppets, while keeping the emotional journey at the center of the opera — grief, hope, despair — as its guiding light.

WATCH ONLINE

View the full production of “Orfeo in Underland” at renegadeopera.org/orfeo-in-underland.

“It is our hope that by centering marginalized communities in these classic operatic stories we can foster understanding and community building,” Ross said. “Opera thrives when all those different artistic disciplines are given space to shine, so we partner with local creators of fashion design, stagecraft and, in ‘Orfeo,’ even puppet design.”

While some of Renegade’s productions are mobile enough to be performed throughout the state — “Orfeo” only requires a vehicle that can transport a 10-foot-tall puppet — many of Renegade’s productions are conceived as site-specific stories told through music and theater. In “Tito,” the original and interactive adaptation of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito planned for August, so much of the drama rests on using the space — singing from balconies, overhearing talk in the hallway, moving from room to room — that Renegade would need to carefully choose its venues if the show were to tour.

One of the pillars of Renegade’s mission is supporting emerging artists in the Portland area by offering free auditions and paid opportunities to perform and create operas in a collaborative environment. When casting a show, the company holds free live or video auditions for available roles. Ross, a soprano, played Amore in “Orfeo.”

Like any non-profit organization, Renegade depends on funding to support its artists in order to make art equitably. The managing team is currently all volunteer but the productions have been fully paid up to this point. As the troupe gains more stability, it hopes to be able to pay its managing team and increase stipends for its production artists proportional to the monumental amount of creative energy that goes into their work.

“We need to continue to build a strong community of artists of all disciplines, local venues and audiences,” Ross said. “‘Our first live production was sold out, and if we can keep that momentum up, we’ll be able to share more opera with more people year after year.

“The balance of work and recognition/rest for our administrators is so key. Our creative team works so hard to make these productions happen and the more support and validation we can give to that work, the longer the creative spark will stay bright. It’s really easy to get burnt out when you have so many elements to juggle and so many people to effectively communicate with. We are lucky to have an amazing team at Renegade Opera and I am always striving to support them in their work.”

Madeline Ross (in white) performed as Amore in "Orfeo."