Striking a Chord Berks Opera Company brings the art form to the local community
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erks Opera Workshop d/b/a Berks Opera Company is a 501(c) (iii) organization incorporated in Pennsylvania. Our mission is to promote and support education and appreciation of young people regarding the operatic art in the Berks County community, as artists and as audience members, and to promote public awareness of the relevance and value of the operatic art for all individuals and the community.
We serve the Berks County community by offering performances that can appeal to and enrich opera enthusiasts and newcomers, and by providing educational experiences that introduce younger generations to the art form. We believe there is great value in diversifying young peoples’ cultural outlooks by exposing them— as audience and participants—to an art form which may be well outside their accustomed fare. Our free performances for school children allow hundreds each year to share in this experience close up. We are proud of so much at Berks Opera Company. Pre-pandemic, we collaborated with community groups to present two major productions of classic operas that we used to drive home the relevance of opera to today’s communities. Our interpretation of the opera “Faust” (the man who sold his soul to Satan for eternal youth), focused on the satanic influence of addiction. We worked closely with local addiction organizations, engaging with them and their constituents in talks, group sessions and other activities outside of the opera house. Our interpretation of the opera “Otello,” based on Shakespeare’s “Othello” (the military man who comes home and abuses and eventually murders his wife), focused on veterans’ experience of PTSD. As with “Faust,” we worked closely with local veterans’ groups and related organizations to engage them and their participants in discussions and other activities outside the opera house.
this work, “These Mountains and Valleys: Berks Legends,” provided much-needed work during the enforced performance hiatus. The work then premiered in June 2022, to great acclaim, providing a desperately needed re-opening of live performances and income for the performers. Through all these three productions, we fostered a sense of community and brought disparate groups into contact with the art form. There are several ways the Greater Reading community can support our mission! While we welcome direct donations, as well as volunteers for everything from stage production to event planning, we have two acute strategic needs. Although we are very small, we need experienced volunteer assistance with bookkeeping, financial planning and generally a CFO function. Second, we need to recruit board members who (i) have relationships with business leaders who believe in our mission and can bring us the sort of steady financial support enjoyed by successful arts organizations, and/or (ii) have relationships that can bring a younger and more diverse audience to us, while we ever strive to maximize the relevance of our program to that audience. CQ
Each of these were fully professional productions, featuring noted singers (including several from the Metropolitan Opera), orchestra, and, for “Faust,” full theatrical sets and costumes. Lastly, during the pandemic shutdown, we commissioned well-known Berks County composer and musician Chris Heslop to write a pair of short operas on the lives of two famed historical Berks County figures, in collaboration with Berks County actress and librettist Vicki Haller Graff and local historians. The creation of 23