No, I haven't stopped thinking about Baltimore's opera future. And, thanks to some others in the area similarly focused, I've got a lot more to think about.
Last week, Giorgio Lalov and Jenny Kelly announced the debut season of their Baltimore Opera Theatre at the Hippodrome - Rossini's The Barber of Seville in November and Verdi's Rigoletto in March.
This will not be the all-local company Lalov and Kelly initially announced. These inaugural presentations, using an orchestra and chorus from Europe augmented with area musicians, suggest a version of the couple's longtime touring company, Teatro Lirico d'Europa. Whether Baltimore Opera Theatre becomes a fully homegrown entity will depend on funding, Kelly says.
Meanwhile, the Lyric Opera House, where the Baltimore Opera Company made its home for decades until its regrettable death earlier this season, has signaled that it will actively work toward producing opera and hired former Baltimore Opera artistic administrator Jim Harp to help with the effort.
But the 2,500-seat Lyric is supposed to undergo major renovation soon, affecting the plans of any prospective users.
So, the thought for today is: What if we've been focusing on the wrong space and the wrong type and size company?
Enter Opera Baltimore, an organization formed by "artists and arts professionals" (as the Web site says), including Laura Lee Everett, a former Baltimore Opera employee who is assistant director of Maryland Opera Studio at the University of Maryland, College Park.
"Our goal is to be the next company producing full-scale opera in Baltimore," Everett says, "with a focus on American artists and featuring American repertoire - at least one American opera a year. We will do standards, too, in new and different ways."
The group's steering committee includes credible folks, among them John Bowen, general director of Opera Vivente in Baltimore. A business plan is in the works, with a goal of raising an initial $2 million, and possible venues are being scouted out.
"Opera Baltimore is talking to 1st Mariner Arena, which apparently is more re-configurable than any of us expected," Bowen says. The prospect of using a portion of the arena certainly adds a new element to the speculation about where the next new wave of opera in this city will hit.
Bowen's primary focus, of course, is the future of his own, chamber-size company. Opera Vivente, based for more than a decade in a church hall in Mount Vernon, has done remarkable work on a budget of less than $200,000. It could use a larger space.
