Opera Nabi Q&A: LA-Based Startup Where Anime, Opera & Stickers Meet, Beautifully

Opera Nabi Founder Kristen Choi: “I was inspired to make these fun creations through the worlds of opera and music, with anime and Manga. So, if you have an interest in any of those subjects, this is the Etsy store for you!”

We’re beyond thrilled for Opera Innovation contributor Kristen Choi. Her recently launched Opera Nabi shop on Etsy is a small business / opera startup built on bridging visual and operatic art forms, as well as a multitude of cultures and cultural art forms (ps “nabi” means “butterfly” in Korean). Through Opera Nabi, Kristen’s operatic and illustration skills and knowledge are beautifully joined as a one-of-a-kind sticker shop. If that’s not “opera innovation” we don’t know what is! Just back from Italy, Kristen took time to do a quick Q&A with us. Links for Kristen’s Etsy shop and more work samples below, keep Opera Nabi in mind for Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Holiday Stocking Stuffers. JM

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Opera Innovation Q&A | Opera Nabi Founder Kristen Choi

OI: Could you tell us why this art form inspires and delights and how you arrived at the Opera Nabi small business concept?

KC: I've always loved anime, since I was a kid. The drawing style always attracted me and even more so the chibi style. I mean who doesn't love mini, cute versions of things? It's appealing! And just adorable. I decided to start (Opera Nabi) after tapping back into my old hobby of drawing. As mentioned, I love anime and manga, so I decided to pick up drawing and sketching again. Then, after drawing for a while, I decided to become even more creative with it. While in quarantine, I felt that it was time explore creativity in other places besides music and singing. That’s when I decided to bridge the opera world I miss so much with this revived hobby of sketching and doodling. By doing so, I could reimagine famous opera scenes and composers in the manga or chibi style. I decided to put a poll on Instagram just for fun, to market research the idea, actually getting some positive responses from friends and colleagues.

I also wanted the name of my store to reflect who I am. Of course, it had to be opera-related, so opera had to be a part of the name. I decided on ‘Nabi’ because in Korean it means ‘Butterfly.’ The opera, Madama Butterfly, also has a very significant place in my heart, becoming the main inspiration for my shop’s name. Also, if you know me, I'm a very social person and love meeting people and making friends, so there’s that word play, too. I also wanted to keep the name in Korean to reflect my cultural identity.

OI: Who is your customer and why? For instance if I'm an opera lover but not a sticker aficionado, how would you sell me on the idea of collecting and using Opera Nabi creations?

KC: Well, customers right now are mostly opera and music lovers. Stickers are super accessible and make amazing gifts for opening and closing nights of shows and are also cute accessories to decorate personal items. Singers can add some extra personality to their scores, notebooks, tablets, or waterbottles by putting a sticker on any of these items. I'm still in the process of ordering cards with opera anime scenes depicted, but I imagine they’d be beautiful gifts to give to people.

OI: The opportunity to "sell" opera to people already interested in these art forms is obvious. What are your thoughts for perhaps nurturing a greater interest in opera through the Opera Nabi imagery and products you're creating?

KC: Right now, anime is super mainstream, especially among younger generations. When I was a kid, it was considered nerdy or "dorky" to like anime, but now it’s considered to be a beautiful art form. I think by connecting the two and reimagining opera in this style, Opera Nabi could attract some anime otaku nerds and lovers.

Screenshot from Opera Nabi on Instagram.

OI: The Opera Nabi product line seems like a great new hobby. How are you approaching the holiday season? What are your business goals for the holiday?

KC: Honestly, I’m just trying to add more products to my store and pump out more designs that people have requested. Getting more followers and keeping traction would be good, but it's been kind of a hectic time for me traveling during COVID, so I needed to get back on track with the store and upcoming designs. A new batch of sticker design orders will be coming in, so I’ll definitely make a special offer for the holiday season. Keep on the look out for bundle orders and special discounts!

OI: How has the Etsy platform and technology made the Opera Nabi business concept better and/or easier to access?

KC: Etsy makes everything so easy to sell on their platform and since it's well-known, people come to it with built-in trust, ready to order from the site. I’ll probably get more traction as I add more products in the coming days and weeks. It's probably be a bit of trial and error, but so far, so great.

OI: What are your future plans for Opera Nabi? Have you considered special partnerships and collaborations with opera companies i.e. special sets for seasons or particular operas?

KC: I don’t have particular plans or projects, collaboration wise, with other companies as yet. But, I’m always open to collaboration, especially if a given project intrigues me personally and/or artistically.

If the Opera Nabi concept is of interest, I’d love everyone to please follow our Instagram. I promise to post more designs ASAP, and if people have ideas they’d like to share or want to discuss special commissions, please DM me. Happy Holidays to all, and please stay safe!

San Diego's Opera Hack: Optimizing Opera’s Future with New Technology

The San Diego Opera’s 2019 Opera Hack was held at Microsoft Corporation’s San Diego Offices on July 27-28, 2019. Photo: Angel Mannion

(Santa Fe, NM) - It started when The Santa Fe Opera tweeted about “Opera Hack”. We didn't know about this endeavor, so down the Google rabbit hole we went, followed by an email and phone chat with Opera Hack’s Angel Mannion, who got me up to speed. The top line from Broadway World:

“In July of 2019, San Diego Opera partnered with Microsoft, with support from Opera America and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, to bring together professionals from theater companies, tech companies, and prominent university engineering and theater programs for a two-day hackathon to discover new ways for technology to be used in theater.

Inspired by ‘hacks’ in the technological sector which often brings together experts in disparate fields to work together to solve a presented problem, usually in a limited amount of time, San Diego Opera's Opera Hack partnered participants with local universities and tech companies to come up with creative solutions to scenarios presented by San Diego Opera. Forty multi-disciplinary experts from around North America submitted sixteen proposals to a panel of tech and theater-based advisors.

$40,000 in funding was disbursed to the three winning ideas enabling them to develop their proposal over the course of the year. “

We’re honored to host Angel’s blog below, which details his professional journey at San Diego Opera, from onstage roles to behind the scenes, ultimately arriving at Opera Hack, managing this one-of-a-kind opera industry incubator. JM

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By Angel Mannion

(San Diego, CA) -My career with San Diego Opera began in 2011, working as a chorister while pursuing a music degree in college. I was fortunate to sing with the company semi-regularly until 2015, but following SDO’s 2014 season difficulties, I began to understand how the career of a professional musician could be unstable and expanded my horizons, exploring choral conducting and arts project management.

While my heart hasn’t fully recovered from singing in the company’s final production (at that time), I’ve come to realize six years later that I’m a better person and professional from the experience.

Over the course of ten years in classical music, I’ve learned that each season provides new reasons for companies to consider shutting down. While COVID-19 has brought us unprecedented performance challenges, it’s also forced our industry to sit down and acknowledge longstanding problems. If we could turn back time to the pre-pandemic years, wouldn’t it first be worth asking if prior business models were ever that beneficial? It’s common for a major American opera house to spend over $1MM on a production that the public will see and experience only a handful of times. Ticket sales rarely cover more than 25% of those costs, while the other 75% comes primarily from donations, grants, and government funding; this model hasn’t traditionally worked very well for opera.

Now that our operating environment is exponentially more difficult, we have the golden opportunity to entirely deconstruct how opera is defined, produced, and experienced.

The theater industry has already entered a new epoch of public performance. While we can’t control how the economic ripple effects of the pandemic will impact our patrons or government programs, it will take a long time for healthy attendance levels to return. If we can’t rely on performing in local theaters, we’ll need to place a priority on exploring other creative avenues - and venues - that serve our communities, locally and nationally. (Note: San Diego Opera did exactly this with its “La Boheme” performances this weekend at San Diego’s Pechanga Arena parking lot, read the San Diego Union Tribune story).

The most prominent figures in opera are conductors, musicians and composers. However, anyone who works in musical theater knows that the success of any opera is dependent upon the level of skilled labor that powers each production, including stage management, sets, wardrobe, makeup, and everything else that happens behind-the-scenes. High-level production for an opera house (especially a unionized one) is expensive to plan, execute, and maintain. So, (theoretically) the more money a company saves on individual productions, the number of productions will increase. And, hopefully, tickets will become less expensive to purchase.

As the cost of living continues to rise in major cities, younger people will have less financial freedom to choose opera as a new experience. We simply can’t assume or rely upon younger audiences to both become fans and financially support 75% of classical music’s costs as they age and (hopefully) become more affluent. As a proactive measure, it would be more prudent for our industry to immediately embrace and seek new technologies that make opera more accessible, relatable, and affordable to/for younger patrons.

Increasing and optimizing the use of technology in opera will make companies more nimble and competitive in an entertainment market catering to Gen-Y and Millennial consumers.

In order to accomplish this, opera needed both the opportunity and venue for coming together; a way to brainstorm how technology could transform the skilled labor side of opera, making it more efficient, more utilitarian, and more widely understood as public service and an art form unto itself.

The first Opera Hack was held at Microsoft Corporation’s San Diego Offices July 27-28, 2019. OPERA America hosted a webinar showcasing first hackathon winners on August, 2020. Opera Hack 2.0 is scheduled for 2021. Photo: Angel Mannion

San Diego Opera General Director David Bennett, center right, talks to participants at the company’s two-day Opera Hack event on July 27-28, 2019, held at Microsoft Corporation’s offices in San Diego. Photo: Pam Kragen for The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Opera Hack’s Angel Mannion (left at podium) with Opera Hacker Ellen Fishman, a member of the Synctus (TM) team, July 27-28, 2019. Photo: San Diego Opera

2019 Opera Hack-winning members of the Becoming team (left to right): John Burnette, Francesca Talenti, Shahrokh Yagdegari and Louis Pisha collaborate on their winning project, July 27-28, 2019. Photo: Angel Mannion

Cue Opera Hack. In the Spring of 2017, I was a part of the marketing team for SDO and had heard rumors that David Bennett was hoping to apply for an OPERA America Innovation Grant to fund a collaborative initiative between tech experts and theater artists. This idea immediately resonated because of its community-centric approach, so I volunteered to assist writing the grant application, with the understanding that I’d have the opportunity to lead and manage the project if it was successfully funded. 

Happily, OPERA America awarded San Diego Opera a two (2)-year grant in 2018 and Opera Hack was born; I’ve managed the project ever since. Following the award, I recruited a panel of local and national advisors to help create the platform (Matt Witkamp, Dr. Chris Warren, Vita Tzykun, David Adam Moore, Charles Murdock Lucas, Anne E. McMills, Ryan Hunt, and Victoria Robertson).

The mission of Opera Hack is broken down into the following pillars:

COLLABORATE - To be a platform that embraces diversity and solves problems by combining expertise from all backgrounds of theater and technology.

INNOVATE - To discover new methods for technology to be used in the production and presentation of musical theater.

EVOLVE - To promote new ways to make all forms and aspects of theater more exciting, affordable and sustainable.

As previously mentioned, San Diego Opera hosted the first Opera Hack in July 2019, a two-day hackathon at Microsoft’s San Diego corporate office. Forty multi-disciplinary experts from across the US and Canada convened to uncover new ways for technology to be used in theater. This group included representatives from Disney, Google Brain, and Microsoft; administrative leaders from Austin Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and Opera on Tap; as well as graduate engineering and music students from Florida Tech, Yale, Indiana University, University of Buffalo, UC San Diego, and San Diego State University. After submitting a total of 16 proposals to a panel of advisors, $40,000 was awarded to three (3) winning teams - OperaMap, Becoming, and Open Show.

Ashley Tata, a multimedia theater and opera designer and director, uses a virtual reality headset during San Diego Opera’s Opera Hack event July 27-28, 2019 at Microsoft Corporation’s offices in San Diego. Photo via Opera Hack, as printed in a San Diego Union Tribune story by Pam Kragen (August 14, 2019).

On August 26, 2020, OPERA America co-hosted an Opera Hack webinar, showcasing how our three (3) winning teams used their awards for research and development, as well as their results. That webinar may be viewed below.

Opera Hack’s winning ideas were exceptional, as were the equally-impressive thirteen (13) proposals in competition with them, including: wardrobe databasing; an automated winch system as an education tool; a budgeting app for technical directors; a conductor’s baton to automate light cues; a sensory accessibility headset for those with autism; and creative, new suggestions for enjoying opera on-demand at home or at the community level. All proposals are viewable here.

San Diego City Councilmember (District 1) Barbara Bry chatting with an Opera Hack participant. From her July 27, 2019 tweet.

Overall, our first hackathon was considered successful, but our biggest takeaway was that we’d essentially created an event for people to make up their own problems to solve rather than using the expertise in the room to solve the problems that we already had.

We knew that if we had the opportunity to do another Opera Hack, we’d approach it differently and more efficiently. Fortunately, we’re grateful to be doing just that, with assistance of a second OPERA America Two (2)-year Innovation Grant. We’re very excited for the 2021 iteration of our event, which has been redesigned to address our current cultural context and pandemic emergency. Opera Hack 2.0 will:

1) Conduct an industry-wide survey to identify specific, pre-existing challenges facing our industry;

2) Select the Top Ten (10) Challenges and hold an online-based, industry-wide hackathon to discover technological solutions;

3) Award a total of $15,000 USD to three (3) winning solutions selected by our Advisory Panel, and;

4) Provide an online platform to host all submissions so that companies and other interested parties may contact and further develop solutions with respective creators.

• Special note: all participants will have rights over their intellectual property and full discretion over the option to share their concepts via our online platform.

Want to get involved? Let’s collaborate!

Opera Hack’s goal is to use technology to create new efficiencies while bringing us closer together as collaborators. To achieve this, we need help from our community to identify problems to solve, recruit participants for our upcoming 2021 hackathon and develop meaningful work partnerships with other companies. Here’s how you can help:

1) Help us identify specific problems to solve together. We hope to uncover new issues that have yet to be exposed or realized. One of the most important elements of Opera Hack 2.0 will be bringing these new problems and challenges to the attention of all. If you work in the industry and have ideas in mind, please email us.

2) Participate in Opera Hack 2.0, Summer 2021. Our open call for hackathon participants will be deployed in early 2021. As of this writing, we haven’t yet announced dates for this one-of-a-kind online experience, but please join our mailing list to receive important updates.

3) Partner and Collaborate with Opera Hack 2.0. San Diego Opera cannot possibly solve all of our industry’s problems and challenges alone - we are but one company. But do you represent an opera organization that supports our mission and wants to get involved? Or are you perhaps a person of influence at a tech company, interested in the opportunity to shape the future of opera and theater?

Simply email us to arrange a phone call - we’d love to discuss how your organization could:

• Sponsor Opera Hack research, the development of current Opera Hack proposals as well as new ideas;

• Provide resources for Opera Hack participants;

• Provide a platform for us to grow our one-of-a-kind community of experts.

We’d also like to encourage everyone in the theater industry to use past and future Opera Hack results as conversation starters with potential corporate sponsors. Once we’ve fully identified upcoming Opera Hack 2.0 problems to address, we’ll begin strategically building new relationships, expanding our Opera Hack business ecosphere.

In closing, I’d like to recognize and thank San Diego Opera General Director David Bennett, SDO’s Director of Institutional Grants Justin Dake, OPERA America’s staff, the Opera Hack advisory panel (as above) and all Opera Hack participants for the open criticism, guidance and community-building they’ve each provided, ensuring that Opera Hack serves not only its mission but a greater purpose. Let’s get to work!

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In addition to being Opera Hack’s Project Manager, Angel Mannion splits his time onstage and behind-the-scenes working on community music projects. After studying music at San Diego State University, Angel founded Folklore Guild to bring high school, college, and professional singers together to record music for video game and television soundtracks. Folklore Guild may be heard on Chef's Table (Netflix) and Lamplight City (Grundislav Games). In 2018 and 2020, Angel successfully proposed and acquired two (2) $150,000 OPERA America Innovation Grants (via the Anne and Gordon Getty Foundation), funding San Diego Opera’s Opera Hack project and funding San Diego Opera’s Opera Hack project and securing Microsoft Corporation as a lead sponsor. As a baritone and conductor, Angel frequently performs with professional choirs, symphonies, recording studios, and churches in San Diego and Los Angeles.

Connect with Angel via LinkedIn.

Follow Angel on Instagram.

Stagetime Aims To Level Opera's Playing Field

Mobile and full-screen renderings for soprano Alexandra Smither’s Stagetime domain. Photo: Jennie Moser

(Santa Fe, NM) - In August, I came across an opera-singing friend on Instagram who was lauding a new platform called Stagetime, which she was proudly beta-testing prior to its public launch. Directed at opera singers, companies, agents and management firms, my initial assessment was a beautifully designed business ecosphere for opera industry individuals and entities (it’s actually more, but hold that thought). I also knew of Stagetime’s founder Jennie Moser and her graphic and website design achievements across opera. It took us a little while to connect, but when we did so last month, our chat was a delight. As hoped, Jennie was open to sharing her experience as the female founder of a VC-funded startup in the opera space. If contemplating your own startup or already on the entrepreneurial path, read on for insights and takeaways from an opera innovator forging her own path. JM

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By Jennie Moser

My year at the intersection of tech startups and classical music has been exciting and strange. When I looked around for other female founders in the art, technology, and venture capital space, my pool of peers was pretty much nonexistent, which meant that the frame of reference when I walked into a room to pitch lent me no support. No investor looks at me and thinks, “ah yes, we saw an excellent financial return last time we invested in a young woman with a background and market of classical music. This pitch is going to be great.” Don’t get me wrong — they don’t want me to fail either, but imagine giving someone your grocery list and then realizing that they don’t even know what a grocery store is. I have about 30 seconds to make sure that instead of an ill-informed tech wannabe with music degrees and subpar Excel skills, I come across as an articulate, multi-disciplinary professional whose diverse background makes my case stronger, not weaker. 

My case - the case for Stagetime - was not born on a white-board in an MBA classroom. It came through the repetition of helping artists and arts organizations become digital by building their websites (which I’ve now done 126 times), a process that takes me and my team around 100 hours and costs our clients thousands of dollars, while the rest of the world has long been connected via LinkedIn at a nominal cost.

When we place the burden of large-scale digital problem solving on individual artists and regional arts organizations, we set the financial barrier to entry damningly high. When we cut artists and the arts out of the conversation about technology and data, a disservice is done to everyone. 

Innovation is creative at its core, and I know that my tech and entrepreneurial colleagues would only benefit from having creative minds contributing to the future of the technology that is shaping reality before our eyes. Similarly, I see firsthand how my artist colleagues have more time to hone and distribute their craft when technology has the ability to make administrative tasks quicker and easier. Automation and digitization are not the enemy here — they free up invaluable resources, time, and labor, so that the arts can focus on, well, the arts.

When the arts are reliant upon manual, in-person processes to build bridges from the arts to the rest of the world, and vice versa, we create an insular vacuum. Our primary task is to find a digital home that shows us at our professional best as individuals, so that we can spend more of our time leveraging that technology to establish professional relationships that become symbiotically beneficial — first within our own industry, but ultimately, with the rest of the digital, professional world, which determines the technology and consumer-driven products that increasingly shape our global future.

So, how do creatives join the conversation?

“Siri, what is ‘venture capital?’”

“Alexa, what is 0.67% of 1.5 million?”

“Google, can you teach me how to sing?”

One of these questions is not like the other. In a world where data is queen, I felt alienated walking into meetings heavy on tech lexicon and MBA slang. I’ve watched the Khan Academy videos on venture capital a truly embarrassing number of times, I’ve had to text advisors at 11pm to ask how a pitch deck is different from a super fancy powerpoint presentation (spoiler alert: it’s not), and my social media confidence plummets when I realize I should share a recent pitch competition win on LinkedIn because, well, I don’t really know how to use LinkedIn.

If we’ve been on a Zoom call in the past year, you can pretty much guarantee my right hand was out of frame writing down words I’d need to look up later. “They didn’t teach us this in music school,” I say, followed by a smile. This happens more than I’d like, but it tends to remind people that I’m not ill-prepared or naive — I’m just hyper-trained in something totally different.

More importantly, all of those things I just mentioned are attainable via Google, textbook, calculator, or Khan Academy video. Numbers and jargon are automatable, replicable, search engine optimize-able. The way that I learned to sing isn’t. The creative side of my brain can’t be replaced by Google. 

Securing venture capital is tricky enough and my particular profile as a female classical musician made my job even harder. After our first meeting, one investor texted a mutual colleague “I think the opera girl might be onto something.” I had to find ways to go from “opera girl” to “potential colleague,” so I spent a lot of time figuring out how to equate our experiences (we can talk about the 'girl' part of this in another article).

The first few months of my path to investment were spent endlessly explaining the music industry and gig economy to people who were “familiar” with something called “the arts.” In this context, I’ll define “the arts” as the subconscious action of reducing creative-driven careers that don’t fit a typical corporate structure into a lump sum commodity containing vague job titles, zany creatives, big personalities, and bohemians waiting to be “discovered”. I maintain that if you go to music school to become mainstream famous, you should perhaps try another line of work.

“I remind the venture capitalists in the room that although I have degrees from the same institutions as they do, my career has never appeared in their LinkedIn feed. ”

Photo: FAYMOUS Studios / Fay Fox

My job was to become really good at painting a different picture for investors. My business pitch was mostly centered around my ability to provide context and draw parallels to the professional experiences of the investors in the room. “The arts” started to take the shape of opera and ballet companies with administrative and production staff. They had roles, titles, and pedigree just as structured as that of the investors in the room. It shifted from nameless singer/songwriters and piano lessons for their kids to a realization that, yes, there are indeed buildings where Chief Financial Officers and principal violinists do their work under the same roof, for the same organization. They were surprised to learn that a set designer was not a high school woodshop fanatic who jumped into the professional trade at 18, but someone with an MFA in Set Design from Yale.

That’s when the fun part starts. I remind the venture capitalists in the room that although I have degrees from the same institutions as they do, my career has never appeared in their LinkedIn feed. I remind them that although we’ve been discussing my pedigree and career for the better part of the hour, they still don’t know what I sound like - and how would they be able to glean that from my LinkedIn? Sure, I have a website, but how would they ever come across me in a professional context? They aren’t going home and stumbling across my website after some late night just-for-fun pre-professional opera singer Googling, I can promise you that. Pain points become apparent, and I go from “opera girl” to “colleague” with education and experience in an industry that is different than theirs, but that still has value.

www.stagetimearts.com

Our investments thus far have come from Elevate Ventures and the IU Angel Network who, once they had relatable insight into the arts industry, saw the value in investing in the arts via Stagetime. I win pitch competitions because Stagetime meets the requirements for technology, business model, market size, and financial projections, sure, but it’s also just...fun, and it looks good. The arts excite people. Whether it’s through their home city opera house or their favorite Netflix show, every one of my investors has a relationship to the product. Once they realize that, they start to feel an attachment to Stagetime, an emotional investment — and they like that. More than the capital, I’m excited that Stagetime has the resource of these investors’ experience in building viable, successful technology products. These are insights that are invaluable to the performing arts ecosystem, as the digital world is one where we have some undeniable catching up to do.

The best part about my job is that I don’t have to choose between the structure that makes a business successful and the subjective elements like attractive design and beautiful media — Stagetime is viable because both of those seemingly dichotomous things strengthen the product from opposite ends of the spectrum. I wouldn’t give up my music degrees or my financial models for anything. In fact, I’m really proud to have both sitting on my desk right now.

Learn more about Stagetime on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Visit stagetimearts.com

Parea Virtual Recitals: Contactless Personal Connection In Action

Parea Virtual Recital Series Co-Founders Will Meinert and Emily Misch.

(Santa Fe, NM) - As the pandemic continues to interrupt our ability to gather for live performance, opera singers around the world are actively meeting the moment. Over the last six months, many have applied their energies and imaginations to various virtual initiatives that, in no uncertain terms, pave the way to what could become standard across the performing arts - equally-weighted live and virtual programming running side by side. The Santa Fe Opera’s General Director Robert K. Meya said as much in a recent Associated Press article, highlighting the company’s well-received Songs from Santa Fe virtual opening nights.

Two singers who’ve taken up this digital / virtual challenge are soprano Emily Misch and bass Will Meinert. Based in Herndon, Virginia, Emily was set to be a Glimmerglass Festival young artist this summer, while Will was scheduled for his second season as a Santa Fe Opera apprentice artist. As their summers and lives changed, they began executing an ambitious plan. The results thus far are impressive; as of this writing, the Parea Series format appears to be the only one of its kind online. Viewers are treated to wonderful, longer form recitals with expert guest conversation around a given topic. Parea’s shorter form Instagram promotional videos also deliver maximum interest - and bang - at around three minutes (see below). If you’re seeking classical music entertainment with interesting, connected conversation in uncertain times, look no further. - JM

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By Emily Misch and Will Meinert

How do we maintain personal connection without personal contact? 

As opera singers, my partner Will and I have become experts at nurturing connections over physical distance. Our biggest success story may be our relationship: we met while performing Derrick Wang’s Scalia/Ginsburg together in 2018, then spent most of our first year as a couple on opposite sides of the country in different opera residencies. But we stayed connected.

Musicians get to be very good at this. One of the most maddening but also wonderful aspects of our profession is how we’re constantly traveling and forming new communities. It’s maddening because these communities are physically fleeting—at the end of a production, we generally go our separate ways—but wonderful because the ties we create often grow and strengthen over years of working together in different contexts. 

However, with the current public health crisis, those same ties can feel stretched thin. We no longer have the promise of “see you next season,” because none of us know when we’ll really be back in the theater. As the distance settles in and begins to seem more permanent, how do we nurture these personal connections? 

For Will and me, the answer was to create something new: virtual recitals in a unique format that allows us to look deeply and differently at the music we perform, safely collaborate, and strengthen our connections with musical friends.

In our Parea Series, Will and I perform music and then discuss it with expert Guest Artists in short video interviews. Our full-length recitals put these different perspectives in conversation to create a concentrated fusion of music and discussion available on a “pay what you want” and “watch when you want” basis. No in-person contact is involved in our work; our productions are completely COVID-safe for both audiences and artists. 

We believe that the personal connections involved in making music are just as interesting and important as the music itself, and that these ties bring us closer together, even while we’re physically apart.

CLICK IMAGE TO WATCH: Parea Series’ “Crisis as Catharsis” virtual recital promo and preview via Instagram.

Our Guest Artists are friends and mentors from a wide variety of our musical communities; while it would be rare for these people to all meet in person, our remote format allows us to have deeper conversations with a wider range of perspectives than would be possible at an in-person recital.

In case you’re wondering, we’ve taken our name from the Greek word parea, a concept deeply rooted in Greek culture. Parea suggests that personal connections and lively conversations with circles of friends are meaningful, valuable, and indispensable parts of life. In our work so far, this has proven to be very true. 

In our first recital, we performed music centered around themes of despair and hope, defiance in the face of oppression, and humor—all ways one might seek relief during a maddening and confusing time. We interviewed five of our musical friends: director Alison Moritz, Yale professor Richard Lalli, opera factotum Rob Ainsley, and coaches Vera Danchenko-Stern and Ken Weiss. For our second recital, we’re performing Menotti’s The Telephone, a short comic opera that, at its core, is about the ways that people communicate, connect, and adapt to reach each other. We’re interviewing friends old and new: composer Bruce Adolphe, pianist Anna Betka, baritone Trevor Neal (Artistic Director of Newport Music Festival) and, of course, our director—the phenomenal Audrey Chait, who directed us in that production of Scalia/Ginsburg two years ago!

Although we’re physically separated from our musical communities, our ideas about and passion for the music we perform keeps us in conversation, and deeply connected to each other. With the Parea Series, we invite you to join our circle of friends, and experience the personal connection that music—making it, talking about it, listening to it—can bring.

Visit Emily and Will at Pareaseries.com

Follow Parea Virtual Recital Series on Instagram.

Ascending Arts: Creating Opera's First Group Reiki Experience

Photo: Ascending Arts

(Los Angeles, CA) - Opera Singer. Reiki Master. Innovator. Maria Dominque Lopez is all of these and more. I met Maria in May 2020, two months into the pandemic. Connected by a friend through Instagram, it’s a pleasure to know her, as well as being one of her distance Reiki clients - an experience that opened the door to my own improved mental and spiritual health during these often dark and unprecedented times. It’s for all of these reasons that we were thrilled when Maria agreed to contribute some thoughts and reflections to Opera Innovation. In the blog below, Maria details her initial experiences with Reiki (which she explains and defines in her own terms), a one-of-a-kind approach to operatic performance and how the pandemic led to unexpected personal and professional innovation and growth. - JM

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By Maria Dominique Lopez

In the fall of 2019, I was in a trance-state while meditating. I felt a strong tingling in my palms and when I opened my eyes, I had a vision that a golden stream of healing light shooting out of my hands. The vision ended after a few moments, but the tingling never did. For months, I had no idea what this constant tingling in my hands meant, or why every time I touched someone in pain, their pain went away. After months of research, I decided to take my first Reiki course and I learned that I was already attuned by the universe and somehow had opened my own energy channels for healing. When I received my universal attunement to Reiki last year, I was so awed by the beauty, magic, and possibility of God’s Infinite Universe that singing completely lost its luster for me. 

This is a problem when you’re a professional singer!

It seemed as though I’d found my true calling, feeling more authentically myself than I’d ever felt before. I was a healer, coming into my own, and it had nothing to do with music. I seriously considered quitting singing in favor of starting a full-time Reiki practice, but COVID-19 hit. Now that the opera industry is on life support, the universe made that decision for me—at least for the time being—but I digress. So many friends told me, “you can do both,” and I knew that they were correct. But, I just couldn’t see how I’d still feel authentic making music anymore. It’s no secret that the ratio of work-to-reward is toxically skewed in the music industry. Why put that much of myself into a singing career when the monetary reward is abysmal? The spiritual and emotional rewards so much greater with Reiki?

And then I talked to James Mowdy of Opera Innovation and Jonathan Morgan of DominantArts.Design and they literally changed my entire way of thinking about it. They encouraged me to not just “do both” and keep them separate, but to find unifying thread(s) and MARRY THEM! 

In my Reiki practice, I work a lot on opening and balancing people’s chakras. Chakras are energy centers mapped throughout the body. Fun science fact: the endocrine system is made up of seven pairs of glands (adrenals/suprarenals, testes/ovaries, pancreas, thymus, thyroids/parathyroids, pineal and pituitary), all of which are located in the same areas as the seven main Chakras. Coincidence? I think not!

With our physical eyes, we can see the reality of what’s right in front of us - what is. But with our Third Eye, we can see what’s all around us - what can be. In short, the Third Eye helps us problem-solve.

For those unfamiliar, the Third Eye is the chakra that sits in the middle of our forehead, and it’s considered the seat of wisdom and understanding. We’re not talking about traditional college education or trivia knowledge here, rather, one’s openness to possibilities in a multidimensional universe. With our physical eyes, we see the reality of what’s happening right in front of us - what is. But with our Third Eye, we’re able to see what’s all around us - what can be. In short, the Third Eye helps us problem-solve.

I felt stuck with this dichotomy of Reiki versus music because My Third Eye was completely shut to the possibilities of a union between the two. James and Jonathan each challenged me to ask myself important questions - questions I might not have pondered on my own because I couldn’t see a workable solution. They helped open my Third Eye!

Sometimes, we all need a little help, a push in the right direction. Just because I’m a lightworker doesn’t mean I’m always enlightened! My Third Eye was closed to the greater possibilities, and I couldn’t have seen where this was all going without those nudges. After weeks of meditating and questioning, and hours of conversations with Jonathan about the unifying threads, I arrived at my epiphany.

#SingTheLight

I realized that in order to reinvigorate my love for music, I should infuse it with Reiki. Not only would I channel Reiki to myself, my colleagues, and the immediate performance space, but I’d also channel Reiki directly to audiences, hence Sing the Light. After all, music is transcendent and has the unique ability to touch the soul and soothe the spirit, as does Reiki, just in a different way. So instead of quitting music, I look forward to returning to live performance, and putting #SingTheLight into motion; when a concert goer buys a ticket to hear me sing, they’ll also be receiving group Reiki as an audience member.  

As a Reiki Master, my mission is to help a new generation come to consciousness, ascending to their own universal calling. As an opera singer, I already transport audiences through beautiful music. Through #SingTheLight, my intention is to do both, elevating audiences through music while also helping them reach their next level of ascension, by singing group Reiki healing right into them.

Not only would I channel Reiki to myself, my colleagues, and the immediate performance space, but I’d also channel Reiki directly to audiences. After all, music is transcendent, and it has a unique ability to touch the soul and soothe the spirit, as does Reiki, just in a different way.

#SingTheLight - connecting with audiences on this quantum level - will change the way we experience live opera.

Together, Reiki, music and #SingTheLight will comprise my life practice as Ascending Arts. Personally, this feels like so much more than a new business, company or brand. Ascending Arts is the most authentic expression of who I am as an Artist as well as a Reiki Master, in practice every day. Welcome to Ascending Arts, it’s my honor to hold this space for you.

Visit Ascending Arts on Instagram.

Photo: Ascending Arts

Finding Our Frosting: Frisson Films' Visual Brand Identity Process

By Elyse A. Kakacek and Ryan Rivard

(New York, NY) - Classical music is facing some considerable growing pains during these unexpected times. Of course, there’s no shortage of things to mourn, but at Frisson Films we are determined to move towards a brighter future. 

Frisson Films is a non-profit organization that is focused on the filmed expression of classical music. But more than that, we want to be an agent of change in the way we represent classical music through more modern avenues, bucking classical’s more traditional norms.

Our industry has been shackled to racist, socioeconomic, and sexist inequalities for its entire existence. The pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement have brought our brokenness into sharp focus, accelerating change, which could redefine classical music for the first time in a long time.

With performance spaces shuttered, classical musicians have a rare opportunity to pause, leave dead weight behind and realign our passion for the art form.

At Frisson Films, we see the evolution of classical music through film, as well as other, new and unexpected mediums. For us, it’s the tailor-made film score inside every waking moment - our heart strings play, feelings externalize, cells vibrate. If you haven't heard the word before, “frisson”, the French word for “shiver,” is the scientific term for a physical response to being moved by sound or sight. We live for these musical chills, more commonly known as goosebumps.

Our goal was to capture and translate these core beliefs and intentions into Frisson’s visual brand identity.

A dear mentor and voice teacher used to say “you need something to put the frosting on.”  I took this to mean that no amount of glitz, glamour or "hype" could ever replace the essence of music, expressed effectively, and what it does for and to people. In the same way, no amount of  branding would matter if Frisson wasn’t already the amazing double chocolate fudge layer cake and company of our dreams. Let’s start our discussion here…

Loving our cake

When filmmaker Ryan Rivard and I founded Frisson Films in New York City, our goal was to incite the discovery of classical music by expressing it visually, through film. Collaborating with artists of all disciplines and genres, we empower classical musicians to express themselves without preconceived ideas of how classical music should be expressed - we don’t believe in boxes.

Once a year, we screen Frisson’s projects for live audiences at a Greenpoint, Brooklyn warehouse. Over the last two years, we’ve released multiple mixed-media short films: L’Eraclito Amoroso (2018), Behold the Archer’s Skill (2019) and Don’t you weep when I am gone (2020), the latter being our most recent film and favorite project to date. Don’t you weep when I am gone features acclaimed baritone Will Liverman’s performance and personal arrangement of the traditional African American spiritual. Liverman was most recently heard as Papageno in The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera, we were so honored to have him on our screen. Thus far, our films have inspired many viewers to continue exploring classical music, key to our ROI, and two films screened in the UK, at the Everyday Arias and The Beeston Film Festival (2019/2020).  Frisson's use of film has also inspired other artists to embark on similar explorations. Along the way, we’ve cultivated a community of musicians, filmmakers, and artists all willing to experiment, which has become as important as creating our own, one-of-a-kind films. 

Finding our frosting

As Ryan and I became more aware of our unique positioning, it became clear that we needed to find the aforementioned frosting for our cake — to visually represent, with integrity, the essence and ethos of Frisson as described up to this point, while still resonating with our artists and audiences.

One of the first creatives to enter our consideration was designer Joe Bradford. Based in Providence, Rhode Island, Joe is a Design Manager for Hasbro Games.  Ryan and Joe had long-standing artistic respect for one another, so we knew we were in good hands when we asked him to come onboard.

In addition to designing our visual brand identity, Joe contributed other elements like the poster design for L'Eraclito Amoroso. The film marked Frisson Film’s UK and European debut in October 2019, screening in partnership with Everyday Arias at London’s Closeup Film Center and Nottingham’s Beeston Film Festival.

We began by sending Joe three things: a spec sheet referencing simple and striking designs, the definition of frisson and a photo of hairs standing on end. Then we dove headfirst into all the details. The three of us agreed that one of classical music’s biggest barriers to entry is its traditional aesthetic.  “As someone who didn't grow up with the genre, it often felt stuffy, exclusive, or out of reach,” Joe said. “I'm excited by the ideas of approachability and inclusion…Frisson Films' efforts to break the mold with a modern, inclusive aesthetic that enables people to discover a genre they might not have otherwise."  

We asked him to share some insight on his design process: “I began the Frisson logo design process with a round of digital exploration creating logo concepts with perfectly set typefaces, moving around vector anchor points with mouse and keyboard, adding filters and noise with the intention of simulating the look of goosebumps.” Unfortunately, it didn’t go as planned. “When reviewing the work a few days later, it felt cold, overthought and disconnected from the idea of classical music.”

We returned to the drawing board and settled on a revised goal for Frisson’s visual identity. After this conversation, Joe realized that the logo needed to be produced by hand.

Per Joe: “The goal for the Frisson Films visual identity was (for it) to resonate honesty and fervor, much like the creation and performance of classical music itself. It needed to be a statement of creative passion, perfect with imperfections. And so with this clearer vision of what the logo was trying to embody, I went to work on how to communicate that through the medium of pencil on paper."

When Joe sent over a gallery of possible logos, the choice was immediately obvious for us. “The choice of cursive was chosen as a signifier for speed and excitement, (bringing) to mind a vision of someone pouring out over sheet music, frantically making marks, the music in their head playing faster than the pencil can move across the sheet of paper.” It was honest, passionate, simple and resonated deeply. And yes, it gave us the requisite goosebumps!

Joe also shared that “the lines which ground the logo serve as an abstract motif of a music staff, and reinforce the idea that Frisson is lifting or rising.” We couldn’t agree more. When Frisson audiences, artists and fans see our logo, we hope this sense of movement transmits, but we also hope they hear a crescendo, or perhaps a bow quickly sweeping across violin strings. Allegro?!

The final product. Visual brand design by Joe Bradford.

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Experience our films (without paywall) via links above or here. Follow us on Instagram to stay updated on new projects releasing in the coming months, including a fully animated short film by Joe Bradford, set to a commissioned acapella piece for voices by New York composer Nathaniel Adams. We also have a special quarantine project to announce soon, and we’ve begun working on the planning stages of a filmed, full-length new opera by composer Dan Felsenfeld and librettist Bea Goodwin. 

If you’re moved and able, please consider a donation to help us fulfill our mission of inciting curiosity for classical music, film and the multitude of ways it is visually expressed. 

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Elyse Anne Kakacek is a Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director at Frisson Films. An American soprano living and working in New York City,  “Kakacek sets her smoldering lyricism into flame” (OperaWire) with her solo album Untethered, available on Spotify, iTunes and Amazon. Follow Elyse on Instagram at @frissonfilmsorg and @furelysek545.

Filmmaker Ryan Rivard is a Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director at Frisson Films. Based in Queens, Ryan is a Producer at Reel Works, a non-profit that mentors and trains New York City youth in filmmaking. Follow Ryan on Instagram at @ryanrivard.

Joe Bradford is a multidisciplinary designer and musician based in Providence, Rhode Island. Joe is currently a Design Manager for Hasbro Games where he has helped make your favorite board games for nearly a decade. Follow Joe on Instagram at @joebradford.