“On paper,” said Doug Anderson, artistic director and co-founder of the Opera Company of Middlebury, “it’s fairly impossible that we exist.”
Anderson just finished the sold-out run of Donizetti’s “La Fille du Régiment” on June 8th, in the company’s 20th season. Jim Lowe’s review in the Times-Argus called it “absolutely delightful” and “virtuosic.”
In the company’s entire history, “virtually every performance has been sold out,” Anderson said. “It just shows how much the community is supporting what we’re doing.”
Established in 2017, the nearby Barn Opera in Brandon is a relative newcomer to the state’s scene. But audiences have already flocked to the opera house where Joshua Collier is the artistic director. Having been first brought to the area by Anderson in Middlebury, Collier was named one of Vermont Public Radio’s 40 artists under 40 in 2019.
For both directors, the intimacy of their productions is crucial: The Town Hall Theater in Middlebury seats 232, and the Barn Opera House just 110.
“I love the size of our house,” Anderson said of the historic Middlebury theater. “Suddenly, the drama, the narrative story, can (be) told in subtle and very effective ways.”
He fell in love with Vermont during a stint teaching at Middlebury College. Despite the fact that the job was temporary, he built a house in East Middlebury.
“In a sense, it was foolhardy,” he said. “I didn’t know I was gonna run a theater and run an opera company.” After his 3-year teaching contract expired, he would otherwise have been jobless.
But in 1997, Anderson walked into what would become the Town Hall Theater and fell in love. Then, while the newly purchased theater was still a construction site, he made another leap of faith. Working with a team of local artists, he produced the company’s first opera: Bizet’s “Carmen.”
“There was sawdust in the corners,” Anderson said of that early renovation period. “Ten thousand bats flying around.”
The production felt like a risk, but it turned out to be a huge success, with budding operatic talent impressing all comers.
“Before we knew it, we had sort of committed ourselves … let’s turn this into an ongoing thing,” he recalled.
In 2015, Anderson hired Collier, who sang in Puccini’s “Turandot.” Though the production only lasted a month, the experience of Vermont lingered in Collier’s mind as he returned to Boston.
Two years later, on a video call with his 1-year-old daughter, he hit a wall. He had been away performing 10 months out of the year, he said, on far-flung regional gigs with companies from New Hampshire to North Carolina.
“She looked behind the iPad, and she couldn’t find me, and she started to cry,” he said. “I said: ‘Something’s gotta give.’”
And through serendipity, he said, “I found this beautiful place and this wonderful community.”
He arrived back in Vermont in 2017, expecting to become “the hermit opera singer,” far from the urban centers and their packed concert halls. He joined the board of a struggling nonprofit, at the time called Brandon Music. He told the board members he could produce an opera on the company’s home stage — which happened to be a barn.
“I was told it’ll never work,” he remembered. “You’re gonna get 30 people.”
The 50-seat barn sold out immediately.
Two years later, he had successfully raised half a million dollars and bought a bigger barn. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he created six live recordings of socially distanced opera casts.
But the limited geographic reach and expense of his productions continued to trouble him.
His mission to “take a sledgehammer” to the socioeconomic exclusivity often associated with opera has fueled significant expansion. He’s founding another company, Opera Vermont, which will be associated with Barn Opera but will focus on reaching new audiences.
“Vermonters don’t want to be told that an art form is above them,” Collier stated. “They want to be moved by the power of the music.”
(His barn opera house gives out free local beer before every performance. Jeans and T-shirts are encouraged.)
The new project will see Collier’s productions move throughout the state to other participating venues, including the Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester and the Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro.
“A state opera company doesn’t have to be something where people go to it,” he said. “It can be a company or an organization where we go to the people.”
The Opera Company of Middlebury recently merged with the Youth Opera Company of Vermont to broaden accessibility and develop local talent. It also offers a program that offers free show tickets to audience members under 26.
One thing both directors stressed is that their work never stops being risky.
“Every year, it’s a major struggle to get to the next year,” Anderson said, adding that ticket sales cover just 30% of the cost of the production. Barn Opera also relies heavily on private donations.
“We have to think about what the scale of philanthropy means,” Collier said.
While $100,000 is a drop in the bucket for some major companies, Collier said, for Barn Opera, it can cover two years of programming.
The success of the local opera companies hasn’t been lost on the Vermont Arts Council, which works to promote the state’s “creative economy” as a critical financial engine. A recent study showed that the arts are responsible for significant tourism and other sources of growth, according to Amy Cunningham, the council’s deputy director.
“In a very small state, we’re lucky to have two really dynamic opera organizations,” Cunningham said, noting that a third company, Opera North, based in Lebanon, N.H., is also accessible for Vermonters on the eastern side of the state.
“Just across the river!” she said.
According to Maria Laskaris, Opera North’s development director, Vermonters make up 30% of the company’s audience. She called the Upper Valley, regardless of state lines, “a community that is eager to see the arts and support the arts.”
In a relatively rural area where arts aren’t always widely accessible, Cunningham lauded the opera companies’ commitment to community and educational outreach.
In the post-Covid era, full theaters in any context is good news, she said.
This fall, Barn Opera will present the world premiere of “Truman and Nancy” by William Zeffiro. The Opera Company of Middlebury will also premiere a new work by local composer Jorge Martín before its feature presentation of Derrick Wang’s “Scalia/Ginsburg.”
Opera North’s summer festival will kick off in July with “Orpheus in the Underworld” and “Rigoletto.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: How two Vermont professional opera companies happened by accident.