Connecting to Community

Fulfilling and broadening the vision of the company’s founders, Vancouver Opera has developed an ongoing series of community programs that explore meaningful issues and themes that arise from each season’s operas. The inaugural project was a “community forum,” a series of community events leading up to the 2002 production of Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men. The events addressed poverty, life with disabilities, and the role of art in effecting social change.
 

Since then, the company has produced several public forums on topics ranging from the plight of women during wartime (Aida) to the place of faith in politics (Dialogues of the Carmelites) to the boundaries of comedy (Rigoletto). In the spring of 2004, in advance of its new production of The Threepenny Opera, VO worked with more than a dozen cultural organizations to produce Berlin in the 20s, a city-wide series of events and performances focusing on the ideas and creations of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.
 

For the 2004 production of Madama Butterfly, VO forged deep relationships with many Japanese-Canadian individuals and organizations to produce a series of 22 events and performances, collectively called Views of Japan, which explored the rich and complex relationship between Japanese and Canadian Cultures. In 2005, leading up to Dialogues of the Carmelites, VO produced Church and State: Dialogues on Religion and Politics, a provocative series of lectures, forums and performances. And in 2006-2007, in the months leading up to The Magic Flute, Vancouver Opera collaborated with First People’s Heritage, Language and Culture Council to produce Where Cultures Meet, a series that explored issues such as cultural appropriation and intellectual property in the arts, and the degree to which cultures can merge in artistic endeavour. 

For the 2010 Canadian premiere of Nixon in China, an extensive series of events was produced, examining the legacy of the groundbreaking meeting between Nixon and Mao. The series included events with Justin Trudeau, Margaret Macmillan and Sen. John Negroponte, as well as a host of public forums, music and dance performances and film screenings.

Community events around 2011's world premiere of the new, VO-commissioned opera Lillian Alling explored themes of immigration and history, with film screenings, open reherasals, historic walking tours and public lectures.

Learn more about this season's community programs here.