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This innovative company, which won acclaim for staging operas in unconventional spaces and ways, said it could no longer keep up with rising costs.
By Javier C. Hernández
For more than a decade, On Site Opera, a small but nimble performing arts group, brought opera to unexpected places: the Bronx Zoo, Madame Tussauds, cafes and soup kitchens. The company won acclaim for its innovative approach, including a Beethoven song cycle performed by phone during the pandemic.
But on Tuesday, the site announced that it was stopped, saying that the increased load may no longer be addressed. The 3 full-time workers in the company will lose their jobs; No other functionality is planned.
“This is a very unhappy decision, and it’s very heartbreaking,” said Corey Kinger, chairman of the company’s board of directors. “The overall fundraising environment is tightening, while the charge to produce opera is expanding dramatically. “
Kinger described the resolution as a “preventative and guilty closure,” saying the opera at the had no remarkable debts or commitments.
The company had a budget of about $1 million. But, he said, opera prices are about 50% more to produce than they were 3 years ago. Government contributions and gifts from foundations have also declined beyond the year, he said.
Across the country, opera corporations of all sizes are struggling as they look to rebuild after the pandemic. Shipping costs, costumes, and fabrics have all increased. And funding from foundations and governments is rarer.
In recent years, corporations have made discounts, adding Opera Philadelphia, Seattle Opera, Portland Opera, Tulsa Opera, and Syracuse Opera. In New York, the metropolitan opera has been spared tens of millions of other people, from its endowment to costs.
On the site, Opera, founded in 2012 through level director, Eric Einhorn and maker Jessica Kiger, was a bright spot in the global opera and gave hope that the genre can thrive in the 21st century. The company organized 30 jobs, adding the first five in the Global.
Shostakovich’s inaugural production of “The Tale of the Silly Bathrough Mouse,” a Russian fairy tale, which the corporation brought to the Bronx Zoo in 2012. During the pandemic, when cultural establishments were closed, the society presented live and interactive Facta performances of Beethoven’s “An Die Ferne Geliebte” over the phone. And he brought his first production through the mail “The Beauty That Says: Diaries in Song”, sending a series of envelopes full of text and objects, as well as links to recordings of song cycles.
Einhorn, who stepped down from his position as artistic director in 2023, said Tuesday at an opera site “undertaking artistic boundaries through the reinvention of what opera can be. “
“I am incredibly proud of the way we have given life to this vision in the beyond 12 years,” he said. “I will be grateful to many incredible artists, personal, board of directors, followers and audiences that have been components of the holidays on the site. “
Javier C. Hernández informs classical music, opera and dance in New York and beyond. Learn about Javier C. Hernández
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