Strategies

Opera Teasers

2 Colorado opera companies attract new audiences with fine dining and fine listening

by Eliza Bent

THE CHALLENGE

Variety is the spice of theatre initiatives, but sometimes programs just get stale. “Opera 101,” a lecture series co-sponsored by Opera Colorado, Central City Opera, Colorado Public Radio and the Denver Public Library, typically featured presentations by opera aficionados and musical excerpts from upcoming productions at the two opera organizations. “It was started to provide a free preview to people interested in learning more about opera and the seasons,” Valerie Hamlin, CCO’s communications director, says. But after a six-year run, the same people kept turning up, and many of them were already season subscribers to CCO, a summer festival, and OC, which operates on a fall-spring calendar. Hamlin reflects, “We realized were no longer reaching out to a new demographic.” It was time for something new—a sorbet to cleanse the palate.

THE PLAN

Opera Colorado and Central City Opera decided to sweeten the deal by adding a dose of cheese, wine and trendiness. The event—newly christened “OPERA Shorts! like CliffsNotes but with live music and good wine”—unfolded over several evenings at Denver’s hip downtown Alto restaurant in January through May ’08. Patrons bought tickets for $20, which included a 30-minute wine-and-appetizer reception followed by a 45-minute sneak-peek presentation previewing an upcoming opera. OC and CCO took turns introducing productions. Banished was the allusion to a college introductory course, and instead the evenings had a “lighter, non-threatening approach,” according to Hamlin. To achieve this end, the two opera companies used skits, music samples, factoids about staging, history and pop-culture references. CCO’s West Side Story, for example, presented an Animaniacs cartoon episode dubbed “West Side Pigeons,” in conjunction with skits. For Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, actor Emily Pulley wrote a whimsical limerick entitled “Oy, Susannah! (Also Known as Life’s a Blitch and Then You Die),” which was read aloud and later posted to CCO’s website. OC, on the other hand, set the story of Don Pasquale as a spaghetti western—so actors donned cowboy boots and hats and put on their best John Wayne drawls to perform a synopsis skit for patrons. “We really wanted to focus on fun,” Hamlin says.

KEY PLAYERS

The collaboration among the marketing and education and community programs departments of CCO and OC was essential in the implementation of “OPERA Shorts!” The camaraderie between the two organizations is longstanding; they have engaged in other community programs and marketing schemes in the past, such as joint subscriptions. “We hope that in working together through collaborations like these, we can expose more and more people in the Denver area and the region to the operatic art form,” Hamlin says. “We don’t look at each other as competitors.” The restaurant Alto, of course, also played a notable role by providing the food, wine and venue at a heavily discounted price. Colorado Public Radio was not involved in “OPERA Shorts!” due to the quick genesis of the project. “In the future, it would be great to have a new media partner with a different demographic—for instance, the Westword weekly newspaper, or a different radio station,” Hamlin observes.

WHAT WORKED

Hamlin says that attendees really enjoyed the gastronomical aspects of “OPERA Shorts!” as well as the brevity and merry tone of the evening. Alto certainly benefited from the series—with the presentation over by 6:45 p.m., many patrons stayed on for dinner. OC and CCO have yet to officially cross-reference their records and crunch numbers in terms of generated ticket sales, but Hamlin notes, “We saw many new faces, most of which were totally new to opera. We figure we attracted about 400 to 500 new potential audience members.” Hamlin describes a couple seated at Alto’s bar who, upon hearing the announcement for “OPERA Shorts!,” decided that $20 was a good deal. They joined in and stayed for the event. “And we also saw a lot of younger patrons. The average operagoer is about 60, so by ‘younger’ I mean fortysomethings!” Hamlin says with a laugh.

WHAT DIDN'T

“Since the restaurant remained open to the public during the presentations, there were the challenges of people walking through during the event,” Hamlin says, adding that seating was quite limited at 100. Getting the word out in new ways proved difficult, too. “We didn’t want to market to the same people, since the point of these evenings was to attract new audiences,” Hamlin says. The companies bought an e-blast list from Steven Kingsford’s company All About Denver, which proved successful.
Skeptics may argue that a program like “OPERA Shorts!” presents the danger of reducing operatic Camenbert to commonplace Cheez Whiz. Hamlin, however, believes that “if we do our job right with these previews, we will whet people’s appetites for each of the upcoming productions.”

WHAT'S NEXT

Hamlin says CCO and OC are in the process of devising new ways to collaborate. “Over the past year, we’ve worked together to promote each of our seasons at the Metropolitan Opera HD screenings at movie theatres [a worldwide program by the venerable New York institution] by putting together a program and passing out promotional materials.” Hamlin adds, “Perhaps we might consider putting together an ‘OPERA Shorts!’ program specific to the seasons of both companies that we tour around the region.”