New Opera Companies and New Operas since 2000

This is just a general call for any info about Opera groups/organizations or music ensembles which perform opera that have formed since 2000.  Given what I said in my previous post about the local opera scene in the area, a recent piece about the rise of Chamber Opera in New York, and what I’ve posted about market and audience fragmentation, I thought it might be interesting to see how much new opera activity has happened since the new millennium.

As many of you know I just love to create lists, or rather, databases. I remember when IU started offering their Music Informatics degree I thought that I might have found my calling, but I’m far too much of a performer and composer to really seriously entertain entering that field.  So I do what I can with the resources I have.

That being said, I’ve started compiling a list (and as with all the other lists, I’ll eventually find some more useful place to host the information in a usefully retrievable and searchable way) of New Opera Companies.  No, not Opera Companies that perform New Operas (though I am interested in that too), but all recently formed Opera Companies in the US. I’ve set the cut-off line at 2000 and up though I am already filling a spreadsheet with all US Opera Companies (to complement my database of all US Orchestras which have existed).

As you can see from my list as of today, there are currently 42 Opera Organizations and 3 music groups which have performed operas. Note that I haven’t come across any organizations which have recently formed since 2012 but in the three year period from 2010 to 2012 more than a third (15) of the organizations listed were formed.  Think about that for a second.  That means, less than two thirds (27) of all the organizations since 2000 were formed in a ten year period (2000-2009). If we just go by a ten year distribution, and we don’t assume there’s an acceleration of new organizations formed, we could predict a total of 50 new Opera groups by 2019–which would be nearly double the amount of groups formed in the decade from 2000-2010.

I know, wishful thinking–and my data is far from comprehensive (not that this stops Classical Music Crisis folks from making grand proclamations about the field, right?).

Anyway, if you know of any Opera organizations or ensembles which have formed since 2000, please let me know. I’d also appreciate info about operas composed since that date (though this won’t be included in this list). Once I’m reasonably sure I’ve got something relatively comprehensive, I’ll start analyzing the data.

Please forward any and all info to: silpayamanant@gmail.com