Beyond the “Paint Jobs” in Opera production.
- Diego Barbosa-Vásquez
- Mar 18
- 13 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Let me begin with a statement that will likely unsettle some of my colleagues:
I don’t consider that the recently published guide, "Producing for Opera's New Audiences," is a solution to our field's complex challenges, rather it is a symptom of them.
I say this with enormous respect for the individuals who created it and the companies featured within it. I know their intentions are good. Their creativity is genuine. Their passion for opera is real. But good intentions do not change the data. And the data tells a story that the as a field we all are refusing to confront.
The Numbers We Cannot Ignore
According to the National Endowment for the Arts 2022 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, there is a catastrophe unfolding in slow motion:
2012: 3.2% of U.S. adults attended opera
2017: 2.2% of U.S. adults attended opera
2022: 0.7% of U.S. adults attended opera
In a single decade, opera's reach has fallen by nearly 80%. We have lost three out of every four audience members.
This is not a "challenge." This is not a "marketing problem." This is an existential crisis.
And yet, the guide proceeds as if the fundamental model is sound—as if we simply need to make our existing product slightly more appealing to the tiny sliver of the population that might, with enough coaxing, buy a ticket.
The Paint Job Problem
The guide offers strategies, all operating within what we can view as the "Product-Based, Transactional, Top-Down Model."
Product-Based: The opera is a finished product—usually a work from the European canon—to be delivered to consumers. The repertoire is the goal rather than the tool.
Transactional: The relationship between institution and community is one of exchange. Money flows one way; entertainment flows the other. And Art (that should be based in two ways communication) is not still very clear as success is measured in "butts in seats" rather that change in the full society.
Top-Down: Artistic decisions flow from very few professionals to the public. The community's role is to receive—and, if we're progressive, to feel "represented" by choices made on their behalf.
This model has brought us to 0.7%. Continuing to refine it will not reverse the trend. It will only slow the decline.
This guide, if analyzed through the cultural commons framework, is a catalog of how to produce paint jobs. Want to make Bohème feel local? Paint it Bronzeville. Want to make Carmen feel modern? Paint it with a new ending. Want to make Butterfly feel authentic? Paint it bilingual. Want to make Traviata feel social? Paint it with a party.
These are not sustainable solutions. They are retouches that doesn't take into account two very important elements:
Opera is FOR EVERYONE. But the way opera truly achieves this lies in how librettist have designed their librettos, and how composers have carefully designed their music to connect deeply with communities. You can explore this idea further in this article: “Folkloric or Popular Music Influences in Opera” (read it in full by clicking here).
We cannot simply “change the stage production” and expect everyone to connect equally to a tarantella that an Italian audience instinctively feels, or to a waltz that a Viennese audience recognizes as part of its cultural identity. Every society has its own music, cultures, sonorities, and “popular” or “folkloric” aesthetics. The great opera composers understood this—and strategically incorporated these elements into their works, creating strong connections with the communities they belonged to or sought to engage.
They leave the fundamental power structure intact: institutions still decide what stories matter, very few people is still control creation, and communities still just watch without any real decision making power.
Enter Chalamet
Into this landscape came Timothée Chalamet. When he said opera is a "dying" art form that "nobody really cares about anymore," he gave voice to what millions believe. The sad part for me as a professional and as a lover of this art, is that the data actually backs him up. But here's what the controversy revealed: institutions reported up to 30% first-time ticket buyers in the days following. Curiosity isn't the problem. When people are invited in, they come.
The question is whether we have anything substantial to offer when they arrive. A painted-over Bohème? Or something that actually belongs to them?
A Cautionary Tale from My Homeland
To give another explample of it, in 2022, Ópera de Colombia produced El Elíxir de Amor by Donizetti—a beloved Italian opera—set in La Guajira, home to the Indigenous Wayuu people with their extraordinarily rich cultural traditions. They painted an Italian opera with Colombian colors, using Wayuu culture as scenery, to sell more tickets? Or to use public funding into producing the same type of stories broadcasted over and over?
The Wayuu have their own stories. Their own music. Their own languages. Their own culture. In addition, the Caribbean region has MULTIPLE stories and musical traditions that deserve to be broadcast to the world. We have composers capable of creating new works. We have librettists who could craft stories rooted in these places.
Instead, we produced Donizetti—again.
*Don't get me wrong, I love L'elisir d'amore. I have conducted it some times, I love to party with its tarantellas, and I love to sing Una Furtiva Lagrima (or even better listen the amazing performance of Rolando Villazon when he perform it twice because of the outstaning ovation and both performances are totally different, unique, and AMAZING!)
But, when 0.7% of the population engages with opera, when public money supports our work, when communities are rich with their own cultural heritage—can we afford to keep making these choices and giving voice to the same?
Understanding the "Club Framing"
To understand why we keep applying paint jobs instead of rebuilding the structure, we need to look at our field through the lens of political economy.
Our Opera field operates as what is call a "Club" —a closed system where a relatively small group of stakeholders hold decision-making power. This "Club" determines what repertoire is produced, who gets to produce it, what constitutes "quality," and who belongs.
Within this Club framing, "innovation" means finding new ways to keep the Club viable—new audiences to recruit and think like them, new revenue streams to tap. But the fundamental structure—who holds power, who makes decisions, whose stories matter—logics remains unchanged.
The guide is, from this perspective, a Club sustainability manual. It never questions whether the Club itself is the right structure for the 21st century.
The Cultural Commons Paradigm
Now imagine an alternative: the performing arts as a cultural commons.
Imagine a lake. Multiple stakeholders benefit: tourists, fishers, companies, farmers, municipalities. Each has responsibilities to maintain the lake's health based on the benefits they receive. The tourist leaves no garbage. The commercial fisher fishes sustainably. The utility company ensures its operations don't degrade water quality for everyone downstream.
A commons is not "owned" by any single stakeholder. It is shared. It requires collaborative governance. It demands that all stakeholders have a voice in decisions that affect it.
Now imagine the Opera Experience as a common:
Professional companies benefit from a rich cultural ecosystem while sharing the benefits with its stakeholders.
Community members participate as creators and members of the decision making processes of their performing experiences, not just consumers, they become part of it in many ways and support it in multiple ways.
Educational institutions developing future artists and audiences within a holistic understanding of the field.
Donors and funders invest in shared cultural wealth and benefiting from a thriving society.
Artists at all levels find opportunities to grow and contribute.
Each has responsibilities. Each has voice. Each contributes to the health of the whole.
This is not a metaphor. This is the operational foundation of everything we do at the Performing Arts Laboratory.
Want to learn more about it? See this for the indepth research behind all of this: https://www.barbosavasquez.com/single-post/opera-sustainability-by-diego-barbosa-vasquez
The Opera Camp™ Model:
Let me start by clarifying that the Opera Camp™ is not the only way to experience opera. Ultimately, if we follow the Cultural Commons framework, the way we experience opera (and all the arts together) will be defined by the full spectrum of stakeholders. The way we organize it will be done in a manner that we ALL feel is coherent with our needs and our possibilities. And for sure, it will be adjusted in each locality based on their own diverse stakeholders needs.
One clear example of it is the concert I co-curated and conducted with Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra that got more than 70% of tickets increase, 40+ organizations involved, and outstanding feedback from boards, subscribers, first time attendees, and musicians. It was a totally different “way of experiencing performing arts” compared to the Opera Camp model, but still based on the main framework of Cultural Commons. There full communities were part of the curation of the repertoire decision making process thanks to an strong empowerment of Greeley Philharmonic work (you can read more in depth about this experience clicking here).
However, to reach the point where communities are empowered to be part of the decision-making power behind their performing arts experiences; where artists understand their outstanding contributions to the field, often sacrificing many things in their lives to create art; and where donors understand that their financial support doesn't mean they own the experience, we need a process. And in Opera where the opportunities to generate this process are reduced because of the nature of the art (that is very expensive and we don’t have to much “shots” to try because of reduced performances compared to orchestras -while a small budget orchestra can have 6 or 7 concerts per seasons, opera companies of similar budgets can produce one or two only-) we need a strong and proven process.
First and foremost, we need a process where we all understand what opera actually is and, together, define what it means also to us as full communities. And the only way to do that is to truly be involved with the art itself (meaning all the arts collaborating together) and to experience it in our own skin, not only seeing it but being part of it. Because, once you experience that feeling of belonging to opera, there is no return: YOU LOVE IT.
And then, it doesn't matter if you decide to continue as a professional, developing the full acrobatic skill necessary to perform a perfect Rossini aria, or if you become a strong opera supporter as a member of the audience. Ultimately, opera is for you because you belong to it. You understand how important the artists, the staff, the donors, and the audience are; we all need each other to actually create opera.
This is what the Opera Camp™ model does. It provides a safe pathway to foster a genuine sense of belonging and ownership of our Opera field.
Repertoire as Tool, Not Goal
To talk about repertoire let me start clarifying that for me all musics, stories, cultures, and values deserve to be broadcasted, and of course that included standard canon repertoire. That’s the reason I have conducted, rehearsed, memorized, and studied more than 350+ works from multiple styles, eras, and latitudes. (You can see the full list here: https://www.barbosavasquez.com/repertorie
That broad understanding of the full universal repertoire has allowed me to professionally inform the Opera Camp™ model and in general my work as conductor, where repertoire is not the final desired outcome. It is the tool that enables full stakeholder interaction.
When repertoire becomes the goal, we end up prioritizing familiar titles, centering artistic leadership, and treating communities as audiences to be cultivated.
When repertoire is a tool, we ask different questions and are not responded by a few rather by a full spectrum of stakeholders:
What stories does our community need to tell and listen right now?
What values do they want to explore?
What cultural traditions deserve to be centered in our communities?
How can creating opera strengthen our social fabric?
This is not theoretical. This is what we have been doing since 2018 in the Opera Camp™.
The Full Architecture of the Opera Camp™ Model
1. Pre-Production Meetings
These are not marketing events. They are governance structures—spaces where community members help determine what stories will be told, what values centered, what cultures represented.
The March 26, 2026 meeting at La Casa (Indiana University's Latino Cultural Center) is free and open to all. Community members will learn about Seeking/Buscando El Dorado, meet the creative team, influence future repertoire, and learn about opportunities to contribute.
This is co-creation from the beginning.
2. The Bloomington Opera Camp™ (BOC)
A two-week immersion where ages 7 to 70+, beginners to professionals, create opera together. Majors in Opera Singer, Orchestra, Fine Arts. Minors in Fine Arts, Dancing, Arts Administration.
A beginner sings alongside a professional. A 9-year-old painter works with a 60-year-old set designer. A first-time arts administrator manages alongside experienced professionals.
This is not "outreach." This is integration.
More info here: https://www.performingartslab.com/oc/bloomington-in
3. CommunityOperaScores™
The engine that makes multilevel, multilingual, multicultural collaboration possible. Traditional scores are amazing, but are amazing in its full structure and logics we should not adapted them in a way they lost their own identity, we must respect the values, cultures, and stories they are trying to broadcast and convey. In addition, even that those scores were designed in a multilevel setting allowing different levels of performers, they are of course professionally targeted to a very specific type of singing and acting that is ONLY one way of doing opera. Similarly, these scores were built under different societal realities and needs, and despite their “universality” many people claim, the reality is that many of them lack connection with current societies realities and needs, becoming totally disconnected to majority of community members as NEA data supports.
CommunityOperaScores™ are created specifically to solve this problems under the Opera Camp™ model. They are specially built to allow a full spectrum of stakeholders to collaborate in a safe space. You can see professionals, students, and amateurs doing opera side by side in a multilingual, multilevel, and multigenerational setting.
Seeking/Buscando El Dorado - 2026: Original in English, Spanish, and Muisca. Latinamerican musical flavors. An opera that explores the myth of El Dorado through an Original Plot centered in today’s needs of collaboration, family values, and cultural literacy.
The Knight of El Dorado - 2026: Original in English and Spanish. An opera that explores two communities whose answer to these questions could not be more different: One whose empire views art only as something monetizable to be mass-produced, and one whose village celebrates art as a collaboration that anyone can be a part of.
Both of them were created based on the March 2025 BOC Pre-production Metting: Repertoire where communities told us which cultures, values, and stories they wanted to see on stage.
This is intentional design for inclusion.
4. Composition and Libretto Program
Due to the decline in audiences and the fact that our field invests millions of dollars to "paint" the same operas trying to solve the problem that they don’t connect with audiences, there are very limited opportunities for creators to develop new works. As a field, we are losing the expertise required to build this amazing an very complex art form—where all arts collaborate together in perfect synchronization, despite all the difficulties this entails.
It is our responsibility to keep this art form alive, not only by training the next generation of creators to think in terms of community collaboration, but also by giving them the platforms to broadcast their voices, stories, cultures, and values with the same level of respect and professionalism. This is why this program exists.
For the 2025-2026 cohort we will feature Seeking/Buscando El Dorado premiered by the Bloomington Opera Camp™ in 2026, and immediately following its premiere, it will tour four more countries thanks to our allied orchestra networks, ensuring this becomes a global event.
5. BOC Fellowships
This is the platform for professional artists to deepen their practice in community-engaged settings. Fellows learn that their role is not to dictate but to facilitate—to bring expertise into partnership with community wisdom.
The 2022 Los Angeles Experience: Proof of Concept
The first image: Sunday, June 12th, 2022—one day after camp began. A day off. I was watching soccer when I noticed two children from our camp, ages 5 and 12, studying the libretto and vocal score. In their free time. For pleasure.
Two children, choosing to spend their Sunday studying an opera. Because it was theirs.
The second image: Opening night. At the post-performance gathering, a parent, a Rotary member, a city councilor, a faculty member, and a young artist talked as equals. They'd built something together.
One audience member said: "The 'Land of Chaos' choir made me realize the urgent need for understanding others."
This is not feedback about high notes. It's about lives transformed.
Want to know more in depth about this full experience: https://www.barbosavasquez.com/single-post/opera-by-and-for-the-community-collaborative-arts-summer-camp-2022
The Five Dimensions of True Sustainability
Dimension | Product-Based Model | Opera Camp™ Model |
Artistic | Keep Euro-centric canon alive through reinterpretation | Generate community-informed works |
Financial | Convert newcomers into subscribers; depend on wealthy donors | Participants invest; become advocates; organic audience growth |
Social | Parties around performances | Community built through the art itself |
Cultural | Translate/decorate; set European operas locally | Center authentic cultural expression as foundation |
Ecological | Rarely addressed | Local creation; sustainable design; content engages nature |
A Clarification
The Opera Camp™ model is not the only way to do opera. Traditional or new productions of Carmen and La Bohème have their place. I personally love to conduct these works. I have wept at the end of La Bohème. And for sure a Wagner opera done with the proper voices, full scenario, and full orchestration is very powerful and moving too. The question is not whether these works should exist and be produced, of course yes. The question is who decides what stories are told, which operas we should do, and who gets to participate in telling them.
We need empowered audiences, artistic administrators able to see the full picture, and full stakeholders willing to understand the needs of each other to take those complex decisions. The Opera Camp™ is a path to create that.
What the Chalamet Moment Really Teaches Us
The 30% increase in first-time attendees is evidence of unmet curiosity. People are interested. They just haven't had a pathway to engagement.
The question is whether we have anything substantial to offer when they arrive. A beautifully produced Bohème? Yes, that's something. But is it enough to sustain their interest?
The Opera Camp™ model offers a different answer. When people participate in creation, they don't just attend—they belong. They don't just watch—they own. They don't just consume culture—they create it.
That is not a paint job. That is a paradigm shift.
An Invitation to My Colleagues
Should we keep making the same product marginally more appealing?
Data is clear, that paradigm has brought us to 0.7%, continuing to refine it will not reverse the trend. The Opera Camp™ model offers a different path. It is proven. It is replicable. It addresses not just the symptoms of our crisis but its causes.
Come see for yourself. Attend our March 26th Pre-Production Meeting. Participate in our Bloomington Opera Camp production (May 26 to June 6), talk with a 10-year-old who painted her first set, or a 60-year-old who sang his first solo.
Then ask: Is our goal to sell tickets—or to ensure opera belongs to everyone?
The answer changes everything.
A Final Thought
When only 0.7% of the population engages with opera, we have to ask: Whose art form is this? Who does it serve? Who gets to decide?
The product-based model has given us centuries of magnificent works. I am grateful for every one of them. But it has also given us a field in crisis—a field that reaches fewer people every year, that struggles to justify its place in public life, that too often feels like a club for the initiated rather than a commons for all.
The cultural commons model offers a different path. It asks us to share power, not just programming. It asks us to trust communities, not just professionals. It asks us to measure success not by tickets sold, but by lives transformed.
This is the work we are doing at Opera Camp™. This is the work we will continue doing in Bloomington, in Los Angeles, and wherever communities want to reclaim their creative voice.
The tools exist. The research is done. The model is proven.
Now we need the courage to use it.
More info about the Opera Camp™ here: https://www.performingartslab.com/oc
Disclaimer
This article reflects the personal opinions, interpretations, and academic perspectives of the author, Diego Barbosa-Vásquez, and is intended for informational and discussion purposes only. It does not constitute factual assertions about any organization, including OPERA America, nor does it represent official final positions of Diego Barbosa-Vasquez neither the Performing Arts Laboratory. All data referenced are drawn from publicly available sources and are interpreted by the author.
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