Indie Opera

Every business enterprise, large or small, faces similar challenges. Where is the market for what they’re selling? How do they generate cash flow to keep the company afloat and, ideally, growing? How do they judge success? In most cases, it’s the bottom line, but are there other measures as well? Customer satisfaction? Community improvement? Personal esteem?

Opera is a business, and whether we’re talking about an institution like the Canadian Opera Company with its $40-million-plus budget, or a tiny, independent operation with zero staff and negligible other resources, the motivations for creating art and being able to continue to do so are fundamentally the same. But in the world of independent opera, the reasons for persisting are head-spinningly diverse compared to the goals of most established companies.

Independent opera companies fall on a spectrum. Wayne Strongman began Toronto’s Tapestry Opera 40 years ago with a group of like-minded artist colleagues looking for a more challenging repertoire. Tapestry, like many fledgling indies since, has continued to champion new works as its budget has grown beyond $1 million. Some would say it’s gone beyond the notion of an indie enterprise.

And then there are the passion projects, the crusaders, the eclectic creators determined to find work for themselves and for other struggling artists by sheer force of will and self-belief. New companies have been invented out of necessity, to create opportunities for underemployed singers, for instance. Both Toronto’s Opera 5 (2012), led by Rachel Krehm and Winnipeg’s Manitoba Underground Opera (2010), founded by Brendan McKeen with some of his University of Manitoba student associates, launched their foray into the business of opera out of that pragmatism.

And the motivation can get more granular than that. Vancouver’s Mariposa Opera, begun in 2012 by two women who have been friends since grade school, dedicates itself to empowering singers