Connections Across Time and Space: Opera in the Cosmos

Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices

Seven years ago, Santa Fe Opera started a conversation that would reverberate throughout American Opera, shaping this celebrated art form into something more reflective of the world in which it's created. Today, Opera For All Voices (OFAV) commissions have surpassed even our wildest storytelling expectations.

Key Change co-hosts Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia tuck into the time machine for a season-ending trip around the OFAV universe, revisiting the initiative's greatest hits and offering fans a glimpse at what's to come––with Ruth Nott, consultant, Opera for All Voices; Brent Michael Davids, composer; and Mary Kathryn Nagle J.D., playwright, attorney, and member of Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

OFAV began with a simple premise. "We wanted to see what other voices were available and had interesting stories to tell," Ruth explains. So, how'd we do?

In the past 18 months alone, OFAV has produced two world premieres in Santa Fe, This Little Light Of Mine and Hometown To The World, a groundbreaking workshop in San Francisco for The Pigeon Keeper, and OFAV on Broadway featuring Hometown To The World. We've also strengthened our bond with the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council.

While reminiscing is fun, the Key Change time machine is actually a forward-focused intergalactic vehicle. Brent and Mary Kathryn have plotted next season's creative journey from pueblo to cosmos. "It'll be one of the very first operas that centers a Native woman protagonist," hints Mary Kathryn. "We're asking questions that go far beyond Indian country or the history of the relationship between the United States and Native people. We're asking questions that pertain to all of humanity, and what is our relationship to the universe."

Catch a ride for Season Five coming soon!

FEATURING

Brent Michael Davids - Composer, Member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community

Mary Kathryn Nagle J.D. - Attorney at Law/Playwright/Screenwriter and Member Of Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma

Ruth Nott - Consultant, Opera for All Voices

RELATED EPISODES

KCP0404 - Story With Purpose: The Origin of the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council with Renee Roybal and Claudene A. Martinez

KCP0405 - Spark of Imagination: Generations of the Pueblo Opera Program with Sonja & Seth Martine

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Key Change is a production of The Santa Fe Opera in collaboration with Opera for All Voices.

Produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios

Hosted by Andrea Fellows Fineberg & Anna Garcia

Audio Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe

Show Notes by Lisa Widder

Theme music by Rene Orth with Corrie Stallings, mezzo-soprano, and Joe Becktell, cello

Cover art by Dylan Crouch

This podcast is made possible due to the generous funding from the Hankins Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and an Opera America Innovation Grant supported by the Anne & Gordon Getty Foundation.

To learn more about Opera For All Voices, visit us at SantaFeOpera.org.