Quarantine Opera: Creating musical community in a pandemic

Now more than ever, we can see how fragile it is to not have this entrepreneurial mindset in your toolset, ready to spring out when times suddenly change as massively and abruptly as they have this year. Many other types of artists use their creativity to shape new approaches; why shouldn’t opera singers do so, too? Besides the extraordinary situation we are in right now, we also have the issue of the regular opera audience getting older and smaller. We must reach out to the younger generations much more, and always review the relevance of what we are doing in a contemporary context instead of relying on status quo and thinking that the art form with its traditions will survive no matter what.