Cincinnati Opera lost its 100th season, but its history and future remain intact

For Chris Milligan, April 15, 2020, was the lowest moment of his 23-year career with the Cincinnati Opera. That was the day the opera board voted to cancel what was to have been the company’s 100th anniversary season.

“We knew it was the only way forward,” says Milligan. “But hearing the votes – ‘aye,’ ‘aye,’ ‘aye’ – was so disheartening. We did it for all the right reasons. But it was really heartbreaking.”

“Heartbreaking” barely begins to scratch the surface of the decision. The 2020 summer season was to have been a spectacular one, with a pair of world premieres and dazzling productions of audience favorites. They’d programmed a new work by composer Bryce Dessner, as well, and begun plans to create a 100-voice community choir called “Harmony.”

And then it was all gone.

Before we mourn it too deeply, though, let’s remember this; Cincinnati Opera will be back.

This is a company that was born in the wake of the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic, after all. It weathered a pair of world wars, the Great Depression, a technological revolution and untold onslaughts of political and social turmoil.

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In case you need another reminder of why we should be optimistic about the company's resilience, you might want to tune in to WGUC-FM at 1 p.m. Saturday, July 18, for the broadcast of Cincinnati Opera’s world premiere production of “Fellow Travelers.”

The company presented Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce’s opera in 2016. It’s a relatively small piece. But its dramatic impact is enormous. And that first production offered palpable evidence to the opera world of just how much Cincinnati Opera had matured.

Based on Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel, the opera is set in Washington, D.C., in the 1950s – the height of the McCarthy era. And while uncovering accused Communists – the “Red Menace” – got most of the press, grandstanding politicians were on an equally vehement tear to rid the government of gay people, the so-called “Lavender Scare.”

“Over 5,000 people lost their jobs,” says Cincinnati Opera artistic director Evans Mirageas. “Countless others killed themselves.”

The opera, like the book, revolves around a love affair between two men working in government. They become enmeshed in political machinations and intrigue and, in the end, a shattering betrayal.

Staged in the Aronoff Center’s 437-seat Jarson-Kaplan Theater, it was a wildly successful production. It was heralded as an important new addition to the opera repertoire. And for Cincinnati Opera, it proved an important milestone.

“It was our first New York Times review in nearly 30 years,” says Mirageas. “And, as important, it sent a wonderful sort of shock throughout our profession that the Cincinnati Opera has the taste and the conviction to stage such a powerful new opera.”

Cincinnati Opera had been involved in the work from its most formative stages. It grew out of an innovative collaboration with the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music called “Opera Fusion: New Works.”

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“It has been a very important new program for us,” says Mirageas, crediting its two founders; Marcus Küchle, the opera’s former director of artistic operations, and Robin Guarino, chair of CCM’s opera program. “It has said to the opera industry that you, as a composer or director or librettist, can bring a work that you are preparing for performance and have it workshopped by incredibly gifted singers surrounded by all the attributes of a world-class conservatory.”

The program doesn’t exist solely to develop new works for the Cincinnati Opera. Rather, it has become a resource for the entire opera world, with productions developed here in Cincinnati going on to play in dozens of other opera houses.

There have been many important milestones in the course of the company’s 100 years, but few quite so game-changing as moving performances from the enormous pavilion at the Cincinnati Zoo to Music Hall in 1972. It revolutionized the company’s presentations, enabling productions that were as technically advanced as anything in the world.

Artistic director James de Blasis took full advantage of the move. But it was his successor, Nicholas Muni, appointed in 1996, who moved the company to an entirely new plane.

“Nick very pointedly told the board that you cannot have the budget of a regional opera company and expect national attention,” says Mirageas. “The board responded and it led to a transformation of every aspect of the company.”

Nowhere was it more evident than in the 2002 production of Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s “Dead Man Walking,” the true story of a nun and the spiritual relationship she builds with a condemned killer.

“That launched a new era and created an appetite for opera by living composers – and particularly by living American composers,” says Mirageas. “With that, we signaled to our community that it was very, very important to us to present opera that existed within living memory.”

In earlier years, programming a steady diet of new works was regarded as institutional suicide. The theory was that once you got beyond opera standbys like “Aida,” “La Bohème” and “Carmen,” audiences would stay home.

But the groundwork had already been laid by the 1984 hiring of a young opera enthusiast and marketing whiz named Patricia K. Beggs. In time, she would become the company’s CEO and general director. (She retired March 2 and remains in an emerita position.) Working with savvy designers and photographers, she helped to revitalize the company’s image. Fortunately, the artistic directors she worked with – de Blasis, Muni and beginning in 2005, Mirageas – were able to deliver on the promise of that marketing.

Ever-so-gradually, Cincinnati Opera began to attract a broader and more diverse audience. The theory was that since they didn’t have decades of experience with the opera, they might be more willing to experience a new work.

So by the time of “Dead Man Walking,” audiences were ready. Soon, there followed a steady stream of important contemporary productions, including John Adams’ “Nixon in China” (2007), Richard Danielpour’s “Margaret Garner” (2005) and Scott Davenport Richards' “Blind Injustice” (2019).

Over the course of the past 15 years, the opera’s programming has grown bolder. But it has never abandoned the rich trove of the standard opera repertoire.

“It’s all about finding a balance,” says Milligan. “This season, we had two world premieres, but we also had ‘Barber of Seville’ and ‘Aida.’ That’s our mission – to present the great works of opera, but also to develop new repertoire and new works.”

And in doing so, the Cincinnati Opera has proven to its audience and to the world around it that it is no longer a company content to simply preserve the operas of the past. It has become a company that is also shaping the opera of the future.

“As much as it was heartbreaking to have to cancel this season, I know we’ll be back,” says Milligan. “It gives me chills when I think about the curtain going up next season. That’s the moment we’re living for.”

Broadcast of “Fellow Travelers”

When: 1-4 p.m. Saturday, July 18

Where: WGUC, 90.9 FM

Information:cincinnatiopera.org