Minnesota Opera Publishes First Annual Video Report

Minnesota Opera has published its first annual report in video for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2013. To watch the video, which highlights the company's 2012-2013 season, visit mnop.co/annual-report.

Minnesota Opera celebrated its 50th anniversary season, which honored the company's half-century commitment to opera's full spectrum, with a year of artistic, programmatic, educational and institutional growth. It featured two stagings by the young director Thaddeus Strassberger - Verdi's monumental Nabucco in a production that looked back at stage traditions of the past and a forward-looking Hamlet, Ambroise Thomas' rarely performed masterpiece based on Shakespeare's unforgettable tragedy. Capping the company's 12-year exploration of Bel Canto-period repertoire, Anna Bolena, the conclusion of Donizetti's Tudor trilogy of operas, was presented in a stunning new Minnesota Opera production directed by Kevin Newbury. Minnesota Opera's New Works Initiative, the company's landmark program designed to infuse the operatic art form with new commissions and revivals of contemporary works, presented its fifth opera with the world premiere of Doubt by composer Douglas J. Cuomo and librettist John Patrick Shanley, based on the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play. The season concluded with a spectacular, sold-out production of Puccini's Turandot.

Other high points of the season included: the appointment of Kevin Ramach as President and General Director; Michael Christie's first full season as Minnesota Opera's Music Director; community residencies in Austin and St. Cloud; Tempo's tenth season of engaging 20- and 30-somethings; Project Opera (Minnesota Opera's training program for youth age 8-18) performances of three fully staged one-act operas by Stephen Paulus, Kurt Weill and Benjamin Britten; a broadcast of the Pulitzer Prize-winning world premiere of Silent Night on Twin Cities Public Television; a New York preview of Doubt as a part of Works & Process at the Guggenheim; announcements of the New Works Initiative revival of Dominick Argento's The Dream of Valentino in 2014 and the world premiere of The Manchurian Candidate by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell in 2015; successful contract negotiations with the Minnesota Opera Orchestra; a banner year of audience engagement on Facebook, Twitter and other prominent social media platforms; and the celebratory encore to the season, "Opera Under the Stars" - three free outdoor concert performances of Puccini's La bohème which drew more than 10,000 Minnesotans in June.

"Our 50th anniversary season was an ambitious one that included four operas we had never produced before, a spectacular staging of Turandot, amazing casts and an ambitious schedule of events; and our free outdoor concerts drew more than 10,000 people" said President and General Director Kevin Ramach. "The combination of these unusual costs and a slight shortfall in our anticipated revenue resulted in a deficit of $169,600 - the first Minnesota Opera has experienced in 10 years. Despite the disappointment of not ending the season in the black, we look back on our 50th season as a tremendous year - one that led to the 14-year high in subscriptions we are enjoying this season."

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