Voices of Change: Reinventing Women in Opera

In the dynamic evolution of opera, women are playing pivotal roles not only as performers but as composers and opera house leaders. These remarkable women are breaking barriers and setting new standards for opera worldwide.
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Great conversation! So good to revisit Proving Up, I saw the recent production at UC Boulder and it was a real breath of fresh air. Also great to see how Houston Opera is changing the game, very exciting.
If I'd been at the dinner afterwards, I would have liked to talk about how the opera scene is now so wide-ranging that story doesn't necessarily have to be the central driving force.
I saw the American premiere of John Cage's Europeras 1 & 2 at the Summerfare festival at SUNY Purchase, which was one of the best experiences I've ever had, anywhere. I saw it years later at the Ruhrtriennale in Germany where it once again made the air feel different. It's a huge idea that changes you without you knowing exactly how it does that.
I use this as an example because the Europeras are perhaps the epitome of opera that doesn't have a story per se (Einstein on the Beach is another one) and they are finally now coming back decades after that US premiere happened.
Yuval Sharon has now directed all but one of the Europeras in the US. He also co-directed the world premiere of Sweet Land, which brought together composers (Du Yun and Raven Chacon), writers, performers and a visual artist in a custom built outdoor auditorium on a patch of contested land in a way I personally have never experienced before.
Sweet Land does have a story, but it's more like a confluence of multiple narratives expressed in a very different way from how "story" is commonly understood. When I watched the video, it felt more like a shamanic ritual.
I certainly enjoy operas with a strong storyline - I was riveted throughout by Proving Up - but for me personally operas that leave the storytelling to your own imagination and bodily response like Europeras and Einstein are extra special.
I also have a different view of opera in Europe. While government subsidy of some European opera productions may come with obligations to honor tradition, my experience is that the much more substantial government support lifts the bar way above that elsewhere. I've already mentioned the Ruhrtriennale which this year is presenting a major staging of a cycle of songs by PJ Harvey. Also Sasha Waltz directing and Cindy van Acker choreographing at La Monnaie / De Munt and Pierre Audi's phenomenal programming at the Festival d'Aix, which invigorates traditional and contemporary opera and other repertoire alike in astonishing ways - including co-productions of new operas by Kaija Saariaho, Bushra El-Turk and Betsy Jolas and jaw dropping stagings of Mozart's Requiem and Mahler's Resurrection Symphony directed by Romeo Castellucci, who really, really should be directing operas over here by now.
Castellucci has collaborated with women artists throughout his career, initially with co-founders of the company of "community of artists" Societàs Raffaello Sanzio Claudia Castellucci and Chiara Guidi then with the choreographer Cindy Van Acker beginning in 2005 with Societàs and continuing through productions of Parsifal, Die Zauberflöte, Das Rheingold, and Die Walküre at La Monnaie, Moses und Aron at the Paris Opéra, Tannhäuser at the Bavarian State Opera and Salome and Don Giovanni at the Salzburg Festival.
I've seen a few productions directed by women choreographers on tour, all of them by European opera houses - beginning with Trisha Brown's l'Orfeo (1998) and Luci Mie Traditrici (2001) for La Monnaie and on tour at BAM and the Lincoln Center Festival and the 2017 cinecast of Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's Cosi Fan Tutte for Paris Opéra. I imagine this must have happened in the US as well, but I don't know of any produced on the same scale. Women choreographers regularly work at the Met however mostly in productions directed by men. Mark Morris is the only choreographer I know to have directed at the Met.