(upbeat music) (bright music) - How do you make Detroit Opera accessible to the community here in Detroit and Metro Detroit?

- I think we're trying to do a number of different things.

First of all, just a few years ago, we changed the name to Detroit Opera to really make sure everyone realizes how much pride we have being right here in the heart of downtown Detroit.

And I hope that signals to our public that we're all about Detroit and that we're all about the people that live in the Metro Detroit area, and that the operas that happen here, really one of my goals is to think, can we create productions here that you cannot really experience quite the same way anywhere else?

And so that's involved some world premiere productions, some new productions, and of course productions in various different venues around Detroit that I think really speak to a certain kind of character of what Detroit's about.

- What does the spring and summer look like for Detroit Opera?

- We have two other pieces on our main stage at the Detroit Opera House, both of which I'm really excited about.

One is, and they're both, you know, what I'm really excited about both of them is that they are firsts for Detroit Opera to be doing these pieces.

One of them is the first time we've ever done an opera on the main stage written by a woman named Missy Mazzoli, who is known as kind of the Mozart of her generation is what New York Magazine, I believe, called her with good reason.

She is an incredible composer, beautiful work that she's written called "Breaking the Waves," which is based on the Lars von Trier film and is actually an incredibly engaging and powerful story.

Pretty dark, it's not for the faint of heart, but it is an absolutely ravishing musical score that I think anyone that comes is gonna be completely captivated by.

So I'm really looking forward to that in April.

And I'm gonna be directing a piece called "The Cunning Little Vixen" in May, which after a piece that is so brooding and dark like ""Breaking the Waves," it's really nice to end the season with a comedy and one that is really good I think for the whole family.

It's a 90 minute piece called "The Cunning Little Vixen."

It is by the Czech composer Leos Janacek and it's based on a comic strip that he read in the newspaper.

And so for our production, we're taking that comic strip aspect really seriously.

There are screens that are up where the singers are basically gonna open portals in the screen, stick their head through the screen, and their bodies will be animated as the animals.

And we'll see the animals running all over the screen.

And the singers have to close these portals and kind of pop up in exactly the right spot to line up with their bodies.

But something really playful, I think really joyful.

Also, some of the most beautiful music I think that's been written for opera and the first time that we've ever performed either this opera or the composer.

And so for me sometimes people think opera is something that people think, I know everything about opera, it's Puccini, it's verity, it's et cetera.

But there is so much more to explore always with opera.

There's so many new directions that it's going and have gone, you know, that opera has gone that I am so excited to be exploring with Detroit audiences.

- Yeah, I love how you're taking these operas and making it like almost modern.

We were here for "Madame Butterfly."

How you took that opera and created this virtual reality space, it was incredible, really blew you away, but then you still had the music that was just so compelling and beautiful as always.

And then "Ainadamar."

- I loved "Ainadamar."

"The Fountain of Tears" was really one one of my favorites I think during my time here.

I mean really it's something that in the case of "Madame Butterfly," I do hope audiences realize it's like the music stays the same, but when the visual changes, you plug into this music in a totally different way.

I think for people that didn't know "Madame Butterfly," maybe they went home to study it or to listen to it on Spotify or Apple Music or however they like to listen to music, it hopefully piqued their interest in what was originally supposed to happen versus why did the director make these choices to take us into a virtual reality space, and what kind of illumination does that bring to a piece.

And so I've been really excited that we could offer that for every single piece that we do.

- So April 25th through 27th, the NFL draft is coming here, your next door neighbor, Ford Field.

So what is the Detroit Opera, do you have anything going on those dates?

- For people interested in architectural history, how that relates to culture, we definitely do tours of the building and it's really well worth the tour because the building itself is over a hundred years old and has gone through so many different lives.

And we have great Dawsons that can tell so many fantastic stories about the life of this theater, the Detroit Opera House.

And I think that that's something that I hope we can continue doing, which is give people one reason to keep exploring.

And I hope that as they come here, they'll discover their own reasons to come back, not just the opera, but everything else that Detroit I think has to offer.

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