They have integrated other art forms and other forms of music into what they do.” ‘They have done ‘La Traviata.’ They have done lesser-known pieces. “They did ‘Troubled Island’ and the cast was African American,” Owens said. The company hasn’t been afraid to wade into politically minded works, like Derrick Wang’s “Scalia/Ginsburg,” or to take on contemporary work, like Bonnie Montgomery’s “Billy Blythe.” The attraction of Opera in the Rock for Owens was in what he calls the company’s “progressive” programming.
I see this as an organization that has a lot of potential.” Anytime you can create positive change is interesting. I have always been interested in arts management. My super passion is theater because that is where I started. “I am passionate about all of the arts,” he said. An African American native of Pine Bluff, Owens got a degree in theater from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Owens doesn’t look like most of his peers in the opera management world, where leadership is predominantly white. “I want to make Opera in the Rock a key player in the arts community in Arkansas and in Little Rock,” Owens said. There have been changes to leadership, too, with the October hire of Fred Owens as president/CEO, who has outsized ambitions for the upstart opera company. The company won’t be staging full-blown operas there, but the group has purchased and installed a gleaming new Steinway piano that will aid with workshops and fundraisers. In December, Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott cut the ribbon for Opera in the Rock’s new downtown office space. Things are changing for the company, though. Puccini’s “La Boheme” and other works went up at UA Pulaski Tech’s Center for the Humanities and Arts, one-acts have been staged at The Studio Theatre and gala events have been hosted at Wildwood Park for the Arts and the Junior League Ballroom.
Maybe that’s because, though Opera in the Rock has staged major works every year, it’s never had an address of its own. This is the case even as the company, founded in 2013, has pretty much cornered the market for opera in Central Arkansas, and boasts the title of Arkansas’s only professional company member of Opera America. Not yet 10 years old, Little Rock’s Opera in the Rock arts organization has flown largely under the radar.
0 kommentar(er)
