The Case for the Boutique Opera Model: A response to Andrew Potter’s Open Letter on the Sustainability of a Life in Opera

When I read Andrew Potter’s open letter about his decision to step away from staged opera, I first read it as an opera administrator and then through the lens of a performer and singer.

Years ago Andrew performed with Loveland Opera Theatre at one of our galas, when I was first getting my feet wet as a performer, long before I would find myself responsible for leading the company. I have watched his career carry him from stages like ours to some of the largest in the country.

When an artist at age 43, with an instrument in its maturity, reaches the conclusion that the economics and sacrifices of staged opera no longer make sense for his life, it deserves serious consideration from those of us responsible for stewarding this art form.

His letter identifies problems many singers recognize immediately: Travel, housing, lessons, coachings, preparation, childcare, lost income, and weeks or months away from home can transform a seemingly respectable contract into one that barely breaks even.

From the other side of the table, there is another uncomfortable reality: the artist and the company can both be underpaid at the same time.

A singer can look at a contract and correctly say, “I cannot live on this.”

An executive director can look at that same contract and correctly say, “I don’t have more to give you.”

Neither statement makes the other false.

A nonprofit opera company cannot manufacture money simply because everyone involved deserves more of it. Someone must buy a ticket, make a donation, award a grant, sponsor a production, or underwrite the difference. Administrators are trying to raise that money inside a culture that does not automatically value what we do.

That is difficult to admit because those of us who love opera understand the extraordinary human achievement it represents. The trained human voice, orchestra, literature, language, acting, dance, scenic design, costume, lighting, and theatrical craft converge for a few fleeting hours of performance.

There is something worth preserving in that pursuit of beauty and excellence.

But believing something deserves to exist does not mean a community owes it an audience.

We cannot demand that our communities value opera. We have to give them reasons to value it, and that responsibility belongs to all of us.

Artists deserve respect, transparency, humane working conditions, and as much compensation as an organization can sustainably provide. Companies should not use prestige as currency. But artists are participants in building audiences as well, and artistic leaders have perhaps the greatest responsibility of all: make the work matter to members of the community and they will invest in its preservation.

Potter’s letter and my own observations as a performer have made me reconsider something deeper: what have we taught singers about what a successful career looks like?

For generations, the ladder has been relatively clear: conservatory, young artist program, small regional company, larger regional company, management, major American house, international career.

Yet the next step is always somewhere else. Another city. Another audition. Another plane ticket. Another temporary apartment. Another several weeks away from your family, friends, partner, children, students, and community.

But what happens when someone successfully climbs that ladder and discovers that the economics still don’t work?

Perhaps we don’t need a better ladder.

Perhaps we need stronger places to stand and plant roots.

I believe one answer may be a renewed regional model of professional opera and what I have come to think of as Boutique Opera.

Not every American community needs a miniature Metropolitan Opera. Many communities could sustain something smaller, more flexible, and deeply embedded in local life.There is a renewed vitality in many of Europe’s smaller opera houses, demonstrating the enduring strength of locally rooted institutions in sustaining the art form. 

Imagine an accomplished singer residing and working in a community. They teach. They perform concerts. Perhaps they have another profession. They sing leading roles with regional companies and collaborate with local orchestras and musicians. Audiences begin to recognize them. Donors know them. Students learn from them. They raise their children in one place. Sometimes a significant engagement takes them elsewhere, but this is the community they choose to land in and the community that welcomes them home.

That person is not necessarily a failed version of an international opera singer.

That can be a successful professional artist.

Boutique Opera can help make that possible, and I know this because it is a world I’m living in and the ecosystem in which I operate. 

The model does not mean lowering professional standards. It means separating professional excellence from institutional scale.

A boutique company can cast exceptional regional singers, employ local professional musicians, create ambitious theatrical work, and still rehearse around the realities of people’s lives. It can use alternative venues. It can collaborate with neighboring organizations rather than duplicating infrastructure. It can combine experienced professionals with emerging singers in genuine apprenticeship. It can experiment with concert opera, film, chamber productions, education, and interdisciplinary work.

Most importantly, it can allow artists to put down roots.

The great houses will always matter. International careers will always matter. There should always be places where opera exists at its grandest possible scale, and there will always be extraordinary artists whose lives and careers take them around the world.

Perhaps we have made the mistake of treating that model as the definition of professional success rather than one version of it.

I have watched this play out in company culture. Some of the most difficult casts with whom to build genuine community have been those in which a majority of artists consider their involvement as just the next rung of their professional ladder. When an engagement is understood chiefly as something to move beyond, it inevitably changes how people participate while they are there.

Conversely, some of the healthiest, most joyful, and most artistically generous casts I have experienced have been filled with people who understood that their work mattered here. They took ownership of the production, invested in their colleagues, cared about the audience in front of them, and recognized that creating something excellent within their own community was itself meaningful artistic work.

But this relationship has to be reciprocal.

A company cannot ask artists for loyalty while offering them nothing in return.

If we want singers to invest in their artistic communities, organizations must invest in those singers, casting them repeatedly when appropriate, showing loyalty to proven artists, creating opportunities for their growth, respecting their time, connecting them with other work, paying them increasingly well as resources allow, and treating their development as part of the development of the institution itself.

Investment also means listening.

Following each production we solicit anonymous feedback from our artists about their experiences. We ask what worked, what didn’t, what they needed, and what they believe we could do better. We read those responses, discuss them, and use them to inform decisions about the seasons that follow.

Sometimes building community means hearing criticism, changing a process we thought was working, setting institutional or personal ego aside and admitting that someone else can see a weakness more clearly than we can. A healthy artistic institution should not merely hire artists. It should be capable of being changed by them. We are inviting artists to help shape the place they might choose to stay.

A measure of a healthy regional opera ecosystem should be whether talented artists can look around at the community they already inhabit and think: I don’t need to leave here to grow. I can help grow what is here.

Putting down roots does not have to mean settling, it can mean being an architect and active participant in building the foundation of a great arts organization. 

That is the experiment we are undertaking at Loveland Opera Theatre. We certainly haven’t solved the economics of American opera. Like organizations across the country, we wrestle constantly with the tension between what artists deserve, what productions cost, what our community can sustain, and what audiences want to see.

But, I increasingly believe the future of this art form may depend less upon sustaining the institutions of the past and more upon cultivating interconnected local ecosystems in which artists, audiences, educators, donors, and organizations grow together.

It should also challenge one of our deepest assumptions. The problem isn’t simply that we aren’t paying singers enough to keep climbing. We need to ask why we built an industry in which climbing and continually leaving somewhere behind became the principal definition of success.

What if the future of American opera isn’t about reinforcing a broken ladder? Could it be about building a new one that supports our own regional ecosystem?

If we can build places in which artists can work, teach, perform, raise families, collaborate, belong, and still pursue artistic excellence, perhaps fewer singers will eventually have to choose between the art form they love and the life they want to live.

In doing so, we won’t merely preserve opera. We will give our communities a reason to believe opera belongs to them.