Two Doors Into Opera

As described last week, my composer friend Tony Plog and I have written two operas for children and two for adults. What we lacked was a group to interact with—a door into opera. 

It turned out to be two doors. 

The first door opened when my friend and fellow librettist, Vanderbilt’s Josh McGuire, recommended we talk to Darren Woods, artistic director of the Seagle Festival in upstate New York. Seagle Festival is the oldest and best-established opera training program in the U.S., and several years ago Seagle added new opera development to its roster of activities. In 2021, as part of that program, Darren produced a workshop version of our Christmas opera, A Letter to Santa.

Encouraged by our success at Seagle, Tony and I decided to attend that year’s National Opera Association conference, to promote all our operas.  

NOA, we had learned, was one of two big opera organizations—NOA for university-based programs, and Opera America (OA) for professionals—and we had decided our operas would probably have more early success with universities. 

Our operas were well-received at NOA, but there was an unexpected bonus: NOA members, it turned out, were a small, friendly group who were passionately dedicated to opera and eager to connect with others, such as Tony and me. We made not just connections but friends, people eager to hear about our year’s activities and new projects. What a wonderful group! 

We’ve now attended two NOA conferences and are going to a third this January. There, we’ll be seeing our friends, and they’ll be seeing our operas.