"BEST OPERA COMPANY IN LOS ANGELES"
- LA WEEKLY, 2018
OUR STORY
Founded in 2011, Los Angeles’s Pacific Opera Project (POP) is dedicated to providing quality opera that is accessible, affordable, and entertaining. POP hosts hundreds of new opera-goers each season, while welcoming back a growing number of opera enthusiasts, producing close to 50 operas in just over 11 seasons. POP’s productions have reached over 40,000 audience members, including 5,000 children through its critically acclaimed productions of Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio with Star Trek themes, and Magic Flute themed as a 1980s video game.
To connect with contemporary audiences, POP creates custom translations for foreign-language shows, transforming the libretto with a modern vernacular. Championing accessibility as a pillar of the organization’s structure, POP offers low ticket prices and livestreams its productions to the public for free. As a leader in innovative programming during the pandemic, POP offered 26 performances of live opera outdoors from 2020 to 2021 with The LA Times noting that a POP production was “the first major musical or theatrical event in Los Angeles Country presented for a live audience in nearly 14 months”.
POP has experienced fast and organic audience growth over the past decade. In 2021, POP established an engagement department and designed an in-school program for elementary students, which has resulted in the organization’s current presence in fifteen Title-I classrooms. POP additionally partners with the National Federation of the Blind, developing a curriculum for blind youth and delivering many of its concert programs in Braille with audio descriptions of stage action during performances.
MISSION STATEMENT: To provide quality opera that is accessible, affordable, and entertaining in order to build a broader audience.
VISION STATEMENT: In the future, opera will become a greater part of popular culture, as we develop a larger local community of opera lovers and launch the careers of opera makers.
POP seeks to create a welcoming environment and a strong sense of belonging for every person
onstage, backstage, and in the audience by:
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Keeping ticket prices low
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Providing complimentary tickets for low-income audience members
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Creating new libretti (lyrics) that reflect how we speak and tell stories today
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Authentically engaging with the Highland Park community at our studio, The POPera Shop
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Robustly introducing high-quality opera education to children in Title-I schools and historically underserved neighborhoods
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Recruiting performers from a variety of backgrounds, to reflect the incredible diversity of our community on stage
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Developing a Board of Directors that reflects the vast range of the diversity of Greater Los Angeles
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Challenging our inherent biases and organizational structural barriers in order to holistically diversify POP's stage performers, Board of Directors, volunteers, audiences, and administration.
PACIFIC OPERA PROJECT
IS A PROUD MEMBER OF
