Opera America

Today's episode is part of our Arts and Health series, which highlights the benefits of the arts on wellness.

Listen in as we're joined by a distinguished panel, including world-renowned artist and advocate and LA Opera Special Projects Advisor Renee Fleming, neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas, founder and CEO of Social Rx Chris Appleton, and moderator Michael Bobbitt, President and CEO of Opera America.

Join us as they extol the value of the arts in bringing meaning to life and as they expand the definition of health to be characterized not simply by the absence of disease but by the presence of meaning.

Arts and health is a fertile field of exploration, and LA Opera is proud to be at the forefront of this movement.

Chris Appleton is the founder and CEO of Social Rx, formerly Art Pharmacy, which is building healthcare infrastructure for social prescribing.

His work focuses on how providers can connect patients with arts, culture, nature, movement, and other community-based resources and on the evidence systems and payment models needed to make those connections sustainable.

And I'm Michael Bobbitt, president and CEO of Opera America.

Before coming to Opera America, I led the Mass Cultural Council, where I had the opportunity to work with an extraordinary team advancing and launching the first-in-the-nation's statewide solution to arts prescribing.

It, it was a terrific program.

Uh, it was a post-graduate fellowship, uh, for a full year, uh, w- run by the League of American Orchestras, which, um, along with, you know, Opera America, uh, Dance USA, um, are a large umbrella organization, um, advocating for orchestras across the country.

And that was a year-long program.

I was, I had 15-week posts at the Houston Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, and the Baltimore Symphony.

The full British artistic scene goes in panic and they don't know what to do because they never had to develop that infrastructure of funding outside of give me money, right? So, I really urge Serge Zorni to take the Opera Europa helm.

And I also wanted to be here because the Dallas Opera has a seat in the Opera America group and we just have a new CEO.

I really think that we need to start thinking with a commercial aspect of survival and thriving, right? Like we have to address the relevancy issue of our art form.

If we don't think...