Stanis Smith: The Mother Art

Uh, it's, it's wonderful to see your personal connection to opera, and it's exciting to think about your, um, your vision and your understanding of opera as you become the chair of, of the board.

And I think, you know, Vancouver Opera has been doing a lot of work beyond the main stage in recent years in schools, libraries, partnering with Indigenous communities.

Why do you, why do you think that that work is important to an opera company in 2026?

Well, I, I think it's very important for us to be part of the community because that's where we basically ...

That's who we serve.

And, um, if we're not doing works that, uh, resonate with the community, then we're not gonna have an audience.

So it's, it's really no more complicated than that.

And so I think, I think the more that we can make the community aware that we're not just performing, uh, three operas on the main stage, we're doing all sorts of things in the community, uh, all, all year round, I think that helps us, uh, build a loyal following.

And I also think that it helps us to, um, diversify our audience because there are some of the ...

Uh, and we are, I, I suspect we will talk about this, um- Later on in this conversation about the works that we're programming now, which, um, are, I would call title recognition opera, and we're doing that for a very good reason.

Um, and for some of our, um, more seasoned opera goers, uh, who have maybe seen too many of those sort of title operas, I think the smaller, more, um, adventurous, uh, riskier works are appealing.

So I think that, um, that for me, I think it's important for us to get the story out that we are more than just the three main stage productions that we do every year.

I wanna go to that topic right now.

A lot of folks, or some folks sometimes say, "Oh, your, your, Vancouver Opera only does, does the big hits." But, um, uh, can you, can you tell us why, why it is that we do that? It's for a good reason.

We have, we have all sorts of business cases to make for that, and I'll, I'll let you expand.

Sure.

Well, ultimately, we have to be financially sustainable as a company.

Um, and um, it's very clear that, uh, for people who are, I'll call them newbies, people who are not, um, not familiar with opera, um, tend to make their choice of first opera based on whether it's a title that they recognize.

Uh, and we can name them easily, operas like, uh, La Traviata, uh, Carmen, um, Barber of Seville, uh, Tosca-

All coming up, by the way, in our next season.

[laughs]

I've just named, I've just named three, I've just named, uh, three of the, three of those four are coming up in our next season.

Those are operas that people recognize by name, and I think that when somebody who's new to opera is paying, um, good money for a, a ticket, they want some confidence and reassurance that they're going to have a good night, and obviously name recognition, uh, helps tremendously with that.

So I think you can have your cake and eat it when it comes to programming well-known operas as long as we give the seasoned opera crowd a good reason to attend and a fresh, a fresh in, a, a, a fresh take on the, on the piece.

Opera's absolutely in a moment right now of peril and adventure, and you hear stories of companies like Philadelphia suddenly turning things around with a variety of interesting programming and ticketing initiatives.