Minnesota Opera has a claim few companies on Earth can match: it changed what American opera is. From the Ordway Center stage in St. Paul, its New Works Initiative commissioned and premiered operas that now play worldwide — The Grapes of Wrath, Silent Night (Pulitzer Prize winner), The Manchurian Candidate, Dinner at Eight.
The company pairs its premieres with lavish classics — Carmen, La Traviata, The Barber of Seville — performed with the Minnesota Opera Orchestra and choruses in the Ordway’s jewel-box Music Theater. Its Project Opera youth program trains the next generation of Minnesota singers.
Opera is supposed to be an old-world art. Minnesota Opera made it a frontier — bold, literary and unmistakably American.
