Arizona Opera lands $375K Piper grant aimed at reaching new audiences

Arizona Opera received a $375,000 grant from the Piper Trust inaugural AGILE grant program, the company announced last week.

The money will be used to help the company, which produces opera in Phoenix and Tucson, reshape its model and brand to reach new audiences.

Next season, Arizona Opera will split its season into two parts — the Main Stage Series of big works (“La Traviata,” “The Marriage of Figaro”) at Tucson Music Hall and Phoenix Symphony Hall; and the Arizona Opera Red series of smaller works (“Charlie Parker’s Yardbird”) at Tucson’s Temple of Music and Art and Phoenix’s Herberger Theater Center.

When he rolled out the plan late last year, Arizona Opera President and General Director Joseph Specter said the idea was to program smaller, newer works in spaces that might be inviting to nontraditional opera audiences. If they liked what they saw in the smaller venue, they might be inclined to attend the bigger masterwork operas.

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The Piper Trust funding will help Arizona Opera, one of four arts organizations in the Phoenix area tapped for the grants, to market the rollout of its programming model and create ways to build excitement and enthusiasm with old and new audiences alike.

“This grant is about vision and strategy,” Specter said in a press release.

In that release, trust spokeswoman Susan Pepin said Arizona Opera’s “transformation has great potential to contribute to strengthening community resilience and cohesion within the broader arts and culture sector.”

Arizona Opera, which ends its season next weekend with Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” opens its 2018-19 season with Piazzolla’s operetta “Maria de Buenos Aires,” which comes to Tucson Oct. 6-7. For tickets and the complete season lineup, visit azopera.org