USD Magazine Spring 2021

Opera Initiative. Considine sees massive inequities on the casting opportunities for women in op- era and saw a need to develop some rules about what operatic works they’d get behind. “We won’t perform a work where the female lead dies at the end. And two-thirds of the char- acters must be women, with a prohibition against them being nuns or maids or prostitutes.” Thus was born Really Spicy Opera’s current main endeavor, the Aria Institute. “It’s an online training program to train com- posers and librettists to write opera arias,” he explains.” The institute started out by surveying performers about what they do and don’t want in new operatic arias and operas in gen- eral. “We then took that to peo- ple and said, ‘We’re not trying to tell you how to write music. But we do want to tell you what oth- er people — those who will actu- ally be doing the performing — say they want to have.’” For the Aria Institute’s sopra- no edition, in July 2020, 12 new arias for sopranos were written. “We had a showcase, and then we did an expanding Aria Insti- tute for mezzo-sopranos, and they created 28 new arias. Mez- zo-sopranos are the lower female voices in opera, and they’re mostly stuck playing supporting characters. And they never succeed at love. Some mezzos, these are professionals, have been working in opera for three or four decades, saying ‘I’ve never had a love ballad.’ I think that’s a shame.” In the end, it’s all about the love of the art. “It’s incredibly rewarding,” Considine says. “Serious art is true work, but we’re trying to create a structure where artists are set up to suc- ceed. But it’s important to pay attention to what makes you happy. You know, life is too short to be unhappy all the time.”

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Spr ing 2021