Welcome to PavarOpera: A New Kind of Opera

Hailed as a tall, dashing baritone “with a robust sound with ringing top notes,” Grant Youngblood’s many orchestral appearances have garnered enthusiastic praise for his “smooth lyric baritone voice bringing beautiful shading and color to the score.” Recent engagements for Mr. Youngblood have included returns to Dayton Opera as Rigoletto, Iago in Otello, and for their season opening Russian Panorama gala; a return to Central City Opera as Horace Tabor in its 60th anniversary production of The Ballad of Baby Doe; and performances at both Baltimore Concert Opera and Opera Delaware in the title role of Macbeth. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut & telecast in Capriccio. Mr. Youngblood made an international concert debut with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in the 1999 Liturgica Festival. He has performed for a Stravinsky Festival mounted by the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas; and has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in performances of Copland’s Old American Songs under the baton of Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Opera-in-concert appearances have included Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia with the Buffalo Philharmonic, as well as Ruggiero in Halevy’s La Juive with Opera Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall. Mr. Youngblood’s orchestral repertoire includes major works of Bach, Barber, Beethoven, Bloch, Brahms, Copland, Duruflé, Fauré, Gounod, Handel, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Paulus, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams, Verdi and Walton. More information at www.grantyoungblood.com/

THE ART OF RESPONSIBILITY

The Arts serve a distinct purpose in society. 

We learn from the Arts. We feel through the Arts. We identify our values by the Arts. We find our own value reflected in the Arts. 

To become an artist, one must probe the depth and scope of one’s perception and reconstruct for others visceral and critical revelations and observations. One must also act responsibly in approaching those reconstructions by creating balance between the artist, the source of inspiration, and the community it serves. PavarOpera has found that balance and wants to responsibly serve the community, the creators of Opera, and the artists who dedicate their lives to the Arts. 

A NEW MODEL FOR OPERA PERFORMANCE

Opera has long been associated with high society and not with “community” in its modern day meaning. Opera has required orchestras and is performed in languages not easily accessible to audiences outside Europe. And Opera has generally been presented in classical music venues. PavarOpera aims to change that. 

The stories within Opera, like the stories within the Arts across generations and cultures, are the stories of people and their communities. Stories of love, families, and real-life issues that intersect every community of every kind. 

Therefore, let’s get back to the stories and those issues to reconstruct the connection between Opera and Communities. Let’s make each performance a tangible connecting rod to the community issue within the story. Let’s serve the community through the performance by creating a direct line from the story line in the Opera to a service provider within the community that serves to heal those impacted by that issue. 

This is PavarOpera’s mission and direct function in offering Opera to the community

OUR COMMITMENT TO COMMUNITY

PavarOpera donates portions of each performance to a local community agency by connecting the common threads of the opera storyline to the service. 

OUR ARTISTS

PavarOpera pays its artists. This is a variation on small community opera companies. We do this because we believe in fairness, and we value the time and talent of our artists. Also, they’re very good!