This year, our Annual Fundraising Appeal celebrates the extraordinary range of Opera Vermont’s work, as BARN OPERA officially transitions to Vermont’s state opera company.
From the intimate and immediate performances in the BARN OPERA House, or the expansive, Italianate Barre Opera House, to the impeccable acoustics of the Chandler Center for the Arts, and the state-of-the-art, theatrical Highland Center for the Arts, Opera Vermont brings high-quality opera to every corner of our state.
Opera Vermont’s activities across the state with innovative new productions telling diverse stories, as well as masterworks of the operatic art form, our annual program of work is a significant contributor to the cultural landscape of the Green Mountain State.
As a not-for-profit organization, your support is critical. Every dollar donated helps us enrich the lives of Vermonters and our neighbors throughout the region.
We invite you to join us by making a tax-deductible donation*.
In 2025, our official first production season as Opera Vermont after transitioning from BARN OPERA, an anonymous donor has pledged to match any donation totaling $50,000, doubling your impact. Like you, this donor believes that everyone should have the opportunity to experience the power of opera, no matter where they live within the state.
We are so grateful to everyone in our loyal community for your ongoing support, and with your help, the future of opera and high-quality lyrically theatrical productions is bright from Highgate to Brattleboro, and everywhere in-between.
*All donations are tax-deductible as permitted by law EIN: 86-2778352
Mainstage Productions for Opera Vermont 2025
Pagliacci (February 21 & 22, 2025) - Highland Center for the Arts (Greensboro, VT)
La Traviata (May 23 & 24, 2025) - The Barre Opera House (Barre, VT)
La Fata del Nord/Le Villi (September 19 & 20, 2025) - The BARN OPERA House (Brandon, VT)
A Bayou Legend (November 14 & 15, 2025) - Chandler Center for the Arts (Randolph, VT)
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What makes your heart sing?
Mainstage productionsOpera Vermont’s mainstage programs, a mix of classical, contemporary and underrepresented work, are the foundation of our artistic practice. Your donations allow us to create and bring new works to the Vermont community such as the exciting, circus-centric production of Pagliacci, the large-scale La Traviata, the resurgence of Zuelli’s La Fata del Nord or an unheard of American masterpiece, A Bayou Legend. Like Opera Vermont’s desire to share opera in all corners of the state, Opera Vermont also shares this varied, but beautiful, music from all of the western musical tradition, and brings it to the Green Mountain State, and our opera-loving neighbors throughout the New England region. | Community engagementOur educational and community programs offer broad access for connection and engagement. We produce our “Holiday Card” production for the community every winter, engaging many of Vermont’s choral enthusiasts. Each summer OVT goes abroad to Cesenatico Italy for Opera al Mare, an intensive Opera Training program for international students. We are committed to the support and encouragement of the established artist, to those that are taking their first step toward a life in music, and everywhere in between. OVT also has plans to enter into every high and middle school in the state to expose young Vermonters to this transformative art form. Your generosity ensures everyone can experience the joy of song, and find their own voice in the process. |
Regional initiativesOur Vision at Opera Vermont is to grow a community connected by the transformative power of opera. Reaching regional Vermont through partnerships with existing theatrical venues, we believe that building bridges and sharing story and song connects and strengthens us as a community. Our eventual ambition is to ensure that no matter where you are in Vermont (or border towns in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York) there will be an opportunity for you to experience the power of live opera on an annual basis within a short drive. Your support through our Annual Appeal sustains our impact in regional communities in 2025 and for seasons to come. | Diverse new workAs one of the stewards of song and story in the 21st century, we acknowledge and pay deep respect to the generations of singers and storytellers who came before us and to the artists and global communities we now have the privilege of working with. Our neighbors’ stories are our stories, and we are committed to telling relevant, socially conscious stories that strengthen the ties that bind us together. OVT’s commitment to annual world premieres - or introduction to overlooked masterpieces - continues in 2025 with William Grant Still’s “A Bayou Legend” and the second performance ever of Puccini's contemporary, Zuelli’s beautiful “La Fata del Nord.” The OVT community’s support helps us to ensure these stories are told and celebrated. |
With your help, we can bring this paridigm-shifting, transformative, mind and heart-altering art form to every Vermonter, and tell the stories of both the past, and the now, all collectively comprising the full complexity of the human existence - and all showing us who we are as people and who we want to be as a society.
Join us in this work, however you can: contribute resources that say that the arts are a valuable addition to your life in Vermont; share this appeal, and help us as a grassroots organization raise awareness and resources to help make OVT possible; Volunteer to host an artist for a production week; volunteer to help us in any other way, and help us make this dream of operatic accessibility for all Vermonters a reality.
