Renegade Opera In The News
stage & Studio: renegades of the opera
Renegade Opera's artistic director, Danielle Jagelski, talks about the company's beginnings, its approach to opera, and its upcoming production, "Adam's Run."
From the Oregon ArtsWatch Podcast by Jenna Yokoyama
Since 2020, Renegade Opera has been striving to produce operas in equitable ways that support and feature emerging artists while creating an immersive experience for their growing audience. Renegade Opera’s artistic director and founding member, Danielle Jagelski, talks with Jenna Yokoyama about the company’s beginnings, its artistic and equitable approach to opera production, and about its upcoming performance of Ruby Fulton’s opera Adam’s Run, a dark comedy about climate change, Sept 7-10 at Shaking The Tree Theater. The podcast features music by composer Ruby Fulton and librettist Baynard Woods with Madeleine Tran, Quinton Gardner, Lisa Neher, and the cast of Renegade Opera’s production of Adam’s Run.
The staggering beauty of avifauna: renegade Opera’s ‘Bird songs of opera’
The Portland company presented a refreshingly inventive birdsong-themed outdoor program at Leach Botanical Garden.
From the Oregon ArtsWatch Review by Lorin Wilkerson
“This kind of reinventing of what opera can mean—whether one is a performer or audience member—is exciting for someone like me (and I know I’m not the only one) who loves the medium and the music dearly, but who grows weary of the rote staging of patriarchal drivel that underpins so much of the standard repertoire.”
clemency and transpareency: Renegade Opera’s Immersive “tito”
the local company’s modern adaptation of mozart’s opera merges formidable singing with contemporary political commentary.
From the Oregon ArtsWatch Review by Max Tapogna
“It’s probably reductive to say that Renegade’s adaptation is opera without the “boring parts,” but the production’s chief innovation is its ability to showcase great singing through the more easily accessible medium of interactive and spoken theatre. Yet despite the ingenuity of the staging, the show’s strongest moments were still invariably found in Mozart’s music. Opera veterans and newcomers alike have something to enjoy in this unusual version of a canonical work.’
The cultural landscape
From the Oregon ArtsWatch series of portraits by K.B. Dixon:
“The portrait,” said legendary photographer Arnold Newman, “is a form of biography. Its purpose is to inform now and to record for history.” It is hard to imagine a better, more succinct summation of the genre. As with the portraits in the previous installments of this series, I have focused here on the talented and creative people whose various legacies are destined to be part of our cultural history. My aspirations have remained the same: to document the contemporary cultural landscape and to produce a decent photograph—a photograph that is not a simple transcription but the distillation of an authentic moment; a photograph that acknowledges the medium’s allegiance to reality and that preserves for myself and others a unique and honest sense of the subject. The environmental details have again been kept to a minimum. The subjects have the frame to themselves and do not compete with context for attention. This provides for a simpler, blunter, more intense encounter with character. It is this encounter with character that animates the image.
Madeline Ross
Founder and Executive Director of Renegade Opera, Ross is an award-winning performer and teacher. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2019 and was named National Champion of the National Association of Teachers of Singing classical voice competition in 2020. Ross has performed with the Portland Opera, Opera on Tap (Portland and Boston), and Emmanuel Music among others. She is a founding member of In the Pocket, a choral ensemble, and holds a leadership role in Our Song Artists, a feminist classical music nonprofit.
renegade Opera takes portland by storm
From the The Triangle: publication of Mu Phi Epsilon music fraternity
“Upstart company innovates immersive, accessible approaches to an age-old artform”
“Renegade bucks the typical structure of larger companies that often use the same — or very similar —costumes and staging for their productions year after year. Instead, the company is more experimental and seeks ways to innovate its productions with the help of the performers and creative team. This makes the productions both more familiar to the modern audience — often set in contemporary dress and with English dialogue — and more complex.At Renegade Opera we’re almost never going to give you a ‘traditional’ night at the opera, and we like it that way!” Ross said. “We strive to engage our audience tangibly in our productions, which traditional opera doesn’t do. For example, we are planning an opera this summer that will invite the audience to move from room to room during the action of the story and vote to decide the end of the opera!”
Opera: There and Back Again
From the Oregon ArtsWatch Review of Orfeo in Underland:
“Orfeo in Underland… is about letting go of things you’ve lost, but it’s also about letting go of perceptions of what opera should be. At once timeless and of its time, it expands your heart and mind with every note, telling a story of grief and love that is as honest as it is hopeful.”
New Horizons: Renegade Opera Breaks All The Rules
From the Oregon ArtsWatch Review of Secret Diaries of Pennsylvania Avenue:
“Secret Diaries takes arias from several Mozart operas and presents them as private soliloquies.... The result is an intimate collection of opera standards that sound and feel fresh as sung by this all-women cast.”
“[Renegade Opera’s] argument is, ultimately, that holding a critical lens to opera is essential for the artform’s survival and development…If we push some of those boundaries and break some of those rules that we think are unbreakable or solid, you can find some new horizons.”