Tenor Antonio Domino performs ‘Maria’ from ‘West Side Story’ during the first Chautauqua Opera Company Opera Invasion of the 2025 Season on the Hultquist Center balcony July 12, 2025.
LAYLA VINSON
Staff Writer
For the first time this season, Chautauqua Opera Company will open their book of songs to the community and ask them to request which arias or songs they would like to hear most. This Opera Invasion provides the audience with an uniquely interactive opportunity with the young artists at 6:45 p.m. Saturday on the Hultquist Center porch.
“Opera Invasion is something we started in my first season…always playful and always, in some sneaky way, educational to our audience,” said Steven Osgood, general and artistic director of Chautauqua Opera Company and Conservatory. “What can we show them, through some playful experience, what it means to be an opera singer building a career?”
The now-annual Invasion deemed the “opera open book” originally began a decade prior during the 2016 Summer Season, after a conversation between Osgood and supporters who were incognizant of an audition book — a collection of five arias or songs that artists have prepared that typically showcases multiple languages and styles to exemplify their range.
Osgood compared the program to a menu, with the audience as customers and himself as the waitstaff to moderate audience requests for the singers. The four studio artists performing at the event — Faith Adams, Audrianna Hughes, Ryan Michki and Jared Peterson — span from soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor and bass, respectively, offering great variety in their vocal spectrum.
“The audience has the opportunity to learn about an opera or musical maybe they’ve never heard of, or listen to a language they’ve never heard sung before,” Adams explained, hopeful listeners will select her newest aria addendum from her audition book, granting her the opportunity to debut the piece in such a welcoming environment. “So I think just in the nature of the repertoire we’re presenting, it’s educational.”
In offering their book to Chautauquans, Hughes compared the individual nature of the program creation to curating a playlist that expands past typical operatic arias with pieces such as “Almost There” from the animated Disney film “Princess and the Frog.” Meanwhile, Peterson highlighted his long-lined aria, “Come dal ciel precipita” from Verdi’s Macbeth, citing the piece as interesting and fun while also providing him the opportunity to display the top of his vocal register.
Michki deviated slightly from his colleagues, harboring no particular affinity to any one of his pieces over the other in respect to the spirit of the event.
“Since the nature of this is supposed to look like what we would be bringing to an audition, there is no one piece specifically that I’m hoping they pick, because hopefully when I go to an audition, I want to be comfortable having them pick anything,” Michki explained.
Walking in the shoes of a casting director, audiences are exposed to the life of an opera singer beyond finalized on-stage productions in an interactive experience unlike any other event in the Company schedule. Even entering the Invasion without context, the community can leave having learned and laughed on account of the combination of education and entertainment.
“There’s such a stigma around opera, and every day we’re actively trying to break that stigma and show that it’s not just for a specific demographic of people,” Peterson said, emphasizing the playful environment of the event. “I hear time and time again of people who come to operas for the first time and they’re like, ‘Wow, that was a lot of fun. Opera singers are really cool,’ and they just didn’t expect that, but you can have fun.”
