About us – Helios Opera

OUR VISION

Helios Opera aims to bring opera into the future by creating a sustainable, business-minded company designed to engage a modern and diverse audience. It is initiative-driven and supports innovative, multi-genre projects with the goal of pushing opera forward. It strives to provide rewarding performance opportunities and career support to talented emerging professional artists and to make a positive socio-political impact through education and outreach efforts.

OUR VALUES

Artist Recognition

We believe that artistic and production talent is at the core of what we do and should be recognized and cultivated. This includes financial compensation, a pleasant and rewarding work experience, and an invitation to feel like a partner in what we produce.

How we produce great opera

Fair remuneration of talent
A rigorous work environment
Ongoing career support beyond our rehearsal room

Quality opera

We respect opera's rich history and tradition, but we see a gap between what it has to offer, who it has served and how it represents itself. We produce operas of the highest caliber and engineer our patron experience to attract a diverse, modern audience.

How we produce great opera

A professional brand
A modern touch
A greater customer experience, beyond the show

Social Responsibility

We want opera to be a more vibrant and relevant force in the community. We think creatively when it comes to partnerships and outreach. We constantly wonder how opera can help give back and look for new ways to make opera fun for newcomers.

How we create impact

Inclusive casting
A welcoming outreach strategy and artistic education of underserved populations
Creating diverse partnerships with organizations in and outside of the arts

EDIA+ MISSION

Helios Opera stands with the Black community and the Black Lives Matter movement. We are committed to working against the layers of systemic, personal, and institutional racism, as well as sexism that have pervaded the opera industry for centuries. We pledge to cast, hire, and program with the tenets of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the forefront and make opera accessible for all.

Resources

Articles:

Websites:

Reading lists:

Podcasts:

STOP ASIAN HATE

Helios Opera stands in solidarity with the Asian, Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities. We condemn anti-Asian violence in all its forms and commit to dismantling anti-Asian racism, which has been on the rise over the past year due to increased racist rhetoric around the coronavirus pandemic. This drastic increase in incidents only serves to highlight the pervasiveness of this hate and illuminate its long and painful history. We at Helios Opera acknowledge the role that the opera industry at large plays and has played in perpetrating harmful anti-Asian stereotypes through destructive and racist performance practices. We commit to combat these detrimental practices, attitudes, and traditions in our productions, and pledge to uplift and to celebrate Asian and Asian-American voices, artists, and stories.

Resources (from Americans for the Arts):

Learn about the harm caused, through journal articles, social media posts, and Asian American news.

Practice and learn bystander intervention and sign up for trainings through Hollaback! and Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

Support Asian communities through organizing groups such as Asian American Feminist Collective, advocacy group such as Asian American Advocacy Fund, and shop Asian owned businesses such as Lunar and Omsom.

Donate to or participate with Asian arts and nonprofit organizations such as Asian American Arts Alliance, Asian Arts Initiative, and Seeding Change (just to name a few).

Take an intentional step towards practicing anti-racism through advocacy and justice for Asian American communities.

Land Acknowledgement

Helios Opera gratefully acknowledges the Native Peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who make their home here today. While our staff and artists are working from different remote locations and our work takes us to many unceded lands, we acknowledge that our work is conducted on stolen land.