Our mission: To perform classical music, featuring emerging artists, the highest artistic standards, and a focus on contemporary issues.
Queen City Opera was founded in 2012 to advance the careers of emerging singers, instrumentalists, designers, and conductors by giving them valuable professional engagements in high-quality productions. We focus our productions on contemporary issues, and we collaborate with other organizations to arrange workshops and discussions around these issues. Our recent projects include the following:
-World premiere reconstruction of Tchaikovsky’s lost eco-opera Undina, focusing on water stewardship and sustainable energy.
–Coffee Symphony in collaboration with Deeper Roots Coffee and Green Umbrella, focusing on sustainable coffee production.
–Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín, in collaboration with the Nancy and David Wolf Holocaust and Humanity Center commemorating the musicians of the Terezín Concentration Camp who performed Verdi’s Requiem as an act of defiance against the Nazis.
-Beethoven’s Fidelio in collaboration with Amnesty International and the Ohio Innocence Project focusing on wrongful imprisonment.
-Mozart’s Don Giovanni with the education department of Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio and Jewish Family Services, featuring workshops on sexual assault and consent.
-The world premiere of the critical edition of Weber’s Der Freischütz focusing on evidence-based approaches to gun violence prevention.
-The Ohio premiere of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta in collaboration with the Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
We rehearse at the Warsaw Avenue Firehouse, home to the MYCincinnati Youth Orchestra, an El Sistema-inspired youth orchestra in Price Hill, Cincinnati’s most diverse neighborhood both ethnically and economically. This arrangement facilitates interaction between QCO artists and MYCincinnati students, emulating a 21st century model for performing arts organizations pioneered by the famous Deutsche Kammerphilarhmonie Bremen in Germany. Many members of the QCO Orchestra and staff also serve as Teaching Artists for the MYCincinnati Youth Orchestra.
Our production of Wagner’s Siegfried, the first performance of the work in Ohio in over a century, was recently awarded the American Prize in both Opera Production and Opera Conducting. This was the first time that any opera company or orchestra in Cincinnati won this prize.
QCO was profiled in August 2014 in the Business section of the Cincinnati Enquirer, highlighting our work to transform our community through the arts.
QCO is registered with the IRS as a tax-exempt organization under section 501(c)(3). If you are interested in making a tax deductible donation, we have many sponsorship opportunities available. Please contact us for more info.