Between May 17 and 21, the city of Manaus and the Amazonas Opera Festival will receive Ibero-American opera houses and international guests who will gather at the 16th Annual Ópera Latinoamérica Conference (OLA). On May 15 and 16, the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo will host a previous meeting of the OLA communications forum. Both instances will offer a full agenda of talks and conferences that will cover topics such as innovation in management models, financing and philanthropy, co-production and its circulation of operas in the Ibero-American region, as well as topics related to the new digital environments and the artificial intelligence.

Ópera Latinoamérica (OLA), the largest theater network in Latin America, will hold its Annual Conference in the city of Manaus, Brazil between May 17 and 21, 2023. The activity, organized in conjunction with the Amazonas Opera Festival (FAO ) and the Secretary of Culture and Creative Economy of Amazonas, will bring together representatives of more than 50 Ibero-American theaters and cultural organizations.

Since its creation in 2007, every year, the representatives of the lyrical theaters belonging to the organization – more than 40 institutions from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Spain, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela – meet to jointly address the challenges and trends of the sector. The Annual Conference of Ópera Latinoamérica in Manaus will continue the guidelines outlined in 2022 at the Ibero-American Meeting of Theaters – held at the Gran Teatre del Liceu and organized in conjunction with Ópera XXI, an organization of Spanish organizations linked to opera – and at the last annual conference, held at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, which points to the sustainability of cultural organizations.

The 16th Annual Ópera Latinoamérica Conference will be held in the context of the Amazonas Opera Festival, which will take place between April 21 and May 28, which in 2023 will program titles such as O Contratador de Diamantes by the Brazilian composer Francisco Mignone, Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten and Piedade, a contemporary bet by Joao Guilherme Ripper, also a Brazilian.

Innovation and networking in from the Amazon

Networking is the heart of OLA’s management, that is, putting theaters, festivals, companies and agents from different countries in contact to share management models, good practices and experiences that can be useful, from different angles, to the members of the network. Along these lines, during the Annual Conference of Ópera Latinoamérica in Manaus, experts from different entities –the Inter-American Development Bank, the University of Guadalajara, the consultancy Teknecultura and IE University– will share their knowledge about management models based on data analysis, also known as data-driven institutions. Financing is also a relevant topic for theaters, whose income comes –in different proportions– from their own resources, public and private contributions. One of the conversations of the 2023 meeting will allow to know the motivations of some companies to invest in culture and another will address philanthropy.

Another of the fundamental axes of OLA’s work is to promote the collaboration of theaters in the design of artistic programming, specifically in the circulation and co-production of shows, since virtuous elements for 21st century theater management converge in them: performing opera productions and performing arts in a collaborative way is more sustainable in terms of management –since it allows reducing costs– and it is also more sustainable, because it allows programming the same production on more than one stage in a country or region. In this sense, at the 16th Annual Conference there will be panels such as The production and circulation of opera in Ibero-America or Best production practices, in which the directors of the Ibero-American spaces that are part of OLA will participate. In this line, upcoming artistic projects that could circulate or be co-produced will also be presented.

The preview in São Paulo: Communications Forum

The prelude to the 16th Annual Conference of Ópera Latinoamérica will begin on May 15 and 16 at the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo with the OLA Communications Forum, which will address the opportunities and challenges related to new digital environments and artificial intelligence, as well as of new forms of development of public communities that reveal the impact that cultural organizations have on people.

The link between the arts and new technologies will be addressed in instances such as New digital environments for the performing arts, Development and management of audience communities and the Artificial Intelligence and future scenarios for the performing arts workshop, which will be presented by Javier Ibacache, co-founder of the Latin American Network for the Development of Audiences (REDLAP), and Pepe Zapata, expert in cultural audiences and director of the Catalan cultural community TRESC. The VR Stage project will also be presented, a Finnish National Opera and Ballet project that allows simulating artistic designs and, with it, solving problems typical of the production and planning of stage projects.

Likewise, the different theaters that are part of OLA will share new communications and audience development projects that take charge of the hyper-information age and propose deeper forms of connection with communities based on co-programming or co-creation strategies. , among other.