Opera in diversified formats, innovating and reinventing to bring it closer to today’s world
The independent Opera production company, based in Lisbon, directed by the soprano, artistic director and producer Catarina Molder, aims at bringing the passion of opera to everyone in many different formats including the audio-visual. To fulfill the crucial mission of reaching new audiences, Opera do Castelo has been launching innovative opera projects, based on artistic and aesthetic concepts, that combine tradition and contemporaneity, exploring the inter - disciplinarity power of this art form with daring creativity, into the 21st Century.
It has presented opera in unexpected venues from discos, to public monuments and emblematic districts in the historic centre of Lisbon, doing new commissions, premiering different repertoire, working for younger audiences, creating new TV formats for the Portuguese National Television such as the acclaimed Tv series, Super Diva - Ópera Para Todos (Super Diva opera for everyone), with three Portuguese seasons and the 3rd in English, in worldwide distribution.
It has launched right in the heart of covid pandemic, in Summer 2020 the new Opera festival in town, to bring the emotion of opera to everyone- Operafest Lisboa, combining tradition with vanguardism, including a contemporary opera contest - Maratona Opera XXI, enhancing and showcasing new repertoire, new composers, creatives and interpreters to create the opera of the future and exploring opera in many different and stimulating ways to reach out different types of audiences, that was already a repeated success in Summer 2021. "Courage, audacity, imagination: these qualities, which one would like to find more often in the programming of prestigious musical institutions, are perfectly embodied by the very young OperaFest Lisboa” Première Loge
Opera is 400 years old and over the last 100 years the audience has been watching, almost exclusively, the same operas from the past. It’s urgent re-invent opera and bring it to the centre of contemporary performing arts production, to renew its repertoire with stories from the present and actively promote a much more dynamic environment to bring opera closer to the world and the audience of today!
