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Celebrating Five Years of Living Opera
Five years ago, Norman and I asked ourselves a simple but urgent question: how can we create the culture we want to live in and invite others to join us?
That question grew out of a deeply personal period between 2016 and 2018, when Norman faced an intense battle with performance anxiety during a series of life-changing, high-profile debuts. Watching him navigate that experience made both of us confront a harder truth: even at the highest levels, the structures meant to support artists often fail them. Out of that realization came a principle that still guides every decision we make today: we make the impossible, possible.
From Spark to Platform
What started as a conversation around the dinner table has evolved into a platform that spans continents. In five years, Living Opera has become both a production company and a foundation, a creative house producing original work in music, media, and live performance while supporting artists through education, research, and opportunity.
From the beginning, every initiative has embodied four tenets: service, purpose, story, and excellence. These are the cornerstones of what Living Opera builds, whether a masterclass, a recording, or a research project mapping the economics of culture.
Through concerts, albums, podcasts, and films, Living Opera has created not only performances but blueprints—practical, human-scale systems that show how art and sustainability can coexist. Under the direction of Dr. Christos Makridis, the organization’s research has quantified what artists have long understood intuitively: that culture is not a luxury, but a framework for well-being, belonging, and shared prosperity.
Milestones That Shaped Us
In 2022, while much of the global opera world remained quiet, Living Opera launched the Global Vocal Lab, connecting emerging singers across borders and offering a creative lifeline when live stages were still uncertain.
In 2023, Living Opera presented its art collection Magic Mozart at Art Basel Miami and spoke at NFT.NYC, affirming its commitment to exploring technology as a means of access, not spectacle, a tool for expanding fine art’s reach without diluting its essence.
In 2024, the release of All Is Bright marked Living Opera’s first full-scale album, commissioning a new orchestra and employing young artists, most under the age of thirty.
And in 2025, a new phase begins with the formal launch of the Living Opera Foundation and an expanded media group, establishing a permanent infrastructure for a community that already spans Chicago, Washington D.C., Nashville, Vienna, and beyond.
Every milestone has served one purpose: to bridge past and present, to unite artists and audiences, and to prove that tradition and innovation are not opposites but collaborators.
The Next Five Years
The first five years were about exploration. The next five are about construction.
Living Opera is entering a new phase of growth focused on creating lasting frameworks for artistic excellence and community impact. Its upcoming initiatives include the Eric Wilson Prize, an annual award that recognizes singers not only for artistic achievement but for their ability to design and execute a cohesive artistic vision. The organization will also launch the Kristin Okerlund Masterclass Series, continue advancing its arts research agenda, and expand Living Opera Circles, a growing network of artist-led performances and community events.
Meanwhile, Living Opera Media will release Radio Days, an album collecting oral histories from veterans and senior citizens ahead of America’s 250th anniversary, continue Behind the Curtain, its podcast that takes listeners behind the scenes of the music industry, and release Muse of the Golden Throne, an album reviving the work of Granville Bantock, inspired by the poetry of Sappho.
Each project reflects Living Opera’s belief that creativity and structure are not opposites but partners, that art, when built with integrity, can shape not only culture but the systems that sustain it. The goal is not expansion for its own sake, but refinement: to prove that beauty, managed with purpose, can endure.
As industries transform under the pressures of technology, attention, and economics, Living Opera’s mission remains steady: to make the impossible, possible, and to show that excellence can thrive even in uncertain times.
A Collective Story
None of this happens alone. Living Opera is made possible by singers, musicians, designers, filmmakers, researchers, donors, and supporters who believe the arts can be both generous and self-sustaining.
It is a collective story written by many hands and guided by shared conviction.
For five years, Living Opera has sought to create the culture it wants to live in. As it steps into its next chapter, the mission is unchanged: service, purpose, story, and excellence in every project, every partnership, every note.
Living Opera looks ahead with conviction, building the systems and stories that will shape the next generation of culture.
Warmly,
Soula Parassidis
President, Living Opera Foundation