Shreveport Opera

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Music & Music Related Services

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Shreveport Opera Xpress, or SOX, the touring arm of Shreveport Opera, was established at the beginning of the 2000-2001 school season, giving its first performance on the Children's Stage at the Red River Revel. Opera is a complex and expensive art form, seldom available except in large Metropolitan areas, and is inaccessible to large portions of the population. It was the goal of SOX to bring opera to school children throughout the Ark-La-Tex area and to also provide a professional, affordable, accessible resource for community theaters and similar groups that wished to present an evening of musical entertainment to their patrons.

With these objectives in mind, SOX began its first season by touring two children's operas, Little Red Riding Hood and The Pied Piper of Hamelin, both by contemporary American composer Seymour Barab, whose works set the standard for children's opera today. In addition to these, a Broadway musical review was organized that could be presented by organizations for their own theaters or fund-raising events. Since then, Hansel and Gretel, She Never Lost a Passenger: The Story of Harriet Tubman, Why Dinosaurs Don't Smoke, The Three Little Pigs, Corps of Discovery, What Is Freedom, Why Dinosaurs Don't Litter, and The Telephone have been added, as well as yearly Broadway Reviews and Classical Concerts. SOX performers have been featured with the Shreveport Symphony, the Monroe Symphony, the Rapides Symphony, and The Texarkana Chorale Orchestra. They have premiered such work as Why Dinosaurs Don't Smoke and Why Dinosaurs Don't Litter, by Susan M. Yankee, and What Is Freedom, adapted from Michael Ching's new opera Corps of Discovery.

In its first season, SOX played to over 46,000 students and thousands of adults in schools and other venues. In all, SOX has performed for more than 300,000 students so far. The degree of professionalism of the troupe was so outstanding, and impacted so many communities across the state, that before its first season was even complete, it was nominated for the Governor's Arts in Education Award. SOX is preparing for its sixth season, and looking forward to reaching even more growing opera-lovers!

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MUSICAL MOVER.(Unwind) Albany Times Union (Albany, NY); 8/2/2009 ...K. Woods had a "national presence" and called him a "turnaround master." Woods is credited with saving the Shreveport Opera in Louisiana from extinction when he ran it from 1999 to 2001. As general director of the Fort Worth Opera since... ...more

LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY-SHREVEPORT FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES NEW BOARD US Fed News Service, Including US State News; 7/9/2009 ...Association Dealer of the Year in 2009. He is a national director for the Boy Scouts of America and a past director of the Shreveport Opera and Shreveport Symphony. Peter Gaffney is a graduate of C.E. Byrd High School and earned his Bachelor of Arts... ...more

Skylight firing ignites outrage Artistic director's dismissal drawing intense criticism The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; 6/18/2009 ...ve had in the past, but it works well in other companies." Dillner came to the Skylight in March 2008 from the Shreveport Opera. He was a singer and a director before moving into management. Theisen, who has not participated in the furor... ...more