Opera and Bob

Great work at Pride everyone!  It was such fun to hear you this weekend!

Maggie has written about the reactions she received this weekend to the word 'opera'.  I think that the responses are part of the reason we chose Opera Bob as our name. Maybe the word combination causes people to think 'opera' (okay-- love it or hate it) 'bob' (huh?this sounds interesting and kind of quirky. What is it?).  

As musicians, we all know and love and get the 'opera' part.  However, the 'bob' part is trickier. This weekend made me stand back a little and ask myself, as our website asks, who exactly is bob? 

Is bob clever marketing designed to get people in the door?  Is bob the adventuresome side of artists willing to think and work outside the box?  (And if so what box, and how far outside?) Does bob represent a style of production that presents classical music in unusual ways? Or does bob perform unusual music?  Or does bob pair unusual music with classical tradition such that both are heard differently? Or is bob an open book policy for experimentation? What aspects of our Opera Bob performances this weekend were authentically bob and really worked for the audiences?

As a member of Opera Bob's official publicity and marketing advisory committee of course it is my responsibility to ask these questions and to make sure that our identity is reflected in the marketing material.  As an artist, these questions tap into larger questions for me about classical music and its role and presentation in the 21st century....

Jill