Coffee Milk Opera Mission/Values

Coffee Milk Opera is a new, innovative opera company located in Rhode Island, named after our state's drink! Coffee Milk Opera is a women-led opera company, which we are proud to say is a bit different in our field! Coffee Milk Opera plans to collaborate with community artists in Rhode Island to bring opera to urban and historically marginalized communities, making opera accessible to everyone. We are taking extra steps to make opera more relatable, especially as music-making returns from the recent pandemic.

Coffee Milk Opera also strives to create a safe-space for our hired singers and musicians, in which everyone feels as comfortable and valued as possible. We seek to minimize the barriers that exist between the audience and the artform. We challenge the conception that opera is a 'snobby,' 'elitist' artform; and that it was originally created for all people and oftentimes contained controversial text that questioned the status quo within a society. We realize that even today, music is a necessary instrument through which we analyze our culture and that the stories written in opera librettos are still as relevant and important today. With this in mind, we seek to modernize opera as much as possible while also being mindful and reflective of the original historical meaning of the works. We want to emphasize this by providing lower cost ways for people to attend the opera and reaching out to communities that might not otherwise be exposed to opera. We want our audience to see themselves in the performers on stage, and we likewise want our performers to see themselves in our audience!