Dutch National Opera, Nederlandse Reisopera and Opera Zuid sign covenant for collaboration

In Maastricht, in the setting of their co-production L'elisir d'amore, Sophie de Lint (director of Dutch Nationale Opera), Bart van Meijl (interim director of Nederlandse Reisopera) and Waut Koeken (intendant of Opera Zuid) signed a covenant in which the three opera houses made long-term agreements on a collaboration that is centred around talent development. This is the first time that the three companies have explicitly expressed their ambition to work together.

Sophie de Lint: "We are convinced that this will be a real win-win cooperation, especially for the young talents we want to support, but also because the three opera companies will inspire each other, each from their own expertise. It's a pleasure to work with my colleagues of the Nederlandse Reisopera and Opera Zuid."

Bart van Meijl: "We are delighted that we will be further strengthening and shaping the collaboration with Dutch National Opera and Opera Zuid on the subject of talent development in the coming years. Especially since we will be making a broad-based commitment to talent development. From singers to composers and from artistry to technique. We offer young talents the opportunity to experiment and develop themselves further in various disciplines of opera and music theatre. In doing so, these three opera companies take on the shared responsibility of securing innovative and high-quality opera for future generations."

Waut Koeken: "Talent development and offering quality opportunities to young professionals is one of our top priorities. We see this long-term collaboration with the Nederlandse Reisopera and De Nationale Opera as an inspiring and necessary step towards further strengthening the environment for young talent in the Netherlands. In the near future, we will act as a stepping stone for young talent to enter the professional field; over the longer term, we will guarantee the flow and quality of opera in the Netherlands."

Talent development

Dutch National Opera (DNO), Nederlandse Reisopera (NRO) and Opera Zuid (OZ) consider it an important part of their mission to enable artistic opera talents to develop themselves further. After all, the future of the art form depends on how talented performers are offered a platform and how they are enabled to grow. The three houses are therefore joining forces and deploying their resources and experience for a long-term cooperation programme aimed at talent development in the Dutch opera and music theatre sector.

Joint co-productions

The tangible result of the collaboration will be an annual co-production by the three companies, which will be distributed nationally by a tour.

Dutch National Opera Studio (DNO Studio) will play a major role in these co-productions, but in addition to the young singers from this international talent programme, there will also be collaboration with young Dutch singers or singers who were trained in the Netherlands. However, talent development is not limited to singers: the three companies consider development opportunities for young theatre makers, composers and artistic teams within opera a great need as well. The planned annual co-production will create a new presentation opportunity for this target group, on top of the regular programming of the three companies.

In the current ‘Arts Plan Period’, four collaborations will be produced. The first co-production, a new production of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, will premiere online on 23 May via the European streaming platform OperaVision and can be viewed for free from all over the world. Singers from the DNO-Studio make up the cast. Next year, director Robin Coops and virtual reality director Avinash Changa and their team will be in charge of the project Orphée|L'amour|Eurydice, in which they will offer a new perspective on the classical story through VR technology.

Dutch National Opera Studio

The covenant also includes agreements concerning Dutch National Opera Studio, the international talent programme that has been facilitated by DNO since 2018 but which, through its collaboration with NRO and OZ, also aims to have a positive influence on the more general opera infrastructure in the Netherlands. In the coming seasons, Opera Studio singers and alumni will regularly appear on national stages.