CIM Opera Theater slates ambitious 2024-25 season around Cleveland during Kulas Hall renovation

If necessity is the mother of invention, CIM Opera Theater will be the most inventive group in Northeast Ohio this season.  

Unable to perform at home due to the ongoing renovation of Kulas Hall, CIM Opera Theater will instead undertake a bold 2024-25 season on the road, one featuring some of the troupe’s most ambitious projects in recent memory, including a new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.   

“The opportunities we have to make art during this unusual year will be fantastic,” said JJ Hudson, interim artistic director of CIM Opera Theater. “I see this year as one of growth for us.”  

CIM Opera Theater is no stranger to performing off-site. During the pandemic, the company filmed Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at a warehouse in Cleveland. Last year, it presented Tom Cipullo’s Glory Denied at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA).  

The difference this year is that for the first time in a single season, all three mainstage productions will take place outside CIM. One will mark a return to CMA while the other two will see the company performing for the first time in the school’s 104-year history at Cleveland’s renowned Playhouse Square.  

“The fact that we are entering three professional theater spaces is really exciting,” Hudson said. “It’s going to allow us to tell some great stories, and getting outside our comfort zone will be very beneficial to our students.” 

The new season begins Nov. 16 and 17 with Hudson’s new production of Chabrier’s L’Étoile in the Westfield Theatre, a black-box space in Playhouse Square. CIM’s Harry Davidson will conduct a new adaptation of the 1877 operetta penned by Michael Borowitz (MM ’93), music director of Ohio Light Opera.  

The opera will be sung in its original French, with English supertitles. The real challenge, though, Hudson said, will be the theater, an intimate space that will compel the students to develop and employ valuable acting skills.  

“We have students who excel with light opera, but they’ll have to fill that space,” he said. “They’re going to have to be aware of the particulars. Once they’ve had to do that, they’ll be invested, and they’ll take those skills back to the larger stages.” 

Recently added to the company’s annual calendar is a winter production of a contemporary American work. In that slot on the 2024-25 season will be a special newly commissioned arrangement of Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters, a 2011 opera about a woman’s attempt to escape from an oppressive religious sect.  

Performances will take place Feb. 1 and 2 in Gartner Auditorium at CMA. Rakefet Hak, music director of Opera UCLA, will guest conduct a chamber production directed by Hudson and featuring a cast of six female voices and one baritone.  

“Stephen Karam [librettist] and I are always delighted to see how performers engage with this very challenging material, which is at once contemporary and evergreen,” Muhly said.  

“The intensity of the family dynamic on stage...creates a tightly knit musical team which, with any luck, translates into an intense communication with the audience.”  

Looming over the entire season will be the figure of Don Giovanni, the namesake of the company’s spring season finale.  

On April 23 and 25, Davidson will conduct Hudson’s new production of Mozart’s timeless opera, one starring CIM alum Brian Myer (MM ’14, Southern) in the title role and a guest bass as the Commendatore.  

Notably, performances will take place in the 1,300-seat Mimi Ohio Theatre at Playhouse Square, a space more than twice the size of Kulas, and feature original projections conceived by award-winning designer Brittany Merenda. 

Singing in such a large venue will give students “a workout,” Hudson said. At the same time, having a crew that includes professional designers and singers “elevates the production in a way that will heighten the experience for our students and the audience...We’re going to make sure every scene is compelling.” 

Speaking of scenes, one additional opera presentation will remain at CIM, in Mixon Hall: the company’s annual “Spring Scenes” show. In the 2024-25 season, that will occur on March 1 and 2 and include direction by Jeremy Paul, CIM’s interdisciplinary artist-in-residence.  

Never in its history has CIM Opera Theater taken a complete season on the road, as it will this year. Hudson, though, isn’t nervous.  

On the contrary, he’s excited. As he sees it, three off-site productions represent so many opportunities for the company to generate new and broader interest in CIM, CIM Opera Theater, and opera in general.   

“When we leave our home, we encounter other people,” Hudson said. “I believe there are many people who will take a chance on opera at Playhouse Square and then follow us back home.”  

Tickets to 'L’Étoile,' $30, are available now at playhousesquare.org or 216.241.6000. Tickets to 'Don Giovanni' $15-$50, will go on sale later, also at playhousesquare.org and 216.241.6000. Tickets to 'Dark Sisters,' $18, will be available later. Visit clevelandart.org.  

CIM Opera Theater is supported by gifts from The John P. Murphy Foundation and Michael Frank and the late Pat Snyder.