Detroit Opera artistic director Yuval Sharon extends contract for 3 more years

Detroit Opera’s future looks bright and richly layered: Thursday morning, the globally acclaimed organization announced the extension of artistic director Yuval Sharon’s contract through 2028, meaning three more years of the Motor City leading the art form in creative collaboration and boundary pushing.

Further, with the news of Sharon’s extended stay in Detroit, the company announced overarching themes for its next three programming seasons: America, faith and sustainability.

“I’m very, very excited,” Sharon told the Free Press during a phone call earlier in the week. “It’s going to be really fun. There was a question of ‘What has been achieved in the last few years, and whet is there still?’ The last four years have been an amazing ride, but I think a big question for me was, ‘How can we keep growing? How can we keep pushing forward?’ Coming up with the notion of these seasons that are all focused around a topic felt to me like something that could really solidify a lot of the work that’s been done and push us into new territory.”

Detroit Opera President and CEO Patty Isacson Sabee, who took the reins from Wayne Brown at the start of this year to become the company’s third leader in its history , shared Sharon’s enthusiasm.

“One of the ways Detroit Opera is engaging people is by highlighting relevant issues of our time,” she said. “The season-long artistic explorations that we will present beginning in 2025/26 could not be more timely or relevant. As we strive to make Detroit Opera a gathering space for the city of Detroit, we are so fortunate to have gained a reputation as a company that does things differently and is emerging as a national leader in opera.

“This is due in large part to the artistic risk taking that is happening under our current leadership. Yuval is opening up this art form to make it more accessible and welcoming to people from all backgrounds. He is marshaling the most innovative teams of sound designers, lighting designers, set designers, projection designers, and more, to create extraordinary productions that speak to the way we live now.”

Sharon, for his part, insisted that Sabee’s presence and vision were crucial in his decision to continue with the company.

“Patty’s great, she really is,” he said. “She has a really good grasp on the potential of the company, but it’s also really seeing that there’s still so much room for it to establish itself. She understands that art is at the core of what Detroit Opera continues to be. And she’s a very thoughtful and insightful partner.

“It was great to work with Wayne, of course, (but) a big question for me was, ‘Who is going to take the top job at Detroit? And will they know what kind of direction they want to take the company, and will that be a direction that feels like my continued involvement would be a benefit?’ With Patty, it really feels like that’s the case. She’s a big reason as to why I’m continuing.”

Success by the numbers

During Sharon’s tenure as artistic director, the company has dramatically expanded upon its national reputation, creative force and representation of diversity, kicking off during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic with a daring, dazzling, drive-through production of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” staged in a parking garage when performing arts the world over had been silenced.

More: Michigan Opera Theatre drives into the pandemic era with a fresh take on a classic

Such radical — and, key, successful — innovations led the New York Times to ask in 2022, “ Is the future of American opera unfolding in Detroit ?”

Increasingly younger and more racially diverse audiences have been a phenomenon these last few seasons, with more than half Detroit Opera’s audiences in the 2021 through 2024 fiscal years coming from Generation X (born 1965 – 80) or younger, representing a 12% increase from fiscal years 2019 and 2020.

During the same period, African American audiences more than doubled. First-time operagoers are also streaming into the Detroit Opera House; consider, for instance, the recent record set by “ X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X ,” in 2022: A whopping 46% of ticketholders convened to attend their first Detroit Opera performance.

More: Sprawling jazz opera 'X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X' revived in Detroit

The next 3 seasons

“These next three years,” said Sharon, “they’re all going to be centered around one particular topic each. Part of the reason to do that is, I’d love to see us as an organization really be completely unified around an exploration. I started hearing audience members say, ‘OK, well, I’ll see this one and not that one,’ and I wanted to create an overall program that felt like you really wanted to see all of them. Even if you didn’t totally know what each piece was, you would know that each of the four pieces in that season would be speaking to each other and creating one exploration.

“In addition, I really want to see how this unifies our entire organization in terms of, ‘What are our dance initiatives? What are our educational initiatives? How do we engage with the community at events?’ I’m excited to see how that plays out.”

Sharon pointed out that 2026 will see many institutions across the country commemorating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

“A lot of cultural institutions are going to be, in that year, really thinking about America, then and now, and I’m really excited to see how opera can explore what how we think about America and what role opera plays in considering our national identities. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be all American composers, necessarily, but will somehow present an American perspective. You know, there are a lot of opera by European composers about America, for instance.

“I don’t want to hint too much as to what to expect, but I will say that opera can be an actual mechanism for understanding ourselves better (as citizens and as a nation). I think a lot of organizations are going to be spending a lot of time thinking about that question, and I’d like us to be part of that conversation. Instead of thinking in terms of one-offs, I’m really trying to think in terms of arcs.”

The theme for 2026-27, faith, grew out of Sharon’s experiences and observations during the time he’s been working with Detroit Opera.

“I have come to realize that Detroit is such a religious unit,” he said. “There are a lot of deeply, fervently religious people in Detroit, and people connect very, very deeply with their religious institutions. I’ve found that very moving. In my time in Detroit, it feels like every project that we’ve done, we’ve connected with local churches or synagogues or, in the case of ‘Malcolm X,’ the Nation of Islam. So I really wanted to spend the ‘26/27 season thinking about opera and different kinds of faith.

“I’m really hoping to engage with these various religious institutions over the course of the whole year, in every way. I hope that’s an opportunity for people at these institutions to come see everything we do that year, so that everyone is broadening their own horizons and becoming part of this long-term exchange that we’re doing.”

2027/28’s sustainability theme is a broader idea still yet to be sketched in, Sharon said.

“It’s all about sustainability, and about the climate crisis and about our relationship to our environment,” he said. “The reason it’s (last in order) is because we are going to need to start working over the next few years to investigate how we do the things that we do, so that we can do carbon offsets all the time and think about every way we produce our operas and events, with an eye toward sustainability and mindfulness of resources.

“But I’d like that to also be about the work that actually happens on our stage. I keep thinking about the nonprofit organizations in Detroit that are so dedicated to the greening of public space, notions of sustainability and environmental justice, and I really want them all to be partners in what it is that we’re doing. But I don’t know what that looks like yet, so that’s why it’s third.”

Detroit Opera board president Ethan Davidson had high praise for Sharon’s vision for the coming years.

“Four years ago, we had an unprecedented opportunity for change — for Detroit Opera to reimagine the future of opera,” said Davidson. “Back in 2020, Yuval Sharon’s appointment as artistic director allowed us to seize the chance to think in new ways about opera in this city, creating work that speaks to the communities that make Detroit so vibrant.

“In the time since then, we’ve been able to make opera and dance more accessible to a wider Detroit community. Under Yuval’s leadership, we will continue to use opera to lead conversations locally and nationally about some of the most critical issues of our time.”

Contact Free Press arts and culture reporter Duante Beddingfield at dbeddingfield@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Opera artistic director Yuval Sharon extends contract for 3 more years