Festival

Tradition and vanguard to boost and diversify opera

Since its beginning, OPERAFEST has positioned itself as an event that brings together partners and multiple interlocutors, enhancing synergies and talents around a project that aims to boost the Portuguese opera market, but also enrich the international opera ecosystem, with new proposals and opening paths for wider diversity in opera. 

It aims to contribute to the creation of new repertoire and presents itself as a stage for the emergence of new talents and new formats, as well as experimentation and initiation into opera, in all areas, from artistic to technical. In a public service sense, it aims to meet the specific needs of the sector and the urgent need for its renewal and diversification in global terms, both in terms of creation, programming, and audience, but also providing training and professionalization with the creation of the contemporary opera competition Maratona Ópera XXI and the Laboratório Ópera XXI platform.

The “outside the box” Opera Festival, born during the pandemic, conquers and retains new audiences

It was born in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic and finally placed Portugal and Lisbon on the Route of International Summer Opera Festivals and quickly became the biggest national operatic event, as well as the main gateway and loyalty of new audiences to opera in Portugal, with a surprising generational variety and young audience, going against the general trend, with this phenomenon already being a case study, by doctoral students at Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

It has been growing in scale and attracting new partners, as a result of the recognition of the quality and relevance of its work in boosting the sector, also praised by international critics, in an ultra-demanding global market, assuming itself as an “outside the box” festival that affirms independent production as a engine of paradigm change and where opera is enjoyed with the enthusiasm of a pop festival.

It clearly bets on Portuguese talent, placing Portugal on the international map of innovative opera events, due to its originality, scope and ambition to bring opera to new audiences, investing in contemporary creation and in renewing and opening opera to new perspectives and proposals with a program to meet different tastes and affinities, organized by thematic cycles.

Programming in varied cycles for varied audiences

The conquest of new audiences is due to its dynamic programming that brings together tradition and contemporary creation, built in Cycles with specific objectives, meeting the needs of the operatic market and meeting diverse audiences, and the urgency that opera has to reinvent itself to be closer to the world and today's public.

Great Classics

Great operas from the operatic repertoire are revisited in stimulating readings.

Inedited 

It proposes the discovery of titles in national premieres and operas and composers less known to the general public, from a recent past.

Creations

New commissions and world premieres.

Maratona Ópera XXI 

The contemporary opera competition that focuses on the development of contemporary opera production at all levels, from composition to staging, stimulating the emergence of new talents and new repertoire.

Opera Satellite

It calls for new explorations and new perspectives on opera, through crossovers with other musical genres (Operatic Rave) or new formats to explore operatic material (performance, happening) as a way to reach unusual audiences, attracting artists and creators from other areas.

Conferences

Exploring each edition programme.

Future Audience 

It focuses on raising awareness of opera among younger audiences with varied formats and repertoire.

Cine-Opera

It proposes programming with films crossing with opera.

Laboratory Opera XXI

It is a platform for the development of today's opera that is derived from the Maratona Ópera XXI competition, with its focus on the various aspects of opera composition, production, and interpretation. It thus invests in the training, professionalization, and dynamization of contemporary opera, in a multidirectional action with multidisciplinary initiatives intrinsic to the specialization of this total art form, helping to point out new paths and trends for present and future opera.

Enhancing contemporary opera with the Maratona Ópera XXI competition, Lab Opera XXI, and new commissions

In just 6 years, Operafest Lisboa managed to bring unprecedented dynamics to the Portuguese operatic world, carrying out commissions for new operas, presenting 17 absolute premieres, and promoting the only contemporary opera competition in the country - Maratona Ópera XXI, where a whole new generation of talented composers, but also performers, has been launched.

Showcase for emerging talent and a stage for growth and professionalization 

It has been a stage and development space for singers, musicians, conductors, directors, set designers, costume designers, and other creative people linked to operatic production, but also in technical positions: producers, machinists, stage managers, subtitling operations, at the beginning of their careers, to develop and grow their talent.

Inclusive and environmentally friendly Operafest promotes and dignifies young work 

OPERAFEST condemns free work, excluding free volunteering, young people, or people of working age, as a form of covert labor exploitation.


It is a Festival that invests in the talent of the present and the future and in the dignity and rights of work for young people, with a rate of work with young people up to 30 years old, in positions of responsibility, corresponding to around 30% (production, design, technique, composers, musicians, singers, actors) of its activity and in gender parity, as well as investing in professionalization and specialization, of newcomers to the opera market.

It also declares itself ecological, promoting the saving of resources, recycling, the use of public transport, and reducing as much as possible activities that promote pollution and the creation of waste and unnecessary plastics, whether in the direct activity of the festival or in the activities of partners associated with OPERAFEST, in their programming and merchandising.

Sustainable development goals defined by the UN

OPERAFEST has an unwavering commitment materialized in good practices of cultural, social, environmental, and economic sustainability, evolutionary and continuous, whose repercussions go far beyond the universe and direct action of the festival.
Committed to generating conscious synergies between all interlocutors in the various dimensions of sustainability, essential to building a better world, where everyone, including the opera itself and everyone who participates in it, can prosper!