John Hoomes On The Nashville Opera
John Hoomes is the CEO and Artistic Director of Nashville Opera. Since 1995, he has guided the organization from a budget of $340,000 to over $3.4 million annually in 2024. Under his leadership, Nashville Opera has staged more than 200 productions of opera and music theater. In this episode, Carli and Spencer talk with John about accessibility to the arts, upcoming productions, and how Nashville is uniquely positioned to produce cutting-edge work.
About John Hoomes
Director Mr. Hoomes is the CEO and Artistic Director of Nashville Opera, a position he has held since 1995.
As a freelance stage director, he has directed over 200 productions of opera and music theatre in the US, South America, and Canada. The New York Times called his Nashville Opera world premiere of Elmer Gantry “An Operatic Miracle...in Nashville.”
Since earning his master’s degree from Indiana University, he has worked with many professional opera companies including New York City Opera, Teatro Colón, Cincinnati Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, and Pittsburgh Opera.
Mr. Hoomes has directed a wide variety of operas including Tosca, La Bohème, Carmen, Madama Butterfly, The Marriage of Figaro, Salome, Otello, and Turandot.
He staged the world premiere of Robert Aldridge’s Elmer Gantry, which was recorded on Naxos Records and won 2 Grammys. He also directed the world premiere of Marcus Hummon’s chamber opera, Surrender Road.
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Spencer 0:06
John Holmes, CEO and artistic director at Nashville opera Association. Welcome to signature required.
John Hoomes 0:13
Thank you so much pleasure to be here.
Spencer 0:14
I am uniquely excited to have you here today, because I'll be the first to confess to you that many things around the opera just intimidate the heck out of me. My family didn't grow up going to the opera. I have such little experience with the opera that having you here today is an unbelievable treat, just getting to experience a world that by the end of this podcast, I'm hopeful that you can take some of the layers back, and especially for a lot of our listeners, perhaps the overwhelming majority, that also haven't had the experience of an opera to make it a little less intimidating. So at least for me, I promise you a number of dumb questions today. I promise you a number of things that you're probably going to say. Hmm, I don't know where he's going with that, but come along with me, and we're going to have a good time here together.
John Hoomes 1:11
I think that sounds great.
Spencer 1:12
So maybe start off with just your original story. You've been doing this a really long time. How long have you been involved with the Nashville opera
John Hoomes 1:21
I came to Nashville in 1995 and I came here as the artistic director of the company, which I still am. I am now the CEO and artistic director. So I've been here, if I survive, until the coming year, it will be my 30th anniversary
Carli 1:37
with the opera company. Feel like you need to throw a party or something, that's a big deal.
John Hoomes 1:41
I know. Well, we're maybe, maybe we will, I don't know, but I've been based here in Nashville that time. I work around the country as a stage director as well as direct the shows here. So my home base is Nashville, and I also run the company here.
Carli 1:56
Okay, so how, what portion of the time are you on the road versus in town,
John Hoomes 2:01
not as much as I used to be okay. I can afford to go out maybe two three times. And when I say go out, it's usually a period of around three weeks. That's usually a rehearsal period. But nowadays, because we have zoom, because we have cell phones and everything, it's not that hard. You can still stay in touch and staff meeting by zoom and things like that,
Carli 2:21
that's wonderful. So are you supporting other opera companies across the nation, or what are you working on? Yeah,
John Hoomes 2:28
they would other opera companies. If they want one of our productions I've done here in Nashville, then they'll hire me to come and bring our production and install it there in their theater. Other times, they'll just ask me to come as a director, and they have a show of their own. They want me to come and direct it. That's really cool.
Spencer 2:46
I can imagine as a youth daydreaming of a lot of different things when you're a young child. I can imagine being an astronaut, pilot, yes, a baseball player, but the Artistic Director and CEO of the Nashville opera is a pretty cool little niche that you have gotten into. So maybe take me back to your childhood, or a moment where did you have this experience growing up and you were just brought up into this world.
John Hoomes 3:15
I had no experience with opera growing up, none whatsoever. Until I hit college. I grew up. I grew up in South Alabama, northern Florida, around Pensacola and mobile. The arts there was were incredibly limited. I don't know if I ever heard much classical music at all. The primary there were two primary arts outlets in one was church, of course, in every small town the South and the other were was movies and television. And so those are the two things I gravitated toward. I think for a while my family, at least, was gearing me more toward church work like a minister of music. I think the goal at that time was to be a minister of music in a giant mega church like in Texas, that didn't work out. But I also felt when I was little, if I'd known I could have done this, I probably would have moved to California and try to get into movies in Hollywood, because I had a I still have a huge love of movies. But then I kind of discovered music and discovered live theater. And I started as an actor, actor singer, probably not a great singer, but, but I went to university in in Birmingham, at Samford University, which is a head of terrific music school. So I went there. And there I really discovered classical music. And there I discovered opera, because they would do one show a year, and I was there for a four year program. And one of the first operas I saw was a piece that you don't see much anymore, called the console. And it was a piece written by a man named Giancarlo Menotti, and he wrote it for Broadway in the 40s. It was a Broadway opera. You don't find those much anymore. Yeah, but it was a piece about freedom, and it was a piece about a woman who was living in what they called in an iron curtain country, trying to escape that country. And her her husband had already escaped, and she was hoping to follow Him, and He told her, just go to the consulate. They'll help you. They'll get a visa. And she gets so mired in the bureaucracy and red tape that, spoiler alert, she never gets out. And I didn't know opera could tell those stories and and there were darker stories than Broadway. They were more human, real stories. And that really piqued my interest a lot. And I didn't really want to sing, although I have a training as a singer in music, but I got very interested in the overall picture of not only the singing, but also the drama of the piece and the costuming of the piece and the sets and the lighting and the video, sometimes in a piece. And so I just kind of moved in in that direction, you know. And so when I finished Samford, I went to graduate school at Indiana University, which at the time was one of the top opera schools in the country, and the theater I worked in as a grad student growing up there was equal to the Metropolitan Opera in New York. They built the exact same facility, the same stage they had. It was a giant stage with hydraulic side stages that would roll on. It was, it was amazing. And all the teachers there said, don't get used to this, because this is not the way the world is. But it was, it was a great experience, and it it gave me a lot to work with and to think about and grow. My first six months there, I was working with Leonard Bernstein on a project who was there in residency, and I just thought, Well, this must be the way it is. It's not the way it is at all for our
Spencer 6:51
listeners, Leonard Bernstein wrote West
John Hoomes 6:53
Side Story and a ton of other fantastic pieces, and was a major American composer, orchestrator, musician, conductor, but, but I thought, Okay, this is this is great. And at the time, I had no idea what I was getting that type of training. But then I got out in the world, and I've been fortunate to be working steadily ever since.
Carli 7:21
Wow. Okay, so my parents met at Indiana University in Bloomington, and so I had spent my entire infant years going to Bloomington, and much of my adolescence there, so I had no idea that they had this prolific opera. I knew Bobby Knight basketball, but I did not know about the opera. So are there a lot of schools across the nation that are doing this, or is it special to IU and
John Hoomes 7:50
there are, there are a number of schools across the country that have opera programs, some pretty major programs. Obviously, Juilliard is one. Eastman School of Music. Cincinnati conservatory is fantastic. They're kind of the IU rival in Cincinnati, but there's some great ones on the west coast as well. I went to Indiana because first I had a friend that had gone there and said how great it was. But they also had great connections in the business, because they really train you for a professional career. But But, yeah, Bloomington was great. There was a place down near the Opera Theater there, called bears place. They had pizza and beer was great, but it was a, it's a college town, but right in the middle is, is, is a replica of the Met, basically. And they would do eight giant productions a year, six during the year and two in the summer, I missed out. No, it was amazing. The second year I was there, I was involved in a production of Sweeney Todd, which is a big, famous Broadway piece, you know, and and and so. And we used the actual set from Broadway. They just finished it, and it was on its way somewhere else. And so they brought it to IU and we pieced it back together, and we did it there. And I remember being inside the bakery house, you know, doing something that I was in the stage crew at that time, and up on the wall there was graffiti that Angela Lansbury had left that said, Angela was here.
Carli 9:18
No kidding.
John Hoomes 9:18
Yeah, isn't that cool?
Carli 9:19
That's really cool. So,
John Hoomes 9:21
yeah, small world, you know, small world, love
Carli 9:24
that.
Spencer 9:25
So you're at IU, walk us through the evolution to eventually come to Nashville and rising into the role that you're at today.
John Hoomes 9:35
Well, when I left IU, I started getting jobs at different companies and festivals and like everyone, starting first kind of as a quasi paid intern, and then working as an assistant. And I started, I started working as an assistant stage manager, and they're the people that work backstage to basically make sure the show runs wearing all black, wearing all black totally you. And I, and I did that in for a number of years, an assistant stage manager doesn't what we doesn't call the show. That's where you call the light cues. You really just make sure everything runs. You make sure the chorus comes on, you make sure the principal singers, they get on. In fact, there's a whole method that you stand backstage with someone, no matter how much they've done it, and you have a score, and you, and you give them a you say, stand by. And then a few seconds later, you say, go and you so you idiot proof them getting on stage, right? And so I did that for years. I was in Philadelphia, doing that with, with a very famous opera singer named Luciano Pavarotti, and he was singing at the time, and I was this kid, and he'd been singing this opera. I think it was called elixir of love. He'd been singing this opera for 20 years, and I'm this kid and backstage with him, and it comes time for him to go on, I say, stand by. And he turns to me and he said, You are going to tell me when to go on? And I said, That's my job and go because I was too young to know any difference. But I did that for a number of years, and then I worked into stage managing, so you're actually controlling the backstage and calling the show. And then I was an assistant director, but I always wanted to direct. I always wanted to be the person who could put the show together in all the aspects of it. And I had kind of a vision for what I wanted with certain shows, which is what you need
Spencer 11:21
as a career guy in logistics, that all I have done is move trucks from here and there, and a and b and warehousing and all the stuff sounds like you're a cousin in that way, that behind the scene, there's a lot of stuff going on back there, and you also have a lot of egos To manage back there from time to time. Perhaps, so
John Hoomes 11:42
a lot,
Carli 11:45
much more creative cousin, perhaps,
Spencer 11:47
yes, that's right, it's just all keeping it on time. Because, certainly on stage like that, you don't notice five seconds in logistics. You notice it back there.
John Hoomes 11:58
You do everything is synchronized to the second ideally. And there are always things you have to work around and work with, but it's a lot of logistics, a lot and just coordinating. So when people come to a show and the curtain goes up and they watch the show, it's like they're only seeing the tip of the iceberg of what it's taken to get there and to put it together, and even what's going on backstage. There's so much going on but, but you see this focused area and that that's the intent you ideally. You come to a show and you see that, and you go, great, and you have no idea what it took to get there. That's the
Carli 12:32
goal, right? Sounds like a metaphor for life. It is. Honestly, this
Spencer 12:38
is now going to be a deeper podcast to go into sorry, life lessons back it up. So all right, when does John arrive to Nashville? And what is Nashville like when you think about opera and its receptiveness to that?
John Hoomes 12:55
You know, Nashville has been so receptive because part of my career, and you mentioned this earlier, is to try to demystify the art form, because I've talked to so many people who have never been to an opera, and they say, well, one I'm afraid I won't understand it. Or they say I'm going to feel dumb coming to it, or they don't I say, I don't want to wear and and I've tried to demystify it my entire career. In what opera is really are terrific stories because it is a theater piece. Ideally, they're terrific stories with the best music in the world. And that's what that's what I'm doing, and I try my best to make it accessible for people, because opera did not start out as some highfaluting type of thing. It started out as something everyone would come to. It was almost like the movies of the day. Everybody would come to the opera. And you can get a cheap ticket and come to the opera, and the opera, somehow it evolved into more of what is seen as an elitist entertainment that was never the intent, you know, and one of the most famous composers, whose name is Giuseppe Verdi, who wrote a ton of pieces, his entire philosophy was the theater remains to be filled because one, he wanted the ticket sales, but two, he wanted to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, and That's what I've tried to carry out here in Nashville. I was in New York for a while. I was in Philadelphia for a good bit, and I started working around the country. And I'm from the south, and little by little, working my way back down south, not intentionally, that's just where the jobs were. And and my wife and I came here together. So when they Nashville hired us, they hired us as a team to come in. We were not yet married at the time, but they hired us as a team to come in, me overseeing the artistic side primarily, and her overseeing more of the administrative Executive Director side, now that there was so much crossover, because we work. Closely together, and we would kind of cross ideas over, but we were hired together. And so before I came to Nashville, and I'm not sure if either of you have toured much, but you get tired of being in a hotel or traveling all the time, you know. And so, and she was traveling too. She was a stage manager, and so she wasn't, we didn't always, weren't always in the same city. And so she was here in Nashville, and Nashville was looking to make a change, and she called me and she said, Look, Nashville's going to be making a change soon with leadership and and I'd never, I'd worked for a number of companies, but I'd never been in this position. She hadn't either and and, but she and I had put together a business plan for an opera and nonprofit, because we thought eventually we may try to start our own somewhere. We may start, try to start our own company and treat people well and be ethical, and create, create a company the way we thought it should be. And so she called me and she said, Should I show them the plan? I said, Yeah, show them the plan. It's not going to hurt anything. And I was in one city working, and she was in Nashville, and so they she showed it to me, to the board, they brought me in, we had a couple of interviews, and then they hired us to come in and basically instigate a lot of the plan we had created. And that's what we've done. And and Nashville was very open. I can't tell you the generosity of people here in Nashville. We have, we have fantastic donors. I have a great board of directors, and so they kind of gave us free rein to create. And so when we first came here, the the entire budget of the Nashville opera, I think, was around $340,000 total. They had accrued some debt, you know, and so we had a big job, and there were three of us, and it was a big job, but we we got a lot of friends together in the opera world. So I'd call favors in to get, like, major singers to come in. We started doing more productions. We started getting out in the community more, and I've been there 30 years, but now our budget next year, I think, is around $3.4 million congratulations.
Carli 17:13
Thank
John Hoomes 17:14
you. Thank you so much. That's really
Carli 17:16
cool. And I was reading, you have created the National Opera into being a is it a stage two,
John Hoomes 17:22
level two, level two, tier two, level two. Help
Carli 17:25
me, because there can't be any stupid questions. Help me understand the different tiers of opera world.
John Hoomes 17:31
There are five tiers in the opera world. The Met is tier one, okay? They're like, they're like, up here, because their budget's like, you know, 300 million a year. So there it's all on budget usually. Does it stand alone up there as one? No? Chicago, lyric, opera, Chicago, Los Angeles, opera, usually opera companies in very large cities because they have a bigger donor base, and so they're much larger. We, for years, were a tier three company, and that's a budget from, I think one 1 million to three, and then below one below 1 million is like a tier four. There may not be a tier five anymore, so it's a tier four is 1 million and below. And these are all companies in cities all over the country. Every almost every city has an opera company and a ballet company and a symphony, and I think that's important for a city to have, but there are different sizes depending on their donor base and the size of the city. So we were level three for a long time, and we really started to push to change levels because and now we are a tier two company, but being a tier two company puts Nashville at the same table of cities like Boston, Kansas City, San Diego, Charlotte, Austin, that you always hear compared to Nashville. And so we now, we now are, are seen differently because we're a tier two company, and we're seen equal to like Boston. Wow, and that's a great thing, which Nashville should be. I love this city, and we want to help grow in this city, and we want to, we want to bring our the art we create, out into this city. And I really think it can. It can heal a lot of our society and life. The arts are so important.
Spencer 19:18
I love the entrepreneurial undertone that is throughout your entire story, is seeing that scrappiness, the plan and even amongst a framework where it's not that you started the Nashville opera, but you formed its culture and its identity, and have been so critical in making the choices that it's going to go in this direction or it's not, and you've had a 10x result of that over your time.
John Hoomes 19:50
Thanks. Well, we're very fortunate, and it took a lot of hard work, but also took a lot of support from the people of Nashville. And I think Nashville is unique. In that, you know, because we do a lot of the classics, like I'm going to be doing Carmen, that's a top top 10 opera we do. We've done Puccini's, La Boheme, top 10 opera every company does, does those. But about 10 years ago, we built a facility on the west side of town, which is our production facility, rehearsal facility, administrative offices, and I had a black box theater space, which is a space, and by that, it means you're basically in this large box. You can put lighting and sound, and you can do small scale shows there. And so about 10 years ago, we introduced a series of doing shows that weren't classics, shows that were very non mainstream shows, but I think are important shows, and important to expose our city to. Now, what I found out is Nashville is a city of new work and new art, because somewhere not far from this studio, someone sitting in a truck working on a song. You know, they're on break and they're writing a song. So when you say, I have a new song in this city, people say, Great, let me hear it. They aren't afraid it's a new song in opera. That's not the case so much. So many people want opera to stay doing works that are 200 years old, but I have no interest in being a museum and having only things you can view behind glass and you can't touch. So anything we do, I want to make accessible. And so we started this series called The NOAA left opera center series, and in which I do small pieces. I do one a year, usually in November. And we have done all kind of things here in Nashville that most companies would not touch because they don't trust the audience. So they feel the audience doesn't want to see this, or maybe their audience doesn't want to see it. And some have tried and failed, we've been very successful. And so so we offer a diet of the classics like Harmon, but you also can come and see something really different. And so in this small space, we've done works by Philip Glass that you the company our size usually would never do. We've done it. There's a there's a wonderful composer in New York named David Lang who's with a band called Bang on a Can. We've done a piece of guy. He is here. I did an opera by Carly Simon here that nobody knew existed. And she wrote a piece about 10 years ago in New York, and I liked it, and and so I said, we should try to do it. And so so we did. I never got to meet her, but I talked her on the phone a few times, but we did this piece that she wrote about her life, and it's an opera. So so we presented all kind of different pieces here. But I think one reason we've been successful is we're in Nashville, Music
Carli 22:45
City. I mean, that makes sense all kinds of music city. So when you say certain people may not trust their audience, is it? Help me understand what that means? Is it because the content is actually pretty gritty and you're worried people won't want to see it? You said you were attracted to maybe the darker elements, because there is light, but there also is dark. And storytelling is that what people are struggling with in certain markets,
John Hoomes 23:08
you know, it's funny, because so much of opera, even the classics, deal with darker elements, right? If you look at Carmen, when you break it down, what Carmen really is about is about a very straight laced man who has a very nice girlfriend. He's from a small town. His mother wants him to marry this girl, and he meets Carmen, who is a very free spirited woman. And all she asks Is she wants to live her wife the way she wants to live it. She wants the same right as a man, as a man when it comes to love. And this guy falls in love with her, and it turns it does not go well. It doesn't go well. And we get in some very dark areas, but that's a classic piece. So, so some of the classic pieces are pretty dark sometimes, but, but, I think, but the music is the music for karma was written, what, almost 200 years ago. And so the music is very melodic. It's very beautiful and very accessible. And it's a very popular piece because of that. And I love Carmen, but some of the other pieces we do like the Philip Glass piece. Philip Glass seems to be not everybody's taste, you know, but we did two shows over the years by him. One was one was based on Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. And that's a it's a great piece. The other piece we did was a piece called the hydrogen jukebox, which Philip Glass wrote the music. And it's beat poetry by Allen Ginsberg, and it's about America from the 60s to the 80s. And it's a fascinating, really cool piece. And after we did that piece, I had a woman from the audience come over to me at the end, and she said, you know, she goes, she said, I just moved here from Los Angeles. And she said, Never in my life would I expect to see this type of art in Nashville, Tennessee. So we. Want to explode that too. We want to explode. I'm in Nashville. It's all about country music. It's about all kind of things in Nashville downtown. Now we have jazz, there's blues, we have the terrific orchestra with classical music. It's Nashville's a very eclectic town, so I think I've been able to, as they say, get away with a lot in what we do. So
Spencer 25:22
John, one of my favorite pieces that we do with each of our guests is a segment called No Dumb Questions. And normally there's like one or two of the questions. Okay, I've got like five or six, and Carly probably has a couple, so I've held them back for about as long as I can. I do need to give an important caveat that some of these questions are probably going to feel real dumb if I have your permission to just be playful and lighthearted in the spirit that you just answered a second ago to say that you're demystifying opera, I really appreciate that message, because I think just saying that takes courage to say, I am passionate about this art form, and this art form is really misunderstood. And rather than having a heart posture of like, well, that's everyone else's fault, that no one understands what Opera's value could be. Instead, you seem to have a heart posture that says, hey, just give me the chance to teach you. Let me show you something. And even in how you say, hey, this one's a little more accessible versus not. I really appreciate that too, because you're acknowledging that there are some pieces that are going to be really tough to access for some maybe new people that are coming to the space. So with that lead in, Do I have your permission to ask some dumb questions? Bring
John Hoomes 26:49
it on.
Carli 26:50
Can I tell them your starting point, though? Tell them the story. So sorry. So we were prepping for this chatting today. I was like, Can I tell him about the time you took me to the ballet, which is probably the most arty thing we've done. He's like, How dare you? How dare you remember this for my birthday before we were even married, Cinderella is one of my favorite stories. I've seen it in many mediums and art forms. And so he gets tickets, thinking he's taking me to the musical of Cinderella, but it was the ballet in Chicago in about five minutes, and the music is swelling, and it's beautiful and the movement. And he leans over and he's like, are they ever gonna talk? What is this? And I I've never laughed so hard trying to look like I know what I'm doing at a ballet. But he was like, What is this? I thought it was a musical. Oh no, babe. Oh no. So this is your starting point for artistic stupid questions. I'm here
John Hoomes 27:45
for you. My first time seeing the Nutcracker. Okay, I kept thinking, is anybody gonna sing? Or I was just ready. I'm with you.
Carli 27:53
You're at least in good company. Oh, that makes me so much better. So happy for you.
Spencer 27:57
I was so nervous about Carly telling that story, and now that you gave your reaction. I'm amongst my people now. Like, when I heard you talking about being from Alabama and Sanford, I was like, okay, like, he's got to get it on some level. It's not going to storm out on you. Okay, all right. Well, I'm diving into some dumb questions. And so for someone that has never been to an opera, and they're maybe thinking, Why in the world would I ever go they express some of the questions you talked about earlier, what do I wear? What do I expect? If you could just break it down for the probably majority of our audience that has never been before, help take some of the apprehension away. To say this is what you should expect when you come to an opera, and how to best understand what you're signing up for. So let's start maybe on that dumb question. Okay, well,
John Hoomes 28:51
let's start with Carmen, because we're going to be doing that soon. It has a very accessible story, as I mentioned before, it's a guy falls in love with a girl. Doesn't work out. Ends badly. A lot of operas end badly because they do. Many operas explore dark human emotion. Many are not for children because they explore dark human emotion. But if someone I see people a lot that have never been first of all, you'll see people there dressed in all everything. You'll see people there and some people in tuxedos, rarely anymore, some people in a suit coat, a lot of people in jeans, okay, and that's great. We don't really have a dress code at all. It's whatever you feel comfortable in
Spencer 29:33
jeans and a button down jeans, you can take it up from there. Jeans
John Hoomes 29:37
and a T shirt with a, you know, with a with a saying, That's okay in public, you're fine.
Carli 29:41
So you truly don't care. You're not. Oh
John Hoomes 29:44
no, okay. Oh no, no, if they come, no, no, no. We just want people to try to come. However you feel comfortable, please come. That's one thing. The second thing is, a lot of the shows we do, we do in the original language. So if a piece was written in Italian, we'll perform. Form it in Italian or German or French. I've done a piece in Czech before. That's hard. Some pieces are written in English, but every piece we do, even the English pieces, I put English titles above the stage. So if you come to a show and you see it, they may be singing in French, but like a foreign movie, we have the English text above the stage. That's so nice of you. This started internationally about maybe 20 something years ago, because they didn't before and and it started, and it was a great idea, and it's kind of revolutionized our business, because now, I mean, I speak some Italian, but not enough to keep up, you know. But that way I can come to a show and I can look up and I can see exactly what they're saying. And if you've ever watched a foreign movie which most people have with subtitles, it's the same thing, and it really has revolutionized understandability of a piece. And a lot of people don't know we do that, and they don't realize I'm not going to sit there for a couple of hours of people singing in French. You're going to have the English above it. But I also tell people that what, what we really are doing is theater. It's a type of theater, and storytelling and drama, storytelling is important. A symphony concert is totally different. That's purely music. Ballet is different. That's more about the dance. We're about the storytelling and the drama of the piece. And a lot of the singers nowadays, they train both dramatically as well as musically. Singing an opera is its own thing. It's a certain type of singing you have to do. I call it controlled yelling, because you have to learn to project your voice like this. And even if we're in the Jackson Hall, which I think is around 2000 seats, we use no microphones. Oh, that's incredible, because these people, it's a very athletic art form, and you basically work up the lung power to produce sound that can cut over a 50 piece orchestra. Wow. And that's part of it. That's part of the that's part of the dynamic, because it's we're an acoustic art form, and if you've not heard an opera singer live like close to you, it's a different experience, because there's something so visceral about it, that you feel that you feel it, and that's that's a big part of what we do and and often you can watch TV and opera on TV, or the Met does a high def broadcast, and I'm glad they do, because it gets it out everywhere. It's not the same as a live experience because we use no microphones. It's that person producing that special sound, and you feel it. And I can't explain it until you, until you've experienced it. But I tell people that because you come to it. And the Jackson Hall is a very large space, the lift center, the smaller shows we do, I can seat 270 people, and you are, you were six feet away from the stage, and that's a different experience, because you're right there in the middle of it, but that's more what it was intended to be, because a lot of the theaters these pieces were written for are not 2000 seats, they're barely 1000 seats, but they were always considered theater storytelling and and it was for the general public. It was for everybody.
Carli 33:26
I had no idea what
Spencer 33:27
a great answer. I just love so much in that much,
Carli 33:31
yeah, you're a storyteller, and how you answer our question.
Spencer 33:36
I really appreciate the fact that the opera started including subtitles, because I would imagine there was a meaningful part of that culture that just was horrified by the thought of including the subtitles, that it would in some way diminish or water down the piece. So yes, I bet that was a whole battle in and of itself, horrified,
John Hoomes 33:58
horrified. And in fact, the principal conductor, who used to be at the Metropolitan Opera is no longer there when this whole thing started. His big quote was, the Met will have super titles over my dead body, and now they do, and he's gone.
Spencer 34:19
That counts as horrified? Yeah, that's right, but he was,
John Hoomes 34:21
he just felt it would, it would destroy the art form, and it did not, if anything, it made it more accessible. But I have met people that don't want to make it accessible. They want it to maintain, as I say, behind glass, so it's untouchable. That's just not what it is. I
Spencer 34:35
think that's a really great message to come out of that, because in every subculture, there is a group that appreciates just that it is their own, and they don't want to make it accessible. But that's also a great way to have something die that you don't expand and reproduce the interest and educate. So I just really appreciate that, that hearing that answer, in and of itself, makes it feel all the way. From the dress to being able to understand what I'm hearing, that all is is really helpful. Perfect. Dumb Question number one answered for me. Thank you. Wow. Okay, another question. So when I think about the content of a typical opera show, it's not something that I've generally heard before that I have any context for being rooted at all in my culture today like that. You might see, for example, Hamilton in New York, unbelievably successful political piece about the founding of our country, a musical, incredible lyrics that had a little bit of a tie to certainly our country and maybe a little bit modern day. So can you talk to me about some of the decision making of the stories themselves, and why a meaningful part of the opera seems to be like what you mentioned, more museum like, rather than something that hits on popular culture of today. Well,
John Hoomes 36:10
yeah, there's a very famous opera by Giuseppe Verdi called La Traviata, right? And let me get just a little bit of history here. And that's a piece he wrote, and it's one of the top pieces of his career, right? And it is about, it is about a woman who is a courtesan, which is actually a prostitute of something, a kept woman. And her name is Violetta, and she has, she is the party queen of Paris. It's 1850 but she is dying. It's an opera. So she has that consumption. She is, she is slowly dying. And she has, and she has made the decision that, okay, I know I'm dying. And so she has the James Dean decision, where she said, I'm gonna live, dad, live fast, die young and leave a great looking corpse, right? And that's her choice. And at one of the parties, she meets this young man named Alfredo, who comes in specifically to meet her. And he's younger than her, but he comes in to meet her because he has fallen in love with her. From afar, he doesn't care who she is or what she is, his family does later, but he's in love with her. And she laughs it off at first, and then she realizes, in this emptiness of my world, maybe this is my one chance of true love. Maybe this, this is it. And so she leaves this life in Paris to go and live with him. And then it and then again, it all goes horribly wrong, because his family interferes, and they because they can't have him marrying this type of woman. These are pretty universal stories. Even today, there are plenty of families that disagree with someone that a son or a daughter fall in love with. That's kind of what this is about. So a lot of these are pretty universal stories. There's a famous story called opera called Rigoletto, and it was very famous, and it's about a father who is overly protective with his daughter, to the point of raising her, keeping her in a convent, not letting her know anything about the world, which is probably the worst thing you can do with a child. But he thinks he's protecting her, and then she, by chance, meets this man who ends up hurting her, and then her father seeks revenge, and once again, it goes horribly wrong, because it's an opera, it goes horribly wrong. But I'm always wondering why nobody has made a movie of that plot, because it would be so great, like Martin Scorsese just said, it in the mob world, where you have some guy who's a bartender for the mob, and his daughter is hurt by Joe pesci's character, and the Father seeks revenge and it goes horribly wrong. So all these stories, I think, if you break it down, they're very universal stories that we maybe not can identify with, but we understand and we've seen, but you have to break it down to the basics of what I'm seeing here, and that's what's made to me so many successful operas are when you break down a story like that, that I can follow all the points of the story, and you put this fantastic music with it that then elevates that story. And that's really what to me opera, is it really, I had a woman a few years ago come to me at TPAC after seeing something, I think it was La Boheme. It's a big, famous piece, and she had never seen an opera, and she went to Broadway all the time, and she came up and she after it's over, and she's crying, it's very emotional. At the end, she came up and she said, this is like the Rolls Royce of Broadway. And I said, I'm going to steal that quote.
Carli 39:34
Should Yeah, I have another. I have a stupid question in my turn. Okay, you arguably, these are not the happiest endings. We've said that sometimes, yes, so if I'm trying to raise kids, we have four kids with an awareness of this art form. Where is our entry point? How do I get them involved with opera in an age appropriate way?
John Hoomes 39:59
It. All depends on the opera. It all depends on the show and the age of the child. There are some pieces written that are comedies for children. There is a wonderful operatic version of Cinderella, wonderful version, a famous comic opera for the entire family. Is the Barber of Seville, and Bugs Bunny parodied that. And you've heard the music in Bucks bunny, okay? And that's a big and we'll be doing it probably in a year or two here in town. It's a it's a terrific show, but it's a comedy. I mean, nobody dies, no dark subjects, it's all funny.
Carli 40:32
Wraps up at the end without blood and murder, no blood and murder, none at the end. At the end of probably won't like it, because he only like shows that have blood and murder, but it sounds right up my alley. Well, I'd say,
John Hoomes 40:41
I'd say 80% leap in with blood and murder, but there's 20% that don't. And every, usually, every other year or so, we we specifically do a family piece, and often it's a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. A lot of opera companies do not program GNS because they feel it's not really an opera. But it does take opera singers to do it, and it's incredibly clever. It's in English. It is for the entire family and and they wrote these during we did Pirates of Penzance a few years ago, sold out family audience and Gilbert, who wrote the the lyrics, the libretto for the piece. He has a famous quote, and he said, my partner, I he said, we're attempting to write we want to write family entertainment. We want to write a piece that any father could bring their daughter to and neither would be given reason to blush. And I thought, okay, that's sweet. That's the but that was written 100 or more years ago in the Victorian era in London and so, but they were writing family entertainment, and so we do those occasionally.
Carli 41:47
I love that. I mean, Spence takes our girls on Daddy daughter dates every other week, and he just rotates through our three girls. And I almost feel like you can't take them to a movie today without there being something to make them blush. So gotta be careful, yeah. So I mean, kudos to you guys for bringing that to Nashville. I love that. Thanks. Thanks.
Spencer 42:06
Couple other just logistical things. Is there just one show per season? Is the opera year round art form that you're gonna join? Or is it very like, Hey, we're active five months out of the year, but not active seven months out of the year. What's kind of the cadence of how the Nashville opera runs out of the 12 months
John Hoomes 42:27
we well, we we stay active the entire 12 months. Our main stage season in which we do our big shows, and what I call the main stage shows, we do four a year, the usually at TPACK, depending Coming up, we'll be opening our season with Carmen, which is a, again, I can't say enough great stuff about it. It's a big, famous crowd pleasing opera, maybe not for the kids, but a crowd pleasing opera. It gets a little stabby at the end. Spoiler alert, literally, yeah, and then we're closing our season with a piece called Lucia de la memor, which is about, it's now Italian opera set in Scotland, set in the 1800s about a woman who is put into an arranged marriage by her brother. It does not end well. It ends well for her, but not for anybody else. But we're closing our season with that. We're doing HMS Pinafore family piece in January, okay, and and again, it is comedy, funny, light, beautiful. And then in November, I'm doing one of my small, strange shows, non mainstream shows. I'll say we're doing a world premiere, but at the beginning we're doing, it's a two acts. Two act evening. The first one act opera we're doing is called Bon appetit. It's an opera about Julia Child. I want to go to the house. It's super cool. And during the opera, Julia Child bakes a chocolate during the show, and if you're on the front row, she will then serve some people
Carli 44:09
tickets for sale. Yet, tickets
John Hoomes 44:11
are they just went on sale. The front row already taken. Well, let me say this an experiment. So my advice is you may not want to try the cake, because we're still figuring this out of how this is going to work, singing and baking. Yeah, that's the ideal. The ideal, though, is is we'll be able to try some what she does, and then we'll take a little mission, and then we're going to come back with a piece, a brand new piece, world premiere, called the cook off by Sean okpebolo. He's a Nigerian American composer in Chicago, and the librettist is Mark Campbell, who won the Pulitzer a few years ago, and they made this one act piece. It'll be the first time anybody's seen it, and it's called the cook off. And it's an opera based in the world of television competitive cooking shows. Yes,
Carli 44:57
literally, I the. I fall asleep every night watching cooking shows. It's like my secret love. So it
John Hoomes 45:06
is super cool. And the cook off has there's only characters. There are five people in it. There are three contestants. There's an MC named Kenny Kincaid that's all like smiles and teeth, smiles, teeth and hair. And we have a food critic, Judge, whose name is Burl Bennett, who is like an HR nightmare. So
Carli 45:26
it's a comedy, it's a comedy, but I bet it doesn't end well. It
John Hoomes 45:31
ends Great. Both end Great, perfect. And they're both. They're both, like, G rated, they're both, you know, they're funny, they're comedies and but it's hard, it's harder to find an operatic comedy because so many of the stories you know kind of head toward darker areas but but both pinafore and the cook off and bon appetit, they're they're both comedies, and for the entire family,
Carli 45:54
all in Thank
Spencer 45:55
you, John, it's just really great to get to ask you a couple questions, and again, I just want to compliment the lightheartedness with which you answer the questions, and being able to meet the audience where they're at, but also encouraging them to say, Hey, this is going to be trying something that you haven't tasted before. So you know, give it a chance. Maybe the first thing you see isn't going to be your very favorite, but the fact that I just hear the words Bugs Bunny come out of your mouth during this time was not something I expected to hear about a cooking show that is done live in the audience like I think that really helps expand the bell curve that you do have some stuff that is important and historical and tells those timeless truths, but also you give a nod to an audience that is looking to something different. And I think that's really fantastic. How you explained that. So I definitely come away from my dumb questions feeling much more educated. So thank you for that. Well, you're
John Hoomes 46:55
very welcome. But my first exposure to opera, before I went to college, and I didn't know what it was, is when I was a small child, and I was watching Gilligan's Island, and they had a they were doing a play or a musical they had put together on the island, and one character was singing a song, and I found out later he was singing one of the songs from Carmen. Now I didn't know that until I saw Carmen and said, Hey, that's from Gilligan's Island. No, it's the other way around. But that was my first exposure. And we've all heard the melodies. We've all heard the songs. People just don't know what they are, but they've heard them before, so
Spencer 47:35
Well, maybe take this moment to talk some about the Nashville Friends of the opera and just what the objective of that is, because I again see your heart of an educator and an ambassador for this art form. So maybe talk to me about some of the ways that Nashville opera is deepening its roots here in Nashville and getting people to try it for the first time.
John Hoomes 47:59
Well, the friends of Nashville opera is a volunteer group with the opera. They were, they've been with it since the start or and when, since I've been here for a long time. They were known as the Nashville opera Guild, and they rebranded into the Friends of Nashville opera a few years ago. And these are terrific volunteers that that sometimes work our shows. They they have a large fundraiser for the opera that they put together in February called La bellinote, and it's been very successful, and I'm sure we'll be doing it again this February. But they do, they do a lot of wonderful things. They're, they're kind of our support system of volunteers here in Nashville.
Spencer 48:44
If someone was wanting to really try to find an experience that they wanted to ask questions to, how could they call up the Nashville opera and get who answers the phone? Like, how could somebody say, Hey? Is this an appropriate show? Let's say that they make it to Carmen, or they don't make it to Carmen, and they're looking to try to find an appropriate entree into it without kind of looking silly. What's the best way for them to be able to do that research and make sure that it's appropriate for what they're looking to do for the evening?
John Hoomes 49:16
They can definitely call, call the office. We put on our website, we list the shows, we put some disclaimers about what's in the show, as far as some content, if there's a content warning, not often, because some, I mean, they're not that bad, I make them sound like they're horrible. They're not that bad, but a little stabby, just a little stabby occasionally, but definitely call the office, talk to somebody there, or ask for me, I'll be glad, and talk to anybody just about to try to try to explain just what it is they will experience and what they're going to see. We're happy and do that
Carli 49:53
well. And I was reading in your bio too how much you guys are doing outreach to schools and to children to try to you. Involve families. Do you want to share a little bit about that? Sure.
John Hoomes 50:04
Well, we have, we have a number of really great outreach engagement activities we do. We have a tour to the schools of Nashville, primarily to elementary schools. And there are a number of operas written geared specifically for children, okay? And they're usually around 35 minutes long. They're based on a fairy tale The composer. And there's a good friend of mine that's writing these now, we'll take music by Mozart's public domain, and he'll use it and piece it together into a pastiche. He'll put new lyrics with it. And so last year, we did an opera and took it into the schools based on the three little pigs. And it's a big hit. It's a big, big hit. But I started that program when I first came to Nashville. So we actually put together a fully staged opera with singers. We audition around the country, bring in four top level singers in costume, with sets with piano, and we take it out to the schools of Middle Tennessee. We do about a seven week tour. We've done this forever, wow. And we play to around 25,000 children a year.
Carli 51:08
Okay, so if I'm sitting here thinking, my kids have to see this, how do I get our school on your list? How do I get them on the tour?
John Hoomes 51:16
Well, the school just needs to. We put an alert out like it'll start in about a month or so, that it's available for any school that wants to call us and you have to call early because obviously it books up fast. We offer this at no cost to the school. Wow, because so many schools are having their budgets cut and they're having their music program taken apart. So we bring this into the schools at no cost to schools. And we also with the education tour. We often play on weekends. We do free public performances at public libraries or at other facilities. We we play to Nashville libraries. We play at the Brentwood library, we play at the Franklin library, and the library publicizes those again, at no cost to them. We just think it's important to bring this out. But we're very proud of this education tour, because we play to so many children, and and, and the the scripts that are written, again, they're very light. They're very funny. I think. The end of one of the shows, one of the taglines is Little Red Riding Hood show, which I love. She turns to the audience and says, The Huntsman never did chop the Big Bad Wolf into a million PCs, because it turned out the Big Bad Wolf is an endangered species, but on chop. But seriously so it's that type of light humor, you know, and, and, and it goes over so well. And in fact, we one school we went to this year, they called us and said the children were so inspired by this. They they've created their own version. They've created their own opera of the three little pigs. And so they sent us a video, and it was the most cute, adorable thing ever. So it's like I said, I'm very proud of that. We also have a very robust engagement activity that we do during the pandemic, when everything kind of stopped, we couldn't perform indoors, and so we started this thing called opera on wheels, and in which we would take opera outdoors, and you could play outdoors with social distancing. And so we started this, and we created this rolling stage. I think originally it was owned by Jack Daniels as a display stage, but it's all
Carli 53:36
good things in Tennessee, originally it was Jack Daniels. Pretty sure my pen is made from barrels, so
John Hoomes 53:43
it's a trailer, and it has a hydraulic wall, and we pull it up, we have a truck that pulls this giant trailer, and then the hydraulic of the wall comes down and creates a stage, and we have lighting and sound, and then we perform. And we do this at public parks in town. We do it all around. But we started this during the pandemic, and it became so popular. We're, we're keep we're doing it now. In fact, we're in the midst of the tour right now, and it's hitting various places around Tennessee for the next three weeks, and then we'll do it again in the fall. And for we're dependent on weather, because it's an outdoor thing, but it's, it's hugely popular, and we play there. We play to around over 25,000 people with opera on wheels in but that's that allows us to take art and music deep into the community itself. And one thing that we do with this, too, with the opera on wheels, is we play to a lot of assisted living centers, and we started this during the pandemic, and we'd pull up into the parking lot, here comes the stage, and then everyone would come out, they'd bring chairs out, and we'd perform. Last week, we're at Abe's garden community in green hills, which is a memory care facility, and we've been there every year, and they always ask. Come back and once again, at no charge. We do this as a free service. We so many. We rely so much on donation from people, and we fundraise a good bit, but there's so much generosity from people, from individual givers, from foundations, from government grants that we just feel it's important that we offer for those donations, we want to offer this at no cost, and so we're able to, I
Carli 55:29
see, through a lot of your story, this idea of abundance. You know, a lot of people in our day and age, I feel like are afraid of scarcity, and scarcity drives a lot of our decision making, fear of not having enough. And I see you saying there's an abundance, abundance of generosity, there's abundance of audience, there's an abundance of talent and joy for this medium. And I just want to commend you. I don't see somebody with an abundance mindset that often, and so that's really fun to hear.
John Hoomes 55:58
Well, thank you. Well, we're very fortunate. We're fortunate to be here in Nashville. We're fortunate to have such a supportive community. And we and we like what we do. I think it's important. I really like what we do, and I love the storytelling aspect. And a lot of people, they look at opera, they don't think about storytelling, but that's really what it is.
Spencer 56:21
One of my favorite questions to ask entrepreneurs in business or any space is if they had a magic wand moment where a big sum of money showed up for them, somebody listening just is unbelievably compelled, or someone like the Indiana story, where you've got just New York quality equipment that just dropped in the middle of Indiana. If you had a significant sum of money, what are the things that you would deploy that towards as the Nashville opera sits today? What are some things that are stretch goals for you that if money was no object, you'd get to work on right away.
John Hoomes 57:06
I would, well, I would expand our education program, because right now we have a seven week tour and we have a waiting list because it's so popular. So if we had more money, I would like to expand that to, like another month. We could easily do another month and fill it up with schools in Nashville. That's a goal of ours. The same thing with our education program with operon wheels, we would, we would beef up the amount of community concerts we could do from a main stage level. I would buy an LED video wall in a heartbeat. Okay, I would like a giant video wall, because I love that technology, and you can do so much in that with the shows, because so many companies are moving away from traditional scenery and hard scenery for a number of reasons, and one is expense, but we as a company have embraced technology as much as we can afford, and so I've done so many shows creatively with video and incorporating video into the show and and some Die Hard opera people, the same thing with Sir titles. There's some pushback, or was, until we showed what it can do. And once you do that, people are going, wow. So I would, I would use it to increase a lot of things we're already doing, but we could do more of and do it better.
Spencer 58:34
Maybe the last question that I have is, when you think about other art centers throughout Tennessee, and you see other theatrical venues and Symphony center and all these other ones. There's one vein to look at it as competitors, right? You're competing over people coming to fill seats and to attend fundraisers. And then there's another way of looking at it, about you talked earlier about the importance of people experiencing this art form. So can you contrast those two things? For me, of just what is the importance for someone to experience the opera, and how do you view other theatrical performance centers throughout Tennessee in relation to your mission,
John Hoomes 59:25
we are very proud to say that here at Nashville, we have an incredibly collegial relationship with all the other arts groups. That is not often the case in other cities, but but we have a terrific working working relationship. We support each other. The larger companies that we really work with are the Nashville Ballet, the Nashville rep, the Nashville Symphony, and we all, we all have a great relationship together, which is, which I say, is sometimes unusual, but it's a very supportive relationship. I think that people experiencing on. Opera is important because experience any type of the arts, I think is so important to your personal growth and how you see the world. I really am a strong believer and this, you know, this sounds kind of like naive, but I'm really a strong believer that the arts can change things. It can change the world. Can change a person's life. One thing we started a few years ago with that in mind is we started a partnership with two universities here in town. And so Nashville opera has a strong partnership with Tennessee State University and Fisk University. These are Nashville's two HBCUs that's historic black college universities, and we started this as a chance to give their students a head start and almost a conservatory type limited training. So we have a cohort of about eight to 10 students per year. I think it's 10 this year. And we do, we do a series throughout the year that they're involved with. It's almost like a Master Class series where we do singing master classes, but we also bring in people outside of performance to talk to people about maybe, if you start as a singer, but you want to move into administration, how do I do that? And so we've done a lot of zoom meetings where I brought in major agents from New York to talk about management and being a manager. I brought in some great singers to talk about their career. There's a wonderful baritone named Lester Lynch, and he's done Porgy and Bess all over the world. That's
Spencer 1:01:32
a great baritone name, by the way, Lester Lynch,
John Hoomes 1:01:35
right? He so I brought him in by zoom to talk to these students, and they would never, ever get a chance to have that type of contact. But we're trying to offer that, because the more, the more contact with the arts you have, the better, but, but I'm I'm I'm proud of what we do here, I'm proud of what we've been able to accomplish here, but I'm always looking for it to involve people, and I'm always looking for to expose people to this art form. Can I tell you one last thing I was, I was doing a talk. I do a lot of talks at Rotary Clubs, some sometimes used to, and I was at one club, and it was a women's book club, right? And the ages varied from like, like 40s. There was one little one there who's like, couple in their 70s. And so big variation. So we're talking nothing. Knew anything about opera, and so I brought some music to play and just talk through, because I do. I've done a lot of talks like this. And I was saying there's a French piece written around 1900 called pegliase, Melisande. It was written by Debussy, and it's this lush, impressionistic, beautiful music. The story is a little obscure, but the music is fantastic. But in it, there's a there's a there's a woman named melisan, who's a young woman, and she's married to an older guy, right? The older guy has a brother whose name is paleos, and he's visiting, and you see like sparks going, changing between the girl and the younger guy, and they know it's wrong, but they feel something for each other. So there's a scene when peleos, the guy, is out in the garden area, and the house is here, and there's a balcony, and so medicine comes out on the balcony, and they kind of talk to each other in secret and and they try to touch each other, and they reach, and it's too far to reach. And he says to her, he says, throw your hair down, so I can at least touch your hair. Now she has, she needs to have the best wig in the world. She's like a 10 foot long wig. And so she throws her hair down. It cascades down and touches the ground. And I was playing this music, and I said, at this point in the music, peleos walks into her hair and pulls it around himself, so he buries himself in her hair. And I paused, and this one lady who had to be 75 goes, what happens next? And I'm going, that's what you want, and that's what you want. You want. The what happens next? Feeling of anybody that comes to anything that we do, what's going to happen and and that's not what people expect with an opera, but I feel it's there. I feel that's what we're we want. It's connecting with an audience through music and storytelling and and giving you an experience.
Spencer 1:04:15
I really resonate with the message that art does have the ability to change things, and I've seen that most personally in comedy, where once something becomes mockable, that you can make fun of it, you can start to laugh about it. That's a really important part of the healing process, is that there are things so that's just too soon, you can't make jokes about it, you can't make fun of it, and you can see where it's at in the healing process. And so I think, from an opera standpoint, to be able to see its role as a storyteller and telling stories that are very old, but. Relevant today and stories that are very new, and doing it in a way that perhaps is a little different, challenging, sometimes intentionally, and hopefully in some ways, we're trying to remove some of the challenge from it. I just really appreciate the service that you have really spent nearly the entirety of your life to making this art form available to people that were it not for your personality, your approachability, I think far fewer people would have experienced it. So thank you for giving the message that you have and having the posture that you've brought here today. This has been a really treat for me to get to ask you questions and learn all about what you do well. Thank
John Hoomes 1:05:45
you. It's been a pleasure, so
Carli 1:05:47
fun. Thank you for being here. You.
