By OISAKHOSE AGHOMO

Photography By OISAKHOSE AGHOMO

Reporting Texas

Near a nondescript building in North Austin, if you listen hard, you can hear Mimi and Rodolfo falling in love. 

As the Austin Opera prepares for its upcoming opening of “La Boheme,” it’s on the upswing into a new era – despite the recent turbulence surrounding the classical arts at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. And while the actor Timothee Chalamet recently said “no one cares about” opera and ballet, Austin Opera is building its future. 

“The company had been leasing rehearsal and administrative space for many years when I got here. …We’ve been kind of running our costume shop out of the corner of a warehouse.” said Annie Burridge, general director of the Austin Opera. 

For the last year, the company has been promoting its big move to the Sarah and Ernest Butler Performance Center in the fall; it will have both a rehearsal space and a costume shop. The company is betting that both the move and its ambitious slate of classic and experimental operas will fortify its business as threats to funding spiral across the industry. 

Brittany Olivia Logan plays Mimi in the Austin Opera’s new production. Oisakhose Aghomo/Reporting Texas

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 “La Boheme” was originally composed by Giacomo Puccini as a tale of friendship and love, set in 19th century France, centered around lovers Rodolfo and Mimi. It’s sung in Italian, the de facto language of opera.

Austin Opera’s “La Boheme” is a production of around 160 people including stage crew and a youth choir. Several times a week for three-hour blocks, the cast and crew meet up in a waiting-room sized space filled with carts of props, costumes and musical instruments. 

As director of the show, Eboni Adams works to make everyone feel at home with the space and each other.

 “What I found in rehearsal spaces is that no matter if you’ve done ‘La Boheme’ one time or 20 times, I always look at the space that we enter into as this is the first last time we will do ‘La Boheme’ in this way because we have people in the room that we have never done this with,” Adams said. 

Though “La Boheme” tends to attract a large audience, opera companies typically run a deficit, Burridge said. 

“Even with ticket prices that can go up to as high as $250 when we’re doing something that’s really popular or in demand, that’s still only going to cover maybe 30% of the expense of putting on an opera,” she said. “It’s always been reliant on patrons willing to cover 70% of that gap.” 

Burridge said that the company had been looking for additional sources of revenue to stay alive because “city, state, national support is just meaningless here in the U.S.”

Timothy Myers, the musical director, ends a scene with Jasmine Habersham as Musetta and the rest of cast and choir. Oisakhose Aghomo/Reporting Texas 

In the last few months, a highly publicized breakup between the Washington National Opera and the newly renamed Trump Kennedy Center, under new management by the Trump administration, has unfolded. NPR reported that the new policies, which required the Washington National Opera to pay for the costs of production up front, caused the rupture.

In addition, the Trump administration has systemically cut grants from the federal government through the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for Humanities in the last year. The Madison Opera in Wisconsin lost a $25,000 grant in 2025, according to The Cap Times.

Burridge said that even though government funding could account for about 5% of an American city opera’s budget, the loss of the funding is “a signal that you don’t need to care about these things, and that’s tough to combat right now.”

Adams said that framing the arts as trivial doesn’t make sense. 

“When has sports ever been underfunded? Hm,” she said. “And so the question is, what is it about art that some people and organizations are deciding generally that those things should not be funded? What is the power of art and why are people not finding it of importance?” 

This is why, as an Austin native, Adams said it was disheartening that Texas’ unofficial cultural ambassador, Matthew McConaughey, was a silent bystander while Chalamet made his comments on the profitability of opera  at a CNN and Variety Townhall, filmed at the University of Texas. 

“My call to action – invite Matthew McConaughey and his friends and family to come see the show and experience the show. And his friend, Timothy Chalamet to the show as well. I want to hear their thoughts,” Adams said. 

The show will run from April 30 to May 3 at the Long Center, which the company currently rents for shows while the Sarah and Ernest Butler Performance Center is under renovation. 

When the center opens in October, Austin Opera hopes to use it to create more revenue by filling South Austin’s need for rehearsal and performance space.

“We’ll have rental revenue streams. We’ll have bar revenue. Hopefully, we can sell a lot of Chardonnay,” Burridge said. “Having our own will enable us also to broaden what we are offering so we can do opera and … chamber music, musical theater, jazz, all kinds of cabaret or recital formats as well.”

The opening will launch the 2026-27 season with “Ofrenda,” which is performed in Spanish and English – another feature of the company’s vision for its future. The opera is the brainchild of Jorge Sosa and John de los Santos as part of the Austin Opera’s Residency for Latinx Creatives. 

Alejandra Martinez, one of the residents, said that expanding the language offerings will open up the market and help more consumers connect to the art form.

“If we’re not making the move to say, ‘we’re going to have this speak to you, we’re going to invite you into this world,’ then ultimately we’re to blame,” Martinez said.

Martinez said that opera’s future, monetarily and culturally, rests in its ability to connect its audience to their humanity. 

“The thing that vibrates to make noise ranges in size from like the diameter of like, of like a dime or a quarter. It is a miracle that we speak and we sing,” Martinez said. “How wonderful it is to be human and to be able to do that.”