Madison Opera
Over the past year at Madison Opera, I’ve photographed shows, edited videos, done tech for livesteams, coded the website, designed artwork, organized contracts with multimedia organizations, and more. As a result, our work over the last season has produced the most ticket sales in recent Madison Opera history, and currently, the most subscriptions we’ve seen since at least our 2014/15 season.
For our next 2024/25 season, we decided on a brand refresh, where we use crisp, flexible, and vivid graphics. Each show has a unique typeface — in the case of The Barber of Seville, custom manipulated typography — and a unique motif, informed by the story of each show.
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville is an Italian comedy that follows the protagonist, Figaro, as he jumps through hoops in order to help a couple find their happy ending.
This is the first opera of the season, and I decided to use some shorthands to establish a line of connection and reach potentially new opera-goers. This show is intended to be the one to introduce the rest of our shows. One of the goals of Madison Opera, or any opera company, is to broaden the target audience beyond the older subscriber base. As a Gen Z who has actually taken an interest in the art form since my time here, this informed the way I would communicate the story of each show visually.
The barber pole is reflective of the protagonist’s occupation, and the fluffy background patterns is shave foam that can be organized inorganically to aid or organize a composition. Same goes for the pair of scissors I rendered from the ‘V’ in ‘Seville.’ The statement font itself is whimsical, playful, and bouncy, just like the comedy itself. All of these elements can be arranged easily to meet any media needs.
María de Buenos Aires
The protagonist of this story, María, was born ‘on the day that God was drunk.’ It’s a Spanish opera of seduction, tragedy, and the supernatural that follows a girl who goes to the city to pursue her passion of dancing, and features Argentine-inspired elements and tango music. This opera has not been produced much in the United States, so I had to read the libretto and do a bit of research on the story and its symbolism to produce an engaging graphic that reflected the emotion invoked by the opera.
The solid blue background elements are reflective of that of the Argentine flag, which is where the story takes place, but dropped down in shade and saturation to add contrast against the surrounding colors. The middle white stripe is replaced with a sunset-inspired gradient of fiery color to imply burning passion. The Sol de Mayo of the flag is placed so that it’s casting said light down onto the title of ‘María’ like a spotlight, but a silhouette of a sparrow, symbolic of the character ‘Sleepy Sparrow’ — who foreshadows the potential outcome of the lifestyle María has chosen — flies against it in contrast. The flowers covering the Sol de Mayo, a geranium and an orchid, are the same flowers laid on María’s body after her death as a result of the lifestyle she chose.
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is a famous opera that is renowned globally as a quintessential opera, and has scandalized audiences for centuries. The composter, none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, is incredibly famous, and his work always generated traction just because of name recognition alone. The story is of a self-serving man and his ‘little black book’ of the hundreds of women he has seduced across Europe — and the result of his lifestyle eventually catches up to him, when he is confronted with a foe he cannot overcome.
Most of the opera takes place at night, so a dark background with textural elements of the cloud and the contrasting elements of the stars produces an interesting backdrop that doesn’t distract from the main motif. Don Giovanni wore a mask for the second part of the opera to obscure himself. However, his intentions were never, ever deterred or obscured for long — like the moon, it always comes back out. The texture of the moon peaks out under the eye of the mask, portraying a fearful expression from the fire on his mask, which is just a hint of his fate by the end of the show.
Below are some examples of how my work has been adapted for different media uses,
including bookmarks, season brochures, stage-side banners, posters, and standing displays,
Opera in the Park 2024 T-Shirt
Photography
During my time at Madison Opera, I’ve had the opportunity to improve my photography skills. Namely, I’ve learned how to shoot for dynamic shows in dark theaters with high-contrast, bright spotlights, on top of making the composition interesting via angles, negative space and other elements of successful photography. Several of my photos have been picked up by the press, two of which making the home page of the Wisconsin State Journal.
Note: Images have been highly compressed to reduce web loading speed; this affects image quality.
Full resolution images are available upon request.
Video Content
At Madison Opera, we promote shows during tech week by filming dress rehearsals and releasing video synopses, or ‘previews,’ the day before show weekend. This turnover happens in eight hours, between receiving the footage, editing it from three hours down to three minutes or less, and posting / promoting it appropriately.
During production, we also interview the performers on various topics about the characters they play and the plot of the show to invite people in on what the show is about. All tech, writing, editing, and publishing is done by me.