When OperaDelaware launches its new season in October, it will have a new leader at the helm.
Eric Einhorn will take over from Brendan Cooke, who is leaving the company after 14 years as OperaDelaware’s general director. Einhorn comes to Wilmington with more than two decades of experience in the opera world, including directing operas at the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera Chicago, Pittsburgh Opera, and Wolf Trap Opera. He served on the staging staff of The Metropolitan Opera from 2005-2020, working on over forty productions.
Einhorn fell in love with musical theatre as a youth, and a succession of influential music teachers steered him into the world of opera, igniting a passion for the art form.
“There's just something a little bit intangible about that perfect intersection of music, drama, text, physical production, live performance that with opera, it just hits a different part of me,” he says.
As the leader of an innovative regional opera company, Einhorn says he will take a collaborative approach.
“Part of what I love about the job is to walk into a room full of people, to work on a piece that many of us have worked on before, and come at it in such a different way because of the alchemy in the room,” he explains.
In his new role, Einhorn won’t be directing individual operas. Instead, he’ll be hiring the people who do, and making sure he brings on people who can help fulfill his larger vision.
“It is a general director's responsibility to create an arc, an overall artistic vision for a company into which these directors and their productions slot in and make a cohesive whole,” he says.
Einhorn says he is committed to OperaDelaware’s tradition of providing both well-known works and pushing the boundaries with new works.
“It's part of the responsibility of an opera company today, I believe,” he says. “And that's part of what drew me to this position in this company in the first place, was that great variety of repertoire.”
He also wants to preserve the group’s Company Artist program, which employs four singers in both performance and administrative roles, giving them stability, a living wage, and benefits.
And, as a co-founder of the company Onsite Opera, which took opera performances out of theaters and into community spaces, he wants to continue similar efforts at OperaDelaware, including the company’s regular pop-up concerts.
“It shows audiences and shows people who might be reluctant to try opera because of what they think it is, to see people that look like them, that they're not ancient people in Viking helmets,” Einhorn says. “These are people you see at the grocery store just doing this incredible art.”
OperaDelaware kicks off its new season with “Don Giovanni Portraits,” a chamber performance of highlights from Mozart’s opera, on October 8 and 10. That will be followed by a fully-staged performance of Don Giovanni at the Grand on October 16 and 18.
But, opera lovers won’t have to wait until October to see the company in action. OperaDelaware will present “Pop-Up Pagliacci” at Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton on July 21, and on July 23, the company partners with the Biggs Museum of American Art to present “Echoes of Freedom: An Operatic Reflection on 250 Years” in Dover.
Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
