Nashville poised to pave 'Road' preem
Opera's budget has grown to $2.3 million
"There's a flowering of artistic movement here in terms of creating new pieces," says Nashville Opera's director, John Hoomes. His company has recently enjoyed surges in audience and fund-raising, both of which encouraged him to mount "Surrender Road," an abstract fusion of pop and opera that tracks a Brooklyn boxer and a Southern belle whose lives intersect in Times Square.
Nashville Opera's budget, which 10 years ago was a scant $300,000, now has grown to $2.3 million. Meanwhile, Hoomes reports his audiences are "some of the most diverse opera crowds I've ever seen. We have everything from tuxedos to people with green hair." The company has been regularly forced to turn away customers.
And legit companies are also generating interest, as evidenced by the early December preems of "Zombies Can't Climb," a campy tuner at People's Branch Theater, and "Scattered, Smothered, and Covered," Nashville Stages' loosely connected revue of new holiday songs by local songwriters.
Marcus Hummon, the locally based writer of "Surrender Road," says the entire city is uniting around the theater. "You can't just do this by yourself," he says. "You have to have a groundswell of support, and we have that in Nashville."
But why now? There are plenty of theories. Audience enthusiasm could spring from an increased push for tourists, a general interest in untested material or even a desire to fill the void left by Opryland, a now-defunct theme park that once staged tuner revues.
Government funding has also been vital. All three shows mentioned are recipients of creation grants sponsored by the Metro Nashville Arts Commission, an org largely spared the budget cuts endured throughout the state.
But the deepest, and perhaps most essential, resources being tapped are the skills of Nashville's singers and songwriters, who are increasingly moving between recording booths and theaters. Kaine Riggan, producing director of Nashville Stages, remarks, "There's just so much talent here, especially for musicals, and I think people are excited to bring that talent (to the stage)."
This is true not only of superstars -- Randy Travis wrote one of the new songs in "Scattered" -- but also of up-and-comers. Hummon, for example, has worked for years as a country and pop craftsman. "Nashville has more songwriters per square mile than any other place in the world," he says. "Pulling those forces together is becoming really exciting."
