About Us
WHO WE ARE
Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) is one of the foremost creators and producers of new opera-theatre and music theatre, with a fierce commitment to leading the industry into the future, cultivating a new generation of talent, and telling the stories of our time.
Founded by “contemporary opera mastermind” (LA Times) Beth Morrison, who was honored as one of Musical America’s Artists of the Year/Agents of Change in 2020, BMP has grown into “a driving force behind America’s thriving opera scene” (Financial Times), with Opera News declaring that the company, “more than any other… has helped propel the art form into the twenty-first century.”
Fostering innovation in
opera-theatre since 2006
WHAT WE DO
BMP identifies emerging and established artists who experiment, innovate, and take artistic risks to evolve opera-theatre and music-theatre into the future.
With a focus on the cultivation of the next generation and diversification, BMP serves as a launching pad for the future artistic leaders in the field.
Through the commissioning, development, production, and touring of new works, BMP aims to expose audiences around the world to relevant contemporary American chamber opera and music-theatre works of the highest caliber.
Beth Morrison is her own genre
Ms. Morrison may be immortalized one day as a 21st-century Diaghilev
Opera has been getting a new lease on life as of late thanks to the ingenious and intrepid producer Beth Morrison
Beth Morrison...has established herself as a true leader, breath[ing] new life into the art form...
OUR HISTORY
Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) was founded in 2006 and quickly went from being an industry disruptor to a leader and tastemaker at the forefront of musical and theatrical innovation by commissioning, developing, producing, and touring the groundbreaking new works of living composers and their collaborators, which take the form of opera-theatre, music-theatre, and vocal-theatre. BMP encourages risk-taking and the result is provocative works that represent a dynamic and lasting legacy for a new American canon.
Since forming in 2006, the company has commissioned, developed, produced and toured over 50 works in 14 countries around the world, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning chamber operas Angel’s Bone and P r i s m.
In 2013, Beth Morrison Projects and HERE Arts Center co-founded the PROTOTYPE Festival, which showcases contemporary opera-theatre and music-theatre projects over ten days each January. The New Yorker recently wrote that the festival is “essential to the evolution of American Opera,” and The New York Times called the festival “bracingly innovative… a point of reference.”
EXPANSION, INNOVATION & NEXT GENERATION
The 2014 bi-coastal expansion to Los Angeles sprang from growing partnerships and relationships with institutions such as LA Opera, the LA Phil, Ford Theatres, Center Theatre Group, The Broad Stage and RVCC. From 2018 to the present season alone, BMP produced 185 performances on 5 continents. BMP’s commitment to cutting edge musical expression has created “its own genre” (Opera News) of originality.
Always on “the edge of innovation” (Opera News), BMP has developed a trailblazing program, BMP: Next Generation, to identify and foster the next generation of opera composers. This crucial initiative is a prime example of the transformative and boundary-shattering programming for which BMP has been known for over a decade.
BMP has continued to innovate during the pandemic, most notably with the formation of the BMP: Producers Academy. Formed to focus on identifying and mentoring the next generation of creative producers and administrators, the Producers Academy served over 900 students in 17 different countries in its first season. Additional expansion was to delve into film with the creation of a feature length film entitled Black Lodge by composer David T. Little, poet Anne Waldman and Director/Screen Writer Michael Joseph McQuilken. Filmed on location in Maine and in the desert El Mirage, Black Lodge hit theatres in the 2022-23 season.