About
Opera Frontier
Opera Frontier is an award-winning Bay Area performing arts company founded in 2007 by Artistic Director Gail Simpson. From the beginning the company reimagined opera’s canon in new evocative ways, performing in nontraditional settings, surprising audiences as pop-up artists, and always challenging contemporary audiences to contemplate what it means to be operatic. Productions included collaborations with choreographers, circus artists, as well as with classical Indian, Middle Eastern and Ethiopian musicians.
Opera Frontier pivoted from stage to film during the pandemic, taking courage from awards it won for its first two submissions: 1) a 2019 collaboration with Circus Abyssinia filmed in Ethiopia; 2) its 2020 film recorded and illustrated from home at the height of covid isolation. Street Muse is Opera Frontier’s first professionally directed and produced film. Director Beth Cloutier deftly enabled us to bring our piece to film with more vibrance and impact than we could have imagined.
Today, Opera Frontier is passionate about the creative exploration of social justice while advancing collaborations that stir diverse perspectives for both audiences and artists. Beloved arias are born anew with fresh lyrics or evocative settings that challenge the viewer to hear favorites reimagined in ways that celebrate the best of the work but also carry it forward into the challenges of the world of today.
Ours is an audience of everyone. Opera fans and opera-phobes find common ground in the company’s approach. We reverently exploit the enduring tunes written by dead white men to prove again that music is a universal language. These tunes are capable of packing a soul-stirring wallop when paired in the vernacular with our real-life challenges. Opera Frontier invites you to join us in our journey to make the world a better place.
Directors’ Statement
Beth Cloutier (Film), Gail Simpson (Artistic)
“Street Muse”, like all Opera Frontier performances, evolves from an impulse to use the drama of opera to move people to look at something familiar through a new lens. With this film we wanted to shine a light on homelessness — a daunting feature of everyday life in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Homelessness is hard to look at – the mess, the pain, the fear and humiliation. It is easy – possibly normal – to look away. But both of us have worked with people experiencing homelessness – Beth as an embedded documentarist and Gail as a hospital chaplain. We wanted our film to invite viewers to see our characters through a lens that might lead to the kind of human connection we found in our work.
To carry our story we chose “Musetta’s Waltz”, an iconic flirty aria from Puccini’s “La Bohème”. In it, Musetta brags about how she enjoys the attention of admirers who are stunned by her beauty when she strolls down the street. “Street Muse” turns “Musetta’s Waltz” upside down. The new lyrics, sung by two unhoused women, reveal how they feel being seen on the street.
From the beginning, we believed that the juxtaposition of the elite art-form with the grit of street life would intrigue viewers. We heightened this intrigue by contrasting the muted colors and dull background of the “regular” people, with the vibrant colors of our impoverished and grimy protagonists. Without romanticizing their condition, our cinematic lens reveals glimpses of the vibrant beauty they possess, they remember and they long for. Puccini’s soaring aria seduces viewers to let their gaze linger long enough to see beyond their sorry state – to witness their humanity.
We solved some challenges of filming opera singers as unhoused people by filming in the backlot of a studio adjacent to one of the grittiest abandoned encampments in East Oakland. We filmed in a burned out abandoned car lot, used shopping carts excavated from the site and moved between the street and the backlot.
Ultimately, our aim is to provoke viewers to imagine the journey of our characters. Will viewers see their own vulnerability in our characters? Will they consider who they might become if their own dreams were upended?
There is no simple solution to our country’s homeless problem. But we hope our film will move us closer by helping more of us experience the kind of compassion that stirs us to action on behalf of our unhoused neighbors.
— Beth and Gail
The Team
Gail Simpson, Producer/Creative Director/Writer
GAIL SIMPSON’s coming-of-age-experience consisted of working in drought relief in Ethiopia during the first two years of a bloody Marxist revolution. Having witnessed starvation and brutality firsthand as a young woman, she has always known the importance of righteous struggles. Fifteen years ago, after a career as an economist/entrepreneur, she founded Opera Frontier where she could pursue her passion to repurpose emotionally-rich classical music to speak to contemporary audiences. During Covid isolation, she pivoted from stage to filmmaking. She immediately received recognition for her imaginative integration of a classical form with edgy content in “Rejoice Abyssinia” and “Activist Aria: More Perfect Union”, winning among others a Telly Award, an Anthem Award, Best Music Song and Best Experimental Film Awards. From her home-base in Oakland California, she is now on a mission to change hearts and minds using the emotional power of opera to address pressing social issues.
Beth Cloutier, Director
BETH CLOUTIER is an accomplished Producer and Director based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In a career that spans 20-years, she has directed music videos, documentaries, TV programs, over a hundred livestreams and VR/AR/MR location-based entertainment installations. Her work has been recognized at festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival and LA Independent Women Film Festival. In addition to Opera Frontier, Beth has helped bring to life the vision of such musical artists as Briget Boyle, Westerner, Allen Ling, 1982, and Strictly Elizabeth. Her work has aired on A&E, Discovery Channel, PBS, America TV, Finnish TV, and Channel 4 UK. Her TV and film credits include the feature music documentary “Last Stand at Dodge”, episodes for the television series “Digital Addiction”, “Breakout Kings” for A&E and “The World According to Comedians” for Filmbutik. She is the founder of the online music video series Local Music Channel. Beth served on the board of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for Northern California.
David Auner, Cinematographer
David Auner, AAC is a cinematographer born and raised in Graz, Austria but based in Los Angeles, CA. David graduated from Middlesex University, London, with a BA in Digital Film Arts and an MFA in Cinematography from the American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles. He began as a sound recordist and camera assistant for TV news and corporate and industrial films before he found his true passion in narrative feature, episodic television and long form documentary projects. David has spent hundreds of hours behind the camera. His feature credits include Grassland & Introducing Joda. David is a proud member of the Austrian Association of Cinematographers since 2015.
Steve Shlisky, Editor
STEVE SHLISKY: A fourteen-time Emmy Award winner, Steve Shlisky has worked in Bay Area television for nearly 40 years. He is the past president and former National Trustee of the San Francisco/Northern California chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS). Currently Steve chairs the Activities and Programs Chapter of NATAS and is the co-chair and instructor at Oakland’s Laney College Media Communications Department.
Steve Shlisky is known for Never Too Late (2023), Activist Aria: More Perfect Union (2021), Less Time (2012) and Buried Voices (2012).
Street Muse
A film by Opera Frontier