About Tacoma Opera

    Our Mission

    Our Philosophy

    Our History

Tacoma Opera is pleased to announce an opening for an Office Manager starting in mid-July 2018. The position is a part-time position (20-25 hrs per week) with the potential of being expanded to a full-time position in the future. Compensation is commensurate with experience. Interested applicants should send a cover email explaining why you are interested in the position along with a work resume related to office management experience attached in PDF format. The email should be sent to Noel Koran, General Director at nkoran@tacomaopera.com. We will respond only to emails with resumes. Please do not call the office with questions. Applicants should respond by June 22. Interviews will take place in the last week of June. See the attached job description for details concerning the position. Sincerely, Noel Koran, General Director - Tacoma Opera www.tacomaopera.com About Tacoma Opera We are Tacoma’s own professional opera company, proudly serving the south Puget Sound region and the entire Pacific Northwest by offering traditional and non-traditional operatic productions in an intimate, atmospheric setting that allows our audiences to experience opera in a uniquely personal way, touching the heart and stimulating the mind. With every production, we strive to engage and move our audiences to the fullest, so that at the end of each performance, everyone goes home feeling uplifted and renewed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Our Mission The mission of Tacoma Opera is: * To promote the performing arts in our region by presenting dynamic opera productions of high artistic quality * To provide a platform for emerging young artists to gain necessary performance experience and training as they begin their careers * To provide employment for local professional artists and production personnel to help maintain a vibrant and stable arts community in the region * To provide educational opportunities about opera to young people and adults with the goal of developing new audiences for opera ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Our Philosophy In the 50 years of its existence, Tacoma Opera has grown from a small, amateur based company, little-known outside of the city of Tacoma, into a vibrant regional opera company attracting audiences from all over the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The company has solidified its position as a cultural icon for the South Puget Sound region and has exciting plans for the future. The company has discovered over the years that there is great value in presenting opera in an intimate performance environment so that audiences can connect more directly with the music, the story and the performers in the operas we present. For centuries, opera for has been associated with grandiose, large scale and expensive productions that focus on spectacle, but opera today in its grandiose form has become increasingly inaccessible financially to many in the everyday general population as presented in the larger opera houses around the world. Tacoma Opera is intent on redefining opera in this country as an intimate and accessible art form that allows audiences to experience opera in a uniquely personal way, touching the heart and stimulating the mind. This is our philosophy and with this philosophy as our guiding light, we will continue into our next 50 years presenting opera/Up Close and Personal/. It’s been a great journey so far and we, at Tacoma Opera, look forward to the next 50 years of serving Tacoma and the South Sound region with exciting, intimate and accessible opera productions. Finally: Opera should be accessible to everyone and we are proud that our audiences come from every walk of life. So no worries if you don’t own a tux or an evening gown. Jeans and tee shirts are just fine. But dressing up is fun too! So if you want to paint the town red, go for it! Whatever makes the evening special for you, that’s what counts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Our History Tacoma Opera was founded in 1968 as the Tacoma Opera Society and presented its first production,/Die Fledermaus/at the Eastvold Auditorium on the Pacific Lutheran University campus. In 1981, with the help of Dr. Hans Wolf, then director of community outreach for Seattle Opera, the company turned professional and changed its name to the Tacoma Opera Association. Wolf became the new director of the company and another production of/Die Fledermaus/was successfully staged that year. Under Dr. Wolf’s leadership and along with the organizational guidance of long-time executive director, Anne Farrell, the company produced many operettas and grand operas over the next several years. The company also produced numerous premieres including the West Coast premiere of Offenbach’s/Christopher Columbus/and the world premiere of a brand-new opera,/The Pied Piper of Hamelin/, by Seattle composer Carol Sams. In the late 1990s, Both Wolf and Farrell retired from their positions and Rod Gideons became the executive director of the company and David Bartholomew the artistic director. During their time, the company continued to expand by producing larger scale mainstream operas. Kathryn Smith came to the company in 2003 as general director, extending the continued growth of the company until the economic downturn of 2008, after which she successfully shepherded the company through some very difficult financial times. She left Tacoma Opera in June of 2011 to take a position as general director of Madison Opera in Madison, Wisconsin. Dr. Noel Koran joined the company as general director after Ms. Smith’s departure and comes to Tacoma Opera from a long background in opera, having been a singer, stage director, producer, educator and arts administrator in a career spanning nearly 40 years.