News

What Is an Apartment House of Sound?

What Is an Apartment House of Sound? John Cage’s America as Overlapping Rooms What does it mean to hear a nation not as a single story, but as an architecture of coexistence? By Austin T. Richey, Ph. D. Digital Media Manager and Storyteller, Detroit Opera John Cage in his apartment, photo by Roberto Masotti (1979)...

Learn More

PROGRAM: Paul Taylor Dance Company

Enjoy the performance program from the convenience of your phone! All the information contained in the program book is at your fingertips. Click below for the full experience.

Learn More

John Cage’s Detroit: Sounds of Silence

John Cage’s Detroit: Sounds of Silence By Austin T. Richey, Ph. D. Digital Media Manager and Storyteller, Detroit Opera The 1950s saw Cage toying with the very foundational ideas of composition. After receiving a copy of the I-Ching—a classic Chinese divination tool—from a pupil, Cage began employing the text to elicit chance procedures in his...

Learn More

John Cage’s Detroit: Early Years

John Cage’s Detroit: Early Years By Austin T. Richey, Ph. D. Digital Media Manager and Storyteller, Detroit Opera John Cage during his 1966 concert at the opening of the National Arts Foundation in Washington, D.C. Image: Rowland Scherman / Getty Images. “The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is...

Learn More

12 Things to Know About Step Afrika!

12 Things to Know About Step Afrika! Founded in 1994, as an exchange program with the Soweto Dance Theatre of Johannesburg, Step Afrika! is the first professional Dance Company in the world dedicated to the tradition of stepping. Step Afrika! is one of the top 10 African American dance companies in the United States, the...

Learn More

In Conversation with Poul Ruders: On Composing The Handmaid’s Tale

In Conversation with Poul Ruders: On Composing The Handmaid’s Tale What does it mean to translate a dystopian novel into sound? Ahead of Detroit Opera’s production of The Handmaid’s Tale, composer Poul Ruders shares insights into the musical language of the opera, his approach to building the world of Gilead, and the ways the work...

Learn More

PROGRAM: The Handmaid’s Tale

Enjoy the performance program from the convenience of your phone! All the information contained in the program book is at your fingertips. Click below for the full experience.

Learn More

When Dystopia Stops Feeling Like Fiction: Opera as a Mirror of the Present

When Dystopia Stops Feeling Like Fiction: Opera as a Mirror of the Present Opera has never shied away from tyrants. By Austin T. Richey, Ph. D. Digital Media Manager and Storyteller, Detroit Opera   The Central Park Five at Detroit Opera, 2025. Austin T. Richey / Detroit Opera.   Across centuries of repertoire, power appears...

Learn More

Opera, Pop Culture, and Why The Handmaid’s Tale Already Has a Fandom 

Opera, Pop Culture, and Why The Handmaid’s Tale Already Has a Fandom  By Austin T. Richey, Ph. D. Digital Media Manager and Storyteller, Detroit Opera Women dressed in red gowns protest outside the Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity Summit in Manhattan, New York, July 31, 2018. Shannon Stapleton / Reuters.   Long before a single note of The Handmaid’s Tale is...

Learn More