This interview was originally recorded on September 29th, 2025.
The Oral History Project is supported by the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation.

Beth Morrison, producer

A 2024 Grammy-nominated producer, recipient of the 2020 Musical America Award for Artist of the Year/Agent of Change, and a 2022 Kennedy Center 50NEXT Honoree, Beth Morrison is an opera-theater producer who serves as president and creative producer of Beth Morrison Projects and the co-founding director of the PROTOTYPE Festival. Morrison created Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) in 2006 to identify and support the work of emerging and established living composers and to change the opera industry by cultivating a new generation of talent and telling the stories of our time. BMP has commissioned, developed, produced, and toured over 65 works in 19 countries around the world, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning chamber operas Angel’s Bone (Du Yun/Royce Vavrek) and p r i s m (Ellen Reid/Roxie Perkins). Morrison is also a lecturer at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University. 

Transcript

Marc A. Scorca: Beth Morrison, I am so happy to speak to you today as part of our Oral History Project. And you've heard me say in person that you are one of the people who has transformed the face of American opera in the 21st century, and I meant then, and I repeat it now, because I still mean it. Thank you for being with us today.

Beth Morrison: Thank you, Marc. It is such an honor, and I'm very humble to hear you say those words and very appreciative for the work that I've been doing, now 20 years in.

Marc A. Scorca: Exactly, but I don't spare anybody. I ask, who brought you to your first opera?

Beth Morrison: You know, I know that you always ask this question, and I have been racking my brains to think of when my first exposure was to opera. I did not go to opera as a kid. I grew up in Maine, and I grew up on musical theater, Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond and Donna Summer. That was what was playing in my home. But my first exposure to opera singing and classical music was the summer that I went to Tanglewood, as a student, in the Boston University Tanglewood Institute program. And so at 17, I heard Jessye Norman, and she absolutely changed my life. I had wanted to be a Broadway singer and heard her, and it was like, "What is that?" Like, "Oh my God". I had never heard anything like it, and just was truly bowled over. That summer was also Kathleen Battle and Thomas Hampson, so some really seminal figures from the opera industry.

Marc A. Scorca: If anyone could do it, a conversion moment, it is those three wonderful disciples for opera, absolutely. There you were 17 years old, but before then, at school in Maine, you were already flexing your muscles as a producer - yes, a performer and a lot of kids perform - but you were also making it happen. Were you actually revealing your future in your high school years?

Beth Morrison: I mean, possibly. I certainly thought that I was gonna go the performer route, but there was this wonderful group called the All Student Theater Project, and it was essentially this like spinoff, if you will, of high school and college students from our community-little-theater, who wanted to do the cool new stuff that wasn't being done at the community theater. And so every college break, we would all come together for three weeks super-intensely, and we would make a theater piece. It was Pippin, it was Godspell, it was Hair, it was Evita, it was Into the Woods. And so, we all sort of produced it, if you will. We all starred in it. We all made the sets. I was a Evita. I music-directed Stephen Sondheim. It was this kind of fabulous crucible really for all of us, to make this work inside and out, and to be on the stage and backstage and all of the things. So, I think that was definitely my first exposure to producing and process, and really being process-oriented, which definitely carried me into my degree. I decided not to go to Broadway, and study to be an opera singer. I went to Boston University Conservatory of Music, and there again, like really was invested in art song. That was really my passion, much more so than opera. And so all in my undergraduate, I was like the nerdy kid who wanted to know everything. I read the Goethe. I studied every backstory. I did the theoretical analysis of all of the music. I loved process. I loved rehearsal. I never really needed performance in the way that I think performers really need. I really needed process, and I loved process, which I think set me up to be a producer.

Marc A. Scorca: Wow. And then Yale for your MFA. Was that right out of Boston University?

Beth Morrison: No, so I did a degree also at ASU (Arizona State University) School of Music in vocal pedagogy. And so I really was thinking I was gonna go on, get my doctorate, be a teacher, a professor at a university in voice. And then I came back to Boston and started working for the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, and was quickly promoted. I was teaching there as a voice teacher. I was running the vocal program. Then I was promoted to assistant director of the Institute, and then I was promoted to the administrative director of the Institute, and there was no artistic director at the time. So, I was doing all of the work of both, and it was in that moment where I really learned, "Oh, this is what I'm supposed to be doing". I was always a nervous performer; I could never do an audition that I felt proud of, and all of a sudden I could channel all of my passion for classical music and voice into a program that, at that time, was 350 students, and 10 programs, and 70 faculty members, and part of this incredible Tanglewood Music Festival. And then I sort of relaxed, and it was like, "Okay, I can get out of myself, get out of my head, and make something much bigger than myself and my own performance". And it was when I moved back to Boston that I started seeing a lot of opera. I started seeing a lot of avant-garde theater. At the time, American Repertory Theater was being run by some of the greatest minds in theater, greatest directors. Robert Lepage was there, Robert Woodruff was there, Robert Brustein was there - these incredible figures. And I was so turned on by what I was seeing in the theater world, and the opera stuff that I was seeing, I just wasn't connecting to. Now of course, I love the music, but I just didn't feel connected to it as a 20-something. And so I started envisioning, what does it mean to create an opera that is like the theater I'm seeing? What would it take to do that? And I started thinking about what would it mean to tell stories of our time in English, in multimedia fashion, with sound design? And I just started kind of imagining this hybrid of our form and real contemporary avant-garde theater. And so I started looking around to see who's doing this, who's doing this, and nobody was doing it. And so I was like, "Okay, well, I guess if I want to see this happen, if I wanna make this change, if I wanna really try and create a new kind of opera, I'm gonna have to do that myself". And so that's when I went back to school, and I went to the Yale School of Drama to do a degree in theater management and producing. I spent my three years writing my business plan, going into New York and meeting every person possible.

Marc A. Scorca: Let's pause for a second, because I wanna get the chronology right here. So, you have an undergraduate degree, and you go right from that to ASU?

Beth Morrison: Well, I did a year in Japan, but that was because of my ex-husband and his livestream. But yes.

Marc A. Scorca: So, you got your master's at ASU, and then went back to Boston to work at the Tanglewood Institute. How long did you do that, as this thought about what opera could be, began to gestate?

Beth Morrison: So, I was at BUTI (Boston University Tanglewood Institute) in the director position for four years. And it was probably, I would say, halfway through when I started feeling this like itch at the back of my brain, which was just like, "Pay attention, pay attention, pay attention". And it was just really foreshadowing my life's dream and my life's work. I kept trying to just get clarity with myself of "What is this trying to tell me?" And then it just was like, "Okay, this is it". And the only way to do this, is to do it on my own.

Marc A. Scorca: It's so fascinating when the direction comes from within that way; you listen to the voices and they tell you, you know, turn right, turn left, and then go straight.

Beth Morrison: For whatever reason, I've always been able to tune into that voice, and I've always been able to have enough, I don't know, like belief in myself that what I was hearing was worthwhile listening to, and I guess also that I could do it. I look back and I'm like, was it hubris? Like, what was this that like, allowed me to think I could do this thing, like, I was really like setting out to actually see what The Met has done this this past year, and like coming out and claiming that new opera is the future and is the way, and like that amazing op-ed that Peter Gelb wrote and gave me an incredible shout out, that we've been doing this for 20 years. Yeah, we have been doing this for 20 years, but honestly, it was like with the forethought that The Met would someday say that, and so when Peter said that, first of all, I was like, "Check, yes". Like, it happened. I feel like I've been working so hard for 20 years to get that result to happen. And now, so many of our composers that we started, that we gave their first opera, their second opera, are now commissioned by The Met. And, you know, Missy Mazzoli is gonna open next season at The Metropolitan Opera. You know, like we did her first two operas, and that's so satisfying. And it also just is like, yes, this work was for something. It paid off; it happened.

Marc A. Scorca: So let's keep going. MFA - three years at Yale. Do you learn more at school, or from the school of hard knocks by just doing it? Where do you learn the most?

Beth Morrison: That's a great question. We started this thing called the Producer Academy, so we like kind of quickly train creative and tour producers, and I get asked that question all the time by them. I really feel there are two paths. There's a path you can go, which is to go to school, or there's a path that you can go, which is to do an entry level position in a company, and start working your way up, and one job leads to the next, to the next. I didn't have the time or the stamina to like start over in a production company, and learn the ropes and build myself up. And I'm also somebody who loved school. What school does for you is it gives you the opportunity to look at the field from a bird's eye position, to see what are the best practices, and to examine those practices and see how you can shift, change and make them your own. Working your way up, and then getting to a place where you can be a leader, is, in my opinion, a longer path. I think you can get there either way. For me, I needed to go to school, because that's how I felt secure in everything, it's like, "Okay, I'm gonna study it. I'm gonna figure it all out and then I'm gonna execute". And so that for me was a thing. Also just to say, at that time and still, although it is much better now, women were not running any companies. Like, it was absolutely not happening. Maybe Francesca (Zambello), but nobody else. And in my mind, like there was no path to moving up to be an artistic leader in a company. So I had to come in and start my own company, so that my artistic vision could be executed immediately. Otherwise, God only knows if I would've ever gotten there, quite frankly. So, did I learn everything I needed to know at Yale? Absolutely not. Did I have a ton of hard knocks and lots of nights up crying, and trying to figure out spreadsheets and feeling very alone and like, "I don't know what the hell I'm doing". Yes; all of that.

Marc A. Scorca: How did you get started? How did you start?

Beth Morrison: So, I finished my business plan in May, which was like when I graduated from Yale, in May of 2005. I had met a couple of writers at the time, Matt Boresi and Peter Hilliard, and they were writing a comic opera, called Don Imbroglio, and they had gotten themselves into the New York Musical Theater Festival, which doesn't exist anymore, but existed for a while, and they needed a producer. And so they asked me, and I said, "Absolutely". And so I moved to New York already having this project to produce. I moved in July of 2005. The festival was in, I think, late September, October. At the same time when I moved, I was tapped by Nico Muhly, who I had met through Linda Brumbach's company, Pomegranate, where I did my fellowship. Linda was managing Philip Glass at the time. Nico was working for Philip, through his publisher Dunvegan, and doing copying for him. And Nico had his breakout moment, that needed a producer, which was his piece, The Elements of Style, that we did for the New York Library Live. And it was a beautiful song cycle that involved people like Isaac Mizrahi, among others, and Nico was 23. I got brought into that. From there, Nico was called out in New York Magazine as one of the 30 to watch, and then his career just like exploded. And so that was his first like, really big breakout moment, and I got to produce it.

Marc A. Scorca: Now, it's interesting 'cause you said that, to realize your vision for what the art form could be, you decided it was important to go out on your own. Now, sometimes a producer has a desire to produce and to curate various interesting voices that they come in contact with. But you talk about a vision so that it wasn't to just produce interesting projects, some different than others, but you really did have an artistic voice within your work as a producer. How would you describe that, and what brought that into being?

Beth Morrison: Yeah, absolutely. So, as I said, I think the beginning of my aesthetic started in Boston with, I wanna say all the Roberts: Robert Lepage, Robert Wilson, Robert Woodruff, like when I think of like, who truly like, made a huge impact on me at a young age, and for me thinking of like, "Oh, this is it; like this is what I wanna do in opera" - it was the three of them, and I was only seeing theater pieces that they were making. Then when I went to Yale, I was meeting amazing designers and incredible directors. At Yale, like you can see like probably three shows a week, and some of that's at the Yale Rep. And so I also saw the work of Daniel Fish and some other really wonderful professional directors, but I was just with incredible young theater artists, and they were shaping my aesthetic as well. And we were making things together at the Yale Cabaret and, you know, building things. And so when I first moved to New York and started working, I was originally working with those people from Yale, those directors, those designers. And I would say that those people carried me for probably a good four or five years. Most of my work was with a lot of Yalies, and then it sort of started to branch out - that's a visual aesthetic. In terms of a musical aesthetic, which was equally as important and equally as much of the dream, if not more so, then it was really trying to find, "Okay, who are my like-minded artists here?" Like, "Who are the composers who are writing in this way that I'm dreaming this can be?" And so, when I moved to New York, I just started going to everything in small spaces, right? I wasn't going to Lincoln Center and The Met, because they weren't doing it. I was looking for who's the next generation of composers and artists that are working in a vernacular that is both English language, but also more of a 21st century musical vernacular. Not this sort of 20th century classical music idiom. And so, as I was just seeking out who these folks were, I was coming in contact with the folks who then became my soulmates, the Missy Mazzolis, the David (T.) Littles, the Paola Prestinis, the Nico Muhlys. They were all young, in their twenties. They were the ones who were doing this incredible work with the voice. They didn't know what they were doing was actually writing their first operas in song cycle form, right? So, like David Little's Soldier Songs. Actually, David, Missy and Judd Greenstein reached out to me, 'cause I had known Missy for years, and we sort of tracked each other. So, I was the director of Tanglewood Institute when she was there as a student. When I was working at BU, she was a student at BU. When I went to Yale, Missy was a student at Yale. When I went to New York, Missy moved here. So, we had known each other and sort of tracked each other. And she reached out, and she was like, "We have this composer collective, we wanna talk to you about a project", and it was David, Missy and Judd Greenstein. And so we met, and they told me about this project. They wanted to come together and make political work, and they were like, "Okay, what do you think?" I was like, "Great, but I just started, I don't have money to commission you, so if you guys wanna write this thing, write it and I will produce it". And they were like, "Oh, okay". And then they didn't write it. But then David called me the next day and he was like, "Here's Soldier Songs. This was commissioned by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. Like, what do you think?" And I put it on and I was like, crying. I listened to it front to back. I picked up the phone and I called him immediately and I said, "David, I don't know where, I don't know with what money, I have no idea how we're gonna do this, but let's do this. We are going to do this together". And so at the beginning, the composers were my partners. We partnered so deeply together on fundraising, on vision, on literally everything. It was like we got married. Like, that's how it felt. Like we got married to do their works, and we were together every second to make it happen. And obviously over time, I was also building the infrastructure of BMP (Beth Morrison Projects), our fundraising muscle, our ability to do things on our own. And so of course, we don't do that anymore. I always partner with them creatively, but I'm not asking them to partner, to fundraise with me. I'm not asking them to partner to look for venues. Of course, like, yes. "Do you have people who you think wanna do your next commission?" Or, "Do you have people who want to do your work and present it?" If I'm working with that sort of first generation of composers I've worked with, they all have huge contacts now. But I continue to work very, very much with emerging artists. And that's where my heart and my soul really lies, and they can't partner with me.

Marc A. Scorca: I wanna explore some of that. But it's interesting that you say they're your partners. They're your partners artistically, but not your partners in terms of fundraising. But, "Hey, I'm a composer and I have this vision for my work. I don't need a producer partner; I just need someone to produce it". So, do you have a unique approach where actually you are a producer partner, as opposed to just a producer?

Beth Morrison: It's such a great question, because I've always defined myself as a creative producer. I've always defined myself as an artist first. And so, for me, that partnership, as a creative partner, is the soul of the relationship, is the soul of the project. Now there are folks who I eventually came to work with, like, when David Lang first wrote and wanted to work with me on the first piece we did together. David had never worked with a producer like me before. And he didn't know even what I could offer and what I could do with him. And he didn't ask for those things, and I didn't like insert myself in that way either. Over time, we grew a relationship, so our next project, anatomy theater, I was much more engaged as a creative producer, really working with him on that. But with the folks who I started, they didn't know any different; they'd never worked with anybody. So, for them, working with a producer, I was their first entrée into having a producer.

Marc A. Scorca: What does the intervention of a creative producer look like? "Hey, this is working for me; this isn't working for me. Hey, this is too long; trim it". How do you intervene as a creative producer?

Beth Morrison: It's so deep; it's so deep from the very beginning. And so, it's many things, but to try to encapsulate it kind of quickly, I would say that I am another artistic voice at the table, and I'll talk about what that means. But at the beginning, particularly when I'm working with emerging composers, a big part of it is I am going to put up people for them to meet. And so, these things are very intuitive instincts on who should write the libretto? Who should be the director? And so, I will give them three to five people. I'll set up dates with them, and then they will make the decision on who they wanna work with, based on those recommendations for both librettist and director. Those are, to me, the two most important roles after the composer. So, that's sort of where it starts. And those conversations that they're having, they come back to me, we discuss it. It's very much a creative conversation from the very beginning. Then once things start rolling along, we start getting a draft of a libretto, say. Again, I'm another seat at the table. So, that table is the composer, the librettist. I bring the director in very early as a sort of dramaturg director. I oftentimes now am bringing in a dramaturg-dramaturg, who generally is a theater dramaturg, because what I'm trying to do is always marry the opera and the theater together, and so for me, theater directors and theater dramaturgs are who I go to. And so I'm just another voice. I guess I'll also say I feel like my role is very akin to a dramaturg in the early stages, where I'm trying to help the writers get to the heart of what they're trying to say. And so I ask a lot of questions. I also will give feedback, like, "I think this is too long here", or "I think I'm not getting enough of this here". Like, "If this is what you're going for, it's not reading, feels a little dry, don't feel like we have a climax". Like, I will give that kind of feedback to the writers. Then they'll go back, they'll make another draft, they'll do their thing. We'll come back, we'll read again, we'll maybe bring actors in; whatever they want. I tailor everything to what they want. I don't prescribe anything. So if I'm working with Royce (Vavrek), Royce doesn't want anybody to read it, except for him. If I'm working with others, the creative team sit around and read it. We just did a libretto reading of Stephanie Fleischmann's, where we brought in a whole bunch of actors. So, whatever they need is what we provide. I don't prescribe it to them. And same thing, then we move on to a musical workshop phase, right? And again, I don't prescribe it. I'm not the, "We're doing a piano vocal workshop, then we're doing, you know, whatever". For me, it's like, what do you need? So like p r i s m was a great example, Ellen Reid's piece that won the Pulitzer. We workshopped that with the University of Illinois; we workshopped it with the Arizona State University. That's how I workshop pieces, is in conjunction with conservatories and universities, because it helps keep the costs low, and it also helps me with my mission of fostering the next generation. And so it's a win-win on everybody's part. So with Ellen's piece, I was like, "Okay, what do you need for a first music workshop?" "I need to hear 10 minutes of each act". It was three acts. Every act had a very different musical aesthetic and language, and she wanted to hear if they were gonna work separately, and also together. And so we went to ASU with 10 minutes of each act, and that's what we did there. And Ellen got what she needed to hear and understand, "Is this working? Does this idea work?" Oh, and I should also say that means it was a fully orchestrated workshop. And I'll say mostly the composers that I work with want to write straight to score. So, I don't ask them to write to score, and then go back to piano vocal. If we do a first music workshop fully orchestrated, we'll do half the piece fully orchestrated, then next year, we'll do the second half of the piece fully orchestrated, and then maybe we'll do one more where we do the full thing. And so, by that time, there's been enough time to hear and make all of the adjustments and tweaks and the workshopping process goes on as long as the workshopping process needs to go. And that's also the way I work as a producer. So, it's just being very engaged at every step. And then once we're in rehearsals, like leading up to the world premiere, I step back and let the director do the work. At that point, I feel like the majority of my work happens as a creative producer in the building and developing of the work. Then I step back, let the director come in and really do their work at the forefront. That's with the designers though. I do work closely with the design team, and that work as well, but I respect that the director will do that work and then they'll present, "Here's what we're thinking". Mostly, I'm usually like, "Oh my God, that's amazing", because I'm hiring them and I know how they work and the aesthetics that they have. Sometimes I'm like, "I don't know if that's gonna work". Or "This doesn't feel like a BMP show", or "This is gonna be too big to tour, and if you don't care about that, okay, but you gotta, as a creative team, decide that", and those kinds of things.

Marc A. Scorca: Now, it's interesting you say, "This doesn't look like a BMP show". So, talk to me about - This is David T. Little's opera, but what does it mean to look like a BMP show?

Beth Morrison: Yeah, so I think, you know, our aesthetic is one that, I guess, people would call 'edgy', that is non-traditional, that tends to focus a lot on multimedia, a lot of video, a lot of sound design, a lot of lighting design. Like, I'm a highly visual person. You can tell that by the folks who influenced me - all the Roberts - they were deeply visual artists, and that's what I respond to. I respond to beauty on the stage, even if it's like deconstructed beauty. It's something that is deeply, deeply visual. And so it's really only happened once, and I'm not gonna say the show, where I was presented with a design that it was like, "Oh, ooh", and it was a team I'd never worked with before - the director picked the designers. I was like, "Okay, and I was like, very uncomfortable because they presented me with the model and, of course, just want me to be like, "Oh, it's great". And I was like, "Okay, so let's talk about this". And then I give my feedback of like, "What if we are going into the psychological realm of this character, and that psychological realm is quite messy. Like, what would it look like if we were gonna take that psychological realm and marry it with what you have here? What does that look like?" And after like some consternation, they came back with an idea that really did that, and then all of a sudden I was like, "Yes, that's a BMP show". And so, you know, I know what it is. And most of the people know what it is that work with me too.

Marc A. Scorca: And an alternative could have been that they did not want to go there. And you might have said, "Then maybe you need someone else to produce it".

Beth Morrison: Yeah, I guess that's possible. I guess I will say like, I'm not somebody as a producer that comes in hard. I mean, you know me, I'm just not a hard person. And so for me, I would continue to say like, "What's the way that we can make this work? What does your vision say that marries with what I'm talking about? How do we get there?" It's very, very rare for me ever to pull the plug on something. I think it's happened maybe twice. And it was mostly because the artists who were working together, couldn't work together, and they decided to pull the plug. And so, for better or for worse, I'm very tenacious and I'm deeply loyal, and it's very hard for me - when I say I'm gonna do something - to not finish it.

Marc A. Scorca: Now we've been talking entirely about art here, but I gotta say that another way that you are just an amazing innovator is in terms of the business model of BMP, where you started in New York, you have another home in LA, you have partnerships all over the country. You've just mentioned ASU and others. Because, of course, work benefits from moving from place to place, it gives the artist an opportunity to see it again, to adjust, to experience it in front of a new audience with a different, perhaps perspective based on where they live and what they've seen. So, how have you built this multi-pronged enterprise that is BMP?

Beth Morrison: Well, from the very founding of the company, I was not founding it on an opera company model, and so what I was trying to do was to marry two different kinds of models together. And so (motioning with right hand) that was the nonprofit theater model that I was learning at Yale, and that (motioning with left hand) was the presenting model that I was learning at my fellowship, which was at Pomegranate Arts with Linda Brumbach, who tour-managed Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson and many other amazing artists for years, and still does. And from Linda, I was learning that whole side of an industry, right? Like, that I didn't know, like I didn't know the presenting world; I wasn't learning about that. But it's a very different world. It's a world of the Lincoln Centers, if you will, the Kennedy Centers, these big facilities, festivals that bring work in wholesale that has been produced, and they pay a fee for it for the week, and then they present it. And so this was the model I was learning about from Linda. When I imagined what the business model for BMP could look like, I was really excited by this touring model, because I was working with composers who are unknown, and I wanted to get their names out into the world. I wanted to move work around, so it wasn't the one and done. And I was looking at an opera field, particularly at that time, where most pieces that were new did not have a second life. And I have thoughts on that and feelings on that. I feel like people didn't really learn a developmental process until much later. And so now we're seeing work that's been through a process that actually is finished, and can survive the world premiere and keep going. But at the time, it really wasn't happening very much, and so I wanted to move work around the world; I wanted to get the artists' names out in the world. And at the same time, that was also getting my company's name out in the world too, and so we started to develop this international reputation as a company. But marrying those things together - what that was, was the capitalization of every project is done in this sort of nonprofit theater model, or nonprofit opera model, right? We raise money through private foundations, through individuals, through the government to capitalize a project. Once the project has premiered and we've gotten it to opening night, then it flips into a different model, which is the presenting model, and so then we take the piece to a presenter and they pay us a fee for however many performances they wanna do. And operas, even chamber operas are very expensive. So, the amount of places that can do this in the presenting world is pretty small, but it exists, and we have toured our work around the world. I think we've been in 19 countries. And things have shifted and changed post-pandemic, because the touring model for work of scale, for risky work, which both of ours are for presenters, has basically collapsed. So, we're in a place now where we are trying to sort out how much touring is possible for this company in this moment, and do we need to go back to making some much smaller-scale work that can tour. In the meantime, we were building out our development department so that we're looking a little bit more like a traditional company, and where we're more dependent on fundraising. There was a moment where we were the envy of the industry because we were like 70% earned, 80% earned income. But that was also when our overhead was very small. It was just me for six years, and then it was three of us for another seven, and now it's 15 of us. So, we've grown dramatically, and have a much bigger overhead. So, we're really shifting our business model. We have a number of tours this fall, which is great. We have this first relationship with Opera Columbus in a partnership with the Wexner Center. We are at the Edinburgh International Festival. We're gonna be in Sweden touring David Little's Black Lodge. So, we do have some touring this year, which is great, and we'll see like how that continues to go. But it is definitely different. But on the Los Angeles side of things - I'll just answer that quickly - we sort of planted a flag in Los Angeles in 2014. My first show there was in 2012, and that sort of whet my appetite for what LA was, and is, and could be. And I just fell in love with it, and basically was like putting it out to the universe. I mean, literally Marc, like, there was this moment where I was driving in a rental car from my airport hotel where I would go like every three months to like, just go someplace cheap and try to figure out Los Angeles, and I literally like rolled my window down and I was like, "Universe, LA, listen up. I am coming for you". And I am not kidding you, one week later, Christopher Koelsch cold-called me from LA Opera, right when he took his general directorship, "Hi, this is Christopher Koelsch from LA Opera". I'd never met him. "I wanna fly you out and talk to you about presenting your work". And my jaw hit the floor. And he did. And I sat down, and he was literally like, "Okay, what are we gonna start with?" And now, it'll be 17 pieces with our upcoming premiere there in November. It's our 10-year anniversary together. It's an amazing partnership.

Marc A. Scorca: So, you mentioned your producer training program, and let me ask, what is the one thing - an impossible question I know, but I'm gonna do it anyway - what's the one thing that people need to know, when they enroll, that they most need to learn about independent producing?

Beth Morrison: I don't know if I can do it into one, but I can do it into probably three. So, one is like, what does it mean to produce and tour? Like, what does that even mean? Like, what are the logistics? What are the nuts and bolts of producing? So, we do that, and the nuts and bolts of touring a work. How do you book a gig? So, pitching; we teach them very deeply on pitching. We teach them how to make beautiful pitch packets, and trailers of their work. We bring in professionals from the industry, like heads of states, I would call them, right? The big heads of big opera companies, big heads of presenting companies, who come in and meet them and have like mixer time with them. And then they pitch them, and they give them feedback on their pitches. And then the third, I would say, is fundraising. And so sort of do a deep dive on how did I fundraise my projects before the company was big enough to have this ability to fundraise all this money. Like, what was I doing at the very, very beginning? And how do they do it? And so very like, fundamental on, "Here's some ideas that I used, that I think you could use to get yourself started fundraising. Here's how I partnered with the artists. Here's what we did to activate their networks, as well as activating BMP's as we were growing. The folks in the Producer Academy - half of them are artists, who want to self-produce, or just know how to work with a producer and presenter better. And half of them are either already in the industry as arts administrators, and just wanna know what it means to produce, and produce in the way that BMP does. And in that pool are also just newbies who just wanna be producers.

Marc A. Scorca: When a composer/librettist approach you and say, "Oh, I really wanna get my work out there; what should I be doing?" What advice do you give the composer or the librettist or the composer/librettist team?

Beth Morrison: Yeah, so it's hard advice, but it's the advice, which is "You gotta get it up". You gotta do at least a workshop where you can record this, and have something to show for it. Even if it's just an aria, even if it's one scene. Like, you have to just do it. And if you're gonna wait to be commissioned at a young age, it's just not gonna happen. And so you have to do this on spec. You have to like, have something that you can share, and people can listen to, because most producers can't look at a score and understand what it's gonna sound like. A midi recording just will make them put it in the drawer and never look at it again. Like, you have to just invest in your work. And then I'll sort of say, "I don't really recommend like putting things on a credit card, but Philip Glass put the entire production budget of Einstein on the Beach, the first time around, on his credit card. And maybe at that moment, that was the best choice? And so I definitely tell 'em that. I say the same thing to young directors. "You have to self-produce, you have to put work up that people can either be invited and come and see, or that you can video in total and share, because otherwise nobody's gonna take the risk. And so, it's an investment in themselves that they have to give. And the Producer Academy really helps them to learn how to go about doing that.

Marc A. Scorca: You're quoted in one of the articles that I read, "Feel the fear and do It anyway". Do you still ascribe to that?

Beth Morrison: I 100% still ascribe to that. I think that that is from a Stephen Covey book, and it's something that like hit me all those years ago, 20, 25 years ago when I read it, and is the thing that was pasted, along with the Oscar Hammerstein quote on producing, to my refrigerator for years and years and years. And yes, listen, I don't know that the fear ever subsides, right? Like, it's always been hard. It'll always be hard. There's always gonna be the moments where you think, "Oh my God, we're going outta business. Oh wait, no, look here's a lifeline. Oh God, like, this show is gonna tank. Oh no, look, we fixed it and it's amazing". You know what I mean? Those moments of like absolute terror and peril. I still have them and I still subscribe to just keep moving: just keep moving, just keep putting one foot in front of the other, just keep making one decision at a time, one after the other and eventually it adds up to the journey. And I will say always that journey has righted itself.

Marc A. Scorca: So, 20 years of BMP, 10 years of Prototype, 10 years plus a little bit at LA, and you're still a young person. Here's the Oral History scoop opportunity. Do you have any surprises up your sleeve? Do you still have ideas of what you want to do different, do next?

Beth Morrison: I would say that I am doing my calling, right? My calling is to partner with the most extraordinary artists of our time, and give them a platform to create work, that they have no fear of failure, which gives them the opportunity to take risks, and continue to evolve the form. That is the heart of who I have always been, and I'm sure who I always will continue to be. I would say I would love to have partnerships that are more partnerships like the partnership I have with LA Opera, with major institutions, and I've been trying to build that out for years and haven't been that successful at it. But those are really sustaining partnerships. They allow me to dive into communities, which I may not already be a part of. And that's the other part I love. I'm very community oriented, and I get that from my dad. In everything I'm doing, I'm trying to build communities, whether that's our next gen program of young composers who are trying to find their people. Well, here's this program. These are your people. Support one another, whether that's the Producer Academy or here's a bunch of independent producers and artists trying to make work. When I was at that stage, I was so alone. I was so lonely. I had nobody to ask things to. Here's your community, invest in them and find each other in the larger, new opera, new music community. I'm always trying to build out these communities, and so the LA partnership has allowed me to go deep into that community, to invest in that community. Half my board are from LA now; half the artists I work with are from LA now. I would love to have that kind of a relationship in Boston, in Seattle, in Chicago with these large companies that we could partner together, and then I can go deep into their community and work with them to develop something really special.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, Beth Morrison, thank you. Such a pleasure to scratch the surface with you, because you have such deep insight into the creative process and into the strategies to move the art form into an ever broader, ever more expansive potential for new audiences, for artists. It's just fantastic. Thank you for this time today. I look forward to seeing you soon and appreciate everything you do and will continue to do.

Beth Morrison: Well Marc, I have to thank you. You have been a lifelong supporter, and OPERA America has been such an important foundation for my company in so many ways, whether that be through the grants, whether that be through the Opera Center, through the New Works Forum, through bringing new works to our Prototype Festival. I feel like OPERA America is my home, and so much of that is because of you. So, thank you.