One Ounce Opera Breaks Down Baroque Barriers

Opera is, perhaps, inherently progressive, although historically the art form has had a reputation for its sky-highbrow sensibilities. La bohème examines poverty; Carmen follows a complex feminist character; and Tosca, now beloved as a campy tragedy, examines political corruption. Despite progressive themes, however, operas are told largely from a male gaze and lack significant diverse perspectives. The art form has a perceived barrier to entry, and if you can’t envision yourself in the audiences without a little pair of bejeweled binoculars, how will it continue to stay alive?

Best of Austin® finalist One Ounce Opera offers a solution – make it shorter. “I really see it as like the future of the art form,” said Julie Fiore, executive & artistic director of OOO. “Short-form operatic storytelling, I think, is where it’s at.”

OOO’s annual Fresh Squeezed Ounce of Opera showcase returns this week at dadaLab, for its eighth year and for the first time as a summer event. Although it’s a nontraditional take on opera in a nontraditional setting, the production company made the shift “to have it feel a little bit more like a kind of a festival environment,” Fiore said. “There are people traveling, and we thought, well, we want them to come to Austin.” There’s Glimmerglass in New York, Spoleto in South Carolina, Santa Fe Opera in, well, Santa Fe, and now, Fresh Squeezed in Austin.

But the showcase isn’t intended for the type of person who travels the nation in search of the next best opera. They are welcome, of course, but OOO’s goal is to make opera accessible to the masses. “Opera is a means to dynamic storytelling,” said Fiore. “It’s also kind of a punk vibe of taking this art form that a lot of people think of as really elitist and for rich, old white dudes, and proving that actually it is deeply meaningful and almost, like, seeps into your pores because it’s just so otherworldly to experience.” 

With nothing but respect for the wig-wearing traditionalists of eons past, “There is a wide swath of composers and librettists that are living now,” Fiore said, “that come from a wide spectrum of lived experience, and we want to tell their stories.”

Runtime is no barrier for the 70-minute showcase, which is made up of three thematically connected short operas. This year, they had over 100 submissions, which is the most they’ve ever received. After combing through each, Fiore whittled the program down to Having Guests for Dinner by Nicholas Bentz and Robert Ellsworth Feng, Mud Girl by Omar Najmi and Christine Evans, and Forever by Elizabeth Gartman and Melisa Tien.

The three 20-minute operas are connected by a common thread with at least one character in each who deals with anxiety and isolation in an uncomfortable, unexpected situation. All three stories also deal with environmental themes, and eagle-eyed audience members may even be able to spot physical through lines in the sets that both hint at what’s to come and call back to previous shows.

“I think it’s important for audiences to see current events and the issues of today discussed in opera,” Fiore said. “What I go back to is the dynamic range that opera affords. I see opera as a perfect fit for telling the story of these emotions because of all of the colors and textures that the operatic voice is able to elicit.”

This article appears in July 17 • 2026.