Cimarron Opera’s mission is to provide aspiring performing artists and creative technicians a forum for their talents and opportunities to gain valuable training and stage experience, while providing cultural enrichment and education to various audiences across the state and beyond.
Cimarron Opera’s history began in the spring of 1975 when Thomas Carey and Carol Brice Carey founded the Church Circuit Opera Company, which was renamed Cimarron Circuit Opera Company in 1981. Thomas Carey and Carol Brice Carey were renowned international performers and professors of music at the University of Oklahoma who sought opportunities for aspiring artists to sing on stage. They also hoped to bring superior operatic productions to Oklahoma. The artistic spirit of the Cimarron Circuit Opera Company’s founders continues to provide inspiration to succeeding artists and directors.
Current programs include the annual Summer Operetta and Summer Opera Theater Camp, the annual Festival of Spirituals, Salon Series concerts, and community programming including AWE-pera Chorus, Opera Club, and additional community performances.
Cimarron Opera fosters and encourages aspiring performers by:
Providing performance opportunities for performers and to give the public an opportunity to see and hear the finest in operatic and lyrical productions.
Developing educational experiences in music for performers and audiences.
Enriching the cultural environment of our state and beyond.
Providing production experience for performers and creative technicians.
Providing workshops and staged performances for children and youth to stimulate enthusiasm and understanding to ensure a future for the art.
Providing an opportunity for arts management and technical performance training.
Providing high quality music theater for parks, schools, community centers, churches, and small outlying communities.
Statement of Solidarity
At Cimarron Opera, we stand in complete, unequivocal solidarity with the fight against systemic racism and injustice towards the Black community in our nation. We stand with all Black families, our Black colleagues and friends, as we take action using our hearts, our souls, our compassion, our love and our voices to fight a just fight because we believe silence is acceptance and inaction is complicity.
Our visionary founders Dr. Thomas Carey and Carol Brice Carey created Cimarron Opera to serve as a platform for Black artists during a time when our town of Norman, Oklahoma was not yet racially integrated. We continue their legacy by renewing our commitment to provide an avenue for Black and Brown artists, and allies, to express their voices through the power of art, to listen and learn, and help drive positive change. The mandate for justice, compassion, and equality is bigger than any one of us and the responsibility for change is all of ours.
- The Cimarron Opera Board and Staff