Really Spicy Opera (f. 2005) is an award-winning jewel-box opera company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It specializes in creating and producing new musical and dramatic works for the stage.

Read about RSO’s pre-2020 history.

Recent Activities (Highlights)

In January 2020, RSO toured France with an itinerary including performances at the Fondation des États-Unis and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

In June 2020, RSO launched an innovative, online composer-librettist training program called the Aria Institute.

The company toured France and Madagascar in 2022, as part of the U.S. Fulbright Program and an American-Malagasy cultural exchange including residencies with the Fondation des États-Unis, the University of Antananarivo, the Lovasoa Cross-Cultural Competency Center, and the Malagasy choir iCanto.

In 2023, RSO premiered the opera Meow and Forever, with a libretto by Basil Considine and music by Jodi Goble.

In 2024, RSO traveled to Germany for Aria Institute-based exchanges at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg and Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, thanks to generous support from the DAAD Program.

Mission Statement

Really Spicy Opera creates striking, entertaining, and thought-provoking musical and dramatic experiences for audiences and performers.  We believe in the use of fresh topics and ideas, the importance of audience engagement, and that the arts should strive to be coherent, meaningful, and exciting. We embrace disparate musical styles and idioms, with the central credo that music and dramatic aesthetics deserve equal weight. We promote equitable representation of different races, classes, and sexual and gender identities onstage due to our deep-seated beliefs that art resonates more with those it represents.

As a company, we are philosophically opposed to pay-to-sing productions and embrace working with young and emerging artists to assist them in progressing to the next step in their careers. We work to remove access barriers, improve participation by women and other underrepresented demographics in opera creation, and encourage and empower artists along their career journeys.

Organizational Structure

Really Spicy Opera is the flagship organization of Spice Arts, a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. It is a member of the Network of Ensemble Theaters and Opera America. Press Kit

Support for Really Spicy Opera is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, the Network of Ensemble Theaters, and donors like you. Details.