 My second-last day at Santa Fe Opera, and Charles Gamble, Director of Community Engagement, pings into my inbox with this: ‘Hey Sarah! I just received a call from Dominik Morningdove, an Indigenous composer who also happens to usher here at the SFO. He was hoping to connect with you. I think Oliver Prezant might have talked to him about your work and fellowship. I've only met Dominik once and don't know anything about his work or focus, but Oliver thinks highly of him. If you have time to call Dominik, his number is …’ So I call. Dominik recovers from his surprise long enough to organise coffee with me the next day, before his ushering shift at the Santa Fe Opera. Dominik is with his partner Violet, who must be the only Australian working at the Santa Fe Opera. I met Violet briefly when she was ushering at the Pueblo Opera Program Youth Night; the torrential rain made conversation difficult, but I recognised her accent. Violet’s passion is design. She’d love to work in film, but for now the opera is a pretty good gig.
It’s a good gig for Dominik for now, too. He is from San Felipe Pueblo, one of the southern Pueblo nations that are part of the Pueblo Opera Program, but not yet represented on the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council. In his mid-twenties now, he grew up without knowing anything much about opera. One day in 2017, when he was about sixteen, his grandmother called him up and said, ‘We’re going to the opera!’ This was Dominik’s first encounter with the art form. That performance of Strauss’s Die Fledermaus changed the course of his life. Although always interested in music, from that first trip to Santa Fe Opera, he began to consider opera as an art form he could work in. Dominik says the experience pushed him towards going to college to study voice. He was accepted into a Bachelor’s degree at Fort Lewis College, which has a Native American tuition waiver. Even with the waiver, he estimates his six years of college still cost him about $6,000 a year in food and board, and remembers his first year, when required to live in college, as especially tough. Without the tuition waiver provided by colleges like Fort Lewis, many Native Americans like Dominik couldn’t attend university at all. Even with the waiver, there are still problems - not just the potentially unmanageable cost of living expenses, but also the limited degree choices. As Dominik said, his Bachelors degree was in Voice. But what he really wanted to do was compose, which wasn’t on offer as a major at Fort Lewis, the only college he could afford. Nevertheless, his time at Fort Lewis gave him a range of complementary skills, including two years of conducting courses, the exams for which involved conducting the choir and orchestra in concert. He describes himself as playing cello to intermediate level, some piano, basic brass, and guitar, as well as his college degree in voice. Dominik’s composition experience predates his college education. He recalls that, around the time of the 2018 Doctor Atomic production, Santa Fe Opera sent teaching artists to Santa Fe Indian School. Dominik was one of four students who contributed music around a particular theme; Dominik remembers his was about radioactive waste on the wind. All four students performed their work at the Lensic Performing Arts Centre in Santa Fe. Dominik also worked with composer Raven Chacon for Site Santa Fe, creating graphic notation for a string quartet. His work was professionally recorded and hosted at Site Santa Fe, both score and recording with headphones for public listening. Now, he’s been out of college two years. He started writing for orchestra while at college, and since then, he’s been paying someone to look over his scores, whenever he can afford it. There don’t seem to be any other viable training opportunities for him, so he’s trying to support himself. Dominik’s dream is to write an opera in his Native Keres language. He says his generation completely missed learning their language, so he’s now passionate about language reclamation and preservation. It’s not easy. Dominik describes San Felipe Pueblo as being particularly conservative. There’s a strong resistance to language being written down. In fact, unless it’s for your own private use, it’s forbidden, and Keresan is definitely not to be shared publicly. Dominik risks retribution - most likely ostracisation - from his tribe if he were to publish or perform such an opera. For him, though, the risk feels worth it. ‘I feel like opera would be one of the perfect avenues [for language reclamation] because the culture’s not just spoken - it’s in the things we wear, the way we greet and speak to each other… opera is the perfect avenue to incorporate everything it is to be Native American.’ Dominik is deeply passionate about opera, and full of ideas. He tells me about performing in a production of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, and how he loved the director’s choices to avoid dead time on stage; there were no black-outs or blue-outs, and the audience was in the moment the entire time. He compared this to seeing La Traviata at Santa Fe Opera, where the whole set moved on a turntable. None of the ‘machinery’ was visible, nor were the stage hands; there was nothing to take the viewer out of the moment, or the place. This fully immersive potential of opera thrills Dominik. He’s keen to write his own libretto, as it’s important to him to conceive everything about his opera’s construction, so it has flow. He also sees characterisation as paramount: he’s currently creating musical sketches for characters from Kafka’s Metamorphosis, as a precursor to drafting an opera. Part of his interest in opera is also as a way to platform Native American culture beyond featuring in textbooks of historical battles. ‘We generally don’t get put in textbooks unless it’s who conquered who’, he says. Opera - because of its complexity, its multidisciplinary richness, and its prestige - seems to him to be the best way to showcase what his culture has to offer. I ask Dominik, if he could wave a magic wand and change one aspect of the Pueblo Opera Program, what would he change? He points out that it’s very hard to galvanise people in a particular Pueblo if the Governor isn’t into it. A lot of things are word-of-mouth and if you don’t talk to the right person, you might not hear about something. Like Renee Roybal from the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council, he recommends speaking to as many people in person as possible, as well as physical collateral - fliers. ‘Spread it to the edges’, he says. Public noticeboards in the middle of a Pueblo won’t necessarily reach everyone, so it’s important to create multiple places where information is available. Ideally, he’d also love to see marketing material in both English and the local language (which is tricky if you’re not supposed to write it down). And finally, always go to the schools, especially elementary schools. Bring singers if possible, who can sing an excerpt, so kids understand what they’re going to see. This is something Santa Fe Opera actively does, but finding ways to increase their reach over time sounds like a good next step. Finally, I ask what Dominik what he needs. He’s hamstrung by not knowing exactly who to talk to, in order to get his works on stage. It’s clear he needs a pathway, first for his own artistic development, and then for career progression. I have some ideas for him, including offering to review his work. But this highly articulate, passionate and determined young creative really needs local pathways if he’s going to realise his dream of telling his own people’s story. I feel strongly that it was serendipity that connected me with Dominik as my last meeting after two weeks at Santa Fe Opera (that, and Oliver Prezant and Charles Gamble). Here is a young Pueblo person, product of the Pueblo Opera Program, who has fallen passionately in love with the art form and dedicated his life to it ever since. It’s clear that, in terms of creating engagement, the Pueblo Opera Program is working. But there are also gaps. Some of these are being filled: there are opportunities for young singers in the Young Voices program, and for technical crew in the Apprentices program. But there’s nothing for Dominik. Yet. Whether or not he ever writes a Native American opera, his example raises awareness of the barriers still in place. Is the Santa Fe Opera responsible for creating pathways for every single individual who expresses interest? I don’t believe so. There are always individual situations that exceed the capacity of any organisation to solve. But if part of the question for the Pueblo Opera Program is ‘what could be next’, then perhaps creating pathways for all the different kinds of Pueblo youth who fall for the opera, to be able to try their hand at finding a home in it, is one answer. Because then the answer to ‘what could be next’ isn’t just about the Santa Fe Opera. Nor is it just about the Pueblo Opera Program. It’s about the future of the young people in the surrounding Pueblos - their capacity to become creatives, to become leaders, to shake the ground under our art form’s feet, and to hand it on to future generations, side by side with those of us who offer over four hundred years of operatic heritage to these far older peoples and lands.
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 Sarah & Michelle You pronounce the name, ‘PRO-testra’ (as in, protest + orchestra. Just so we’re clear).
I found them while researching my Churchill Fellowship application. Type ‘orchestra’ and ‘socially-engaged’ into your search engine and not much comes up, except these guys. Their feisty figurehead is New Jersey-based conductor Michelle Rofrano, who just happens to be on staff at Santa Fe Opera covering Maestro Gemma New for Britten’s Turn of the Screw. We meet up at Tesuque Village Market, a short hop from the opera and therefore a popular hang for the artists - also perilously close to our Air BnB. There are several apprentices having pizza at the next table when Michelle arrives. I start by asking her what she’d most like Australians to know about Protestra. She says it’s an activist orchestra with regular concerts trying to educate audiences about issues of social justice, made up of musicians who donate their time and talents performing and organising, and who believe we have a responsibility to use art to make a statement. We unpack the question of musicians donating their time and talents more. I’m particularly interested because the projects I’ve run in Sydney at the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse are voluntary; I like giving my time and so do the other musicians who join in. But I’ve also received pushback from colleagues who believe an artist should never ask other artists to work for free; that we have such a hard time making a case for proper pay to the wider community that setting up a volunteer orchestra is doing everyone a disservice. Michelle says Protestra’s first concert was entirely voluntary, but now they pay a small honorarium. The 2017 #NoBan concert, Protestra’s inaugural event and a response to the first Trump administration’s Muslim ban, came together in two weeks as an alternative to the ‘shouting into the void’ of social media. Since then, the orchestra has been grassroots funded, including for payment of a lump sum honorarium for musicians in acknowledgment of small costs incurred like parking or meals, or having to miss some teaching. Nevertheless, the honorarium is way below what professional musicians would expect to be paid. Michelle says that all musicians receive information about the honorarium up front, along with details of repertoire, dates, and other logistical details. They are also offered the option to donate their fee directly to the concert’s chosen charity in the musician’s own name. Michelle says about half of all Protestra musicians each concert donate their fee. Beyond that, the orchestra is covered almost entirely by fundraising; any fundraising monies and ticket sales in excess of their budget are donated to the concert’s charity partner. Michelle thinks the honorarium, however small, goes some way towards acknowledging the orchestra is aware that players’ participation in a concert comes at a cost. She also points out that the organisers all donate their time, Michelle included. But at the end of the day, it’s not about money. People come because they have a chance to play great repertoire (Mahler 5, anyone?) that’s a refreshing change after subbing on Broadway, often in chairs they wouldn’t normally play in their professional lives. Protestra works hard to create a collaborative, accepting environment; orchestra members can pitch causes for future concerts. And that’s often what’s most important: ‘People are just excited to play, and to use art to care about a real cause in the world, whereas a lot of times it’s like, for some reason, classical music and the real world seem separate,’ Michelle says. I ask if the Protestra team auditions or vets players. So far, there’s been no real need, although they might review a video of someone they don’t know. It’s a self-selecting organisation; people ask to play because they support the premise. Michelle says of her musicians and volunteer organisers, ‘It does go back to human rights. If you fundamentally believe all people deserve to be treated with respect, deserve autonomy, and to create a life for themselves where they’re happy and they’re respected and fulfilled - and you look at the world and the systems that prevent so many people from doing that, then it’s like, okay, we’re fighting those systems and we should all fight them together! If you believe that, then come on down, and hopefully we’ll see eye to eye on the big things.’ Protestra is currently project-based (although Michelle is open to having it as her full time job, if anyone wants to fund an orchestra?). The season is largely based around responding to current events, and everyone’s availability, especially Michelle’s. ‘Would I love to spend all of my time responding to everything, every single day? Yes. Can I? No. And it also benefits Protestra if I get to work other places too. I’m a better musician and I get to know more people.’ This also means they fundraise concert to concert. As Michelle points out, classical music is really expensive. There’s pretty much no government funding in the USA, so Protestra is funded almost entirely by grassroots donations from donors who believe in what they do. The occasional matched grant of $2,000 is a significant amount for them. While this model means no single sponsor controls their messaging, leaving them completely free to work that out for themselves, available funds limit what the orchestra can do. Michelle is torn about what would happen if they did get a big donor who wanted to control some of their messaging. We’re speaking on the same day that, back in Australia, the board of Creative Australia has just reversed its politically-prompted decision to drop Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino from the Venice Biennale. While the situation in 2025 USA is even more fraught than in 2025 Australia, artists in both communities face loss of funding if their work attracts criticism from government, or, in Australia’s case, if they choose to refuse funding offered to them by corporations to whom they have a moral opposition. To my mind, Protestra is making some pretty brave decisions in their programming, even if they don’t yet have corporate or government funding to lose. It’s an animated conversation, and somehow we end up spilling the corn chips all over the table. Should we we eat them anyway? Michelle jokes that with her Italian heritage, perhaps because they’re salty we should throw them over our left shoulder. The beagle at the next table looks hopeful, but ultimately loses out. The chips get eaten as we talk about how Protestra chooses its concert themes. ‘We don’t shy away from issues even if they don’t directly affect us,’ says Michelle, ‘because I think it’s important for all of us to care about issues of human rights. We all should care, because that’s how you fix it.’ And if you don’t shy away from difficult issues, then you really need to think carefully about your messaging. Protestra’s goal of raising awareness and funds to improve human rights isn’t always a straightforward proposition in the twenty-first century, especially not for a group that wants to be both outspoken and inclusive. Michelle says that for each concert, they have a lot of eyes on all the messaging, to make sure they’re capturing genuine perspectives. The Mahler 5 concert to raise funds for victims of war on Gaza is a key example. The team spent several weeks workshopping how to make the messaging strong enough to highlight the humanitarian crisis, without appearing to be apportioning blame. ‘Before we launch every concert, we joke about the “V” word - verbiage,’ says Michelle. ‘We’re like, we’re workshopping the verbiage for this concert. And we’re exhausted by the time we announce every concert, because it really goes through so many rounds of editing, especially our team members who might be more personally connected to the issue.’ Aware that learning about the issue is not the same as lived experience, the Protestra team always tries to get multiple people’s perspectives. And when they get negative feedback about their messaging, they treat it as a learning experience on how better to focus future messages for that person or group. We finish by discussing the inevitable experience of burnout. We all laugh in recognition when it comes up, but it’s a rueful laugh. Yes, it happens to Michelle - by the time each concert ends, she usually needs a break. But whenever there’s space on her dance card, there’ll be another concert. ‘I want to believe that me, speaking up for an issue I care about, and you, and the musicians in the orchestra, will have some kind of ripple effect, even if it just gives someone else courage and they’re the ones who have a bigger effect. I want to believe it matters. Because if we don’t try, then nothing will get better.’ |
AuthorWhen I was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to travel overseas and study socially-engaged orchestral and operatic models in September 2024, the trip seemed a lifetime away. Now, in June-August 2025, it’s here. Archives
January 2026
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