Our Mission

The Valkyrie Ensemble will empower and promote women in and through opera by supporting female artists, promoting works by and about women, and taking charge of the narrative of opera by producing updated versions of the operatic canon and commissioning new works. The organization will support female artists by providing fair wages for their work, and cultivating opportunities for networking and mentorship. The organization will further its mission to empower women through opera through community engagement with women’s organizations to provide outreach performances, dress rehearsal invitations, and post-performance talk backs.

The need and demand for an organization of this mission is clear. In Chicago alone, there are several companies and organizations just within the arts who are empowering women, yet the operatic community is lacking such advocacy. The repertoire of the art form possesses significant gender disparity in opportunities to begin with, exacerbated by the fact that almost 75% of voice program graduates are women, so that women especially at the start of their careers face fewer opportunities in addition to less pay. Add on to that the general abuse and mistreatment of women in opera plots, the need to advocate for the promotion of women is essential to keeping the art form relevant. Opera in its inherent nature, however, has always created a platform for the female voice to not only be heard, but celebrated, and for this innate reason makes it the perfect art form to continue the cause of women’s empowerment.