Living Opera Launches a New Chapter: A Digital Home for a Global Vision

10 min read

Sep 18, 2025

Living Opera Launches a New Chapter: A Digital Home for a Global Vision

Living Opera unveils its new website and Foundation, marking a new phase in its mission to make the impossible possible. The platform now unites its work across music, education, research, and philanthropy in one place, celebrating five years of growth and looking ahead to the next chapter of artist-led innovation. Founded by soprano Soula Parassidis and tenor Norman Reinhardt in 2019, Living Opera began as a conversation about how to create a new internal culture for classical musc. That conversation has become a movement spanning stages, studios, and classrooms worldwide.

A Foundation for the Future

The newly formed Living Opera Foundation transforms a vision into structure. It provides a home for initiatives that unite creativity and purpose, including the Kristin Okerlund Masterclass Series, which mentors young artists and honors one of Living Opera’s most cherished collaborators, the Eric Wilson Prize, recognizing artistic integrity and leadership, and the Circles network, a model for sustainable, community-driven performance. Each initiative is guided by the same principles that have defined Living Opera from the beginning: service, purpose, story, and excellence.

Music, Media, and Meaning

Living Opera Media expands the organization’s storytelling through recordings, podcasts, and film. Upcoming projects include Radio Days: The Golden Age of American Song, celebrating the music that once brought families together across the airwaves, Muse of the Golden Throne, a revival of rare art songs inspired by the poetry of Sappho, and Behind the Curtain, a podcast revealing the real lives of artists who make today’s culture possible. Each project shares one goal: to make art accessible without losing its depth and to show that classical music continues to speak with power and relevance.

Building the Culture They Want to Live In

As Living Opera enters its next chapter, the message remains constant: beauty endures when it is built with purpose. The new website invites audiences, partners, and patrons to explore how the organization blends tradition with innovation, art with data, and performance with community. What began as two artists seeking meaning in their craft has become a global network proving that excellence, generosity, and sustainability can coexist.

Visit www.livingopera.org to learn more.

Kristin Okerlund Masterclass Series, which mentors young artists and honors one of Living Opera’s most cherished collaborators, the Eric Wilson Prize, recognizing artistic integrity and leadership, and the Circles network, a model for sustainable, community-driven performance. Each initiative is guided by the same principles that have defined Living Opera from the beginning: service, purpose, story, and excellence.

Music, Media, and Meaning

Living Opera Media expands the organization’s storytelling through recordings, podcasts, and film. Upcoming projects include Radio Days: The Golden Age of American Song, celebrating the music that once brought families together across the airwaves, Muse of the Golden Throne, a revival of rare art songs inspired by the poetry of Sappho, and Behind the Curtain, a podcast revealing the real lives of artists who make today’s culture possible. Each project shares one goal: to make art accessible without losing its depth and to show that classical music continues to speak with power and relevance.

Building the Culture They Want to Live In

As Living Opera enters its next chapter, the message remains constant: beauty endures when it is built with purpose. The new website invites audiences, partners, and patrons to explore how the organization blends tradition with innovation, art with data, and performance with community. What began as two artists seeking meaning in their craft has become a global network proving that excellence, generosity, and sustainability can coexist.

Visit www.livingopera.org to learn more.

Latest news and events

10 min read

Jul 31, 2026

Living Opera's Radio Days album is live

Released through Living Opera Music and distributed by Universal Music Group, Radio Days is available now on all major streaming platforms.

Jul 31, 2026

10 min read

Radio Days Is Live

Radio Days, the new six-track release from Soula Parassidis and Norman Reinhardt, is out now on all major platforms.

Drawing on the glamour, romance, and theatricality of early American popular music, the album brings together “O Holy Night,” “O Lola,” “Someone to Watch Over Me,” “My Blue Heaven,” “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” and “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

Produced by Grammy-nominated artist Jeff Trott, with arrangements and piano by Academy Award-winning arranger Patrick Warren, Radio Days places two classically trained voices inside a sound world shaped by radio, cinema, and the great popular songs of the twentieth century.

The project takes inspiration from an era when radio transformed singers into household names and individual songs into shared cultural moments. Rather than reproduce that period, the recording draws on its elegance, scale, and emotional immediacy while giving the repertoire a contemporary cinematic character.

Released through Living Opera Music and distributed by Universal Music Group, Radio Days is available now on all major streaming platforms.

Listen to Radio Days

10 min read

Mar 9, 2026

Soula Parassidis Featured in Marie Claire and Huffington Post Following Response to Timothée Chalamet’s Opera Remarks

CM Culture artist Soula Parassidis has been featured in Marie Claire and Huffington Post following her response to recent comments by Timothée Chalamet about opera and ballet.

Mar 9, 2026

10 min read

CM Culture artist Soula Parassidis has been featured in Marie Claire Greece and The Huffington Post USA following her response to recent comments by Timothée Chalamet about opera and ballet.

In the articles, Parassidis, a Greek Canadian soprano and Artistic Director of Living Opera Music, pushes back against the familiar claim that opera is no longer relevant. Rather than treating the debate as a celebrity news cycle moment, she uses it to make a broader point about the enduring value of live performance, especially at a time when artificial intelligence is transforming much of the cultural economy.

Her comments emphasize that opera is not disappearing, even if traditional funding models are under pressure in parts of Europe. She also points to signs of renewal, including younger audiences engaging with the art form. As she notes, Opera America data show that more than half of first time opera attendees are under 45.

Parassidis also addresses the growing conversation around AI and the arts. Her argument is that opera and ballet remain fundamentally tied to physical presence, breath, discipline, and risk in real time, qualities that cannot be easily replicated by synthetic media. In that sense, the very qualities that make these forms seem outside the pace of pop culture may also be what make them durable.

For CM Culture, the Marie Claire Greece feature marks an important example of Soula bringing an artist’s voice into a wider cultural conversation about technology, relevance, and the future of live art.

You can read the Marie Claire op-ed here and the The Huffington Post feature here.

10 min read

Mar 6, 2026

Living Opera Releases “O Lola” from Radio Days: The Golden Age of American Song

CM Culture is pleased to share the release of “O Lola”, the latest track from Radio Days: The Golden Age of American Song, the new album project from Living Opera, distributed by Universal Music Group.

Mar 6, 2026

10 min read

Living Opera Releases “O Lola” from Radio Days: The Golden Age of American Song

CM Culture is pleased to share the release of "O Lola", the latest track from Radio Days: The Golden Age of American Song, the new album project from Living Opera, distributed by Universal Music Group.

Performed by tenor Norman Reinhardt, “O Lola ch’ai di latti la cammisa” from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana brings one of opera’s most haunting melodies into the broader musical and historical world of Radio Days. Produced by Grammy nominated songwriter Jeff Trott (If it makes you happy, Soak up the sun), and arranged by Academy Award winning arranger Patrick Warren, the recording reflects the project’s larger aim of connecting the operatic voice to the history of broadcast, recording, and American cultural memory.

The release also speaks to Living Opera’s wider artistic vision: presenting classical repertoire in ways that feel vivid, accessible, and culturally connected without losing musical depth. In the context of Radio Days, “O Lola” is not simply an isolated operatic excerpt. It becomes part of a larger story about how voices travel across media, from the early days of transmission to today’s digital platforms.

The project is led by soprano Soula Parassidis and Norman Reinhardt, founders of Living Opera Music, whose work continues to bridge performance, storytelling, and contemporary cultural strategy. Through releases like “O Lola,” Living Opera is building a model that treats classical music not as a closed tradition, but as a living form that can move across audiences, formats, and generations.

With Radio Days, that approach is especially clear: the project draws on the sound world of the past while presenting it with a distinctly modern framework for recording, distribution, and audience engagement. “O Lola” is a strong example of that balance, rooted in operatic tradition but shaped for a broader cultural conversation.