Houston Grand Opera’s Big-Tent Vision: Monica Thakkar on why a world-class city needs world-class opera
By Somdatta Basu
Ask Monica Thakkar what opera is and she resists the narrow box. “Take every art form – music, orchestra, dance, singing – meld them together and tell a story through the human voice.” It’s an expansive definition that neatly explains why Houston Grand Opera (HGO) keeps showing up in places you don’t expect an opera company to be: homeless shelters and hospitals, gospel churches and libraries, black-box spaces and the Wortham Theater Center. If the story matters, HGO will find a stage.
Thakkar – Director of Strategic Initiatives at HGO – joined IACCGH Business Hour on Open Forum to trace how that philosophy is reshaping the company. Recruited to Houston shortly after visionary leadership changes (General Director and CEO Khori Dastoor and Artistic & Music Director Patrick Summers), she describes an organization in a “period of growth and innovation” and wants the city to feel invited. That welcome starts with programming. HGO’s season ranges from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (often called a jazz opera) to Hansel and Gretel for families; from The Barber of Seville – with tunes even first-timers recognize – to Handel’s Messiah in director Robert Wilson’s meditative staging (the version whose orchestration Mozart once refashioned). The point, Thakkar says, is a season where “everybody should be able to find something they love.”
Access isn’t only about titles. It’s the total experience. At the Wortham, every production is supertitled – English translations projected above the stage even when the work is sung in English – so the story meets you where you are. HGO offers descriptive services for patrons who benefit from live narration. And the lobby hums before curtain with pop-up performances and pre-show “insider” talks that decode what you’re about to hear. For younger audiences, there’s a Young Patrons Circle and Under 40 Fridays (the Porgy and Bess edition is slated for Nov. 7, as shared on air). For families, Family Day returns with Hansel and Gretel on Feb. 14 a 30-minute/interval/30-minute format in English, ringed with crown-making, face painting, story time, and an instrument “petting zoo.” “My seven-year-old niece is spoiled now,” Thakkar laughs. “She expects intermission activities everywhere.”
Education is a long game. HGO’s Bauer Family High School Voice Studio introduces advanced teens to classical singing; the Young Artists Vocal Academy brings college-age singers for two weeks of training; and the renowned Butler Studio places rising professionals inside HGO’s productions as they launch international careers. High-school nights pack the house with 2,000 students whose unguarded reactions – gasps, laughter, tears – become fuel for the artists on stage. Backstage tours and dress-rehearsal invitations (including an IACCGH night for Hansel and Gretel) turn the Wortham into a living classroom.
Community partnerships widen the circle. Houston Methodist supports the healing side of the arts while caring for HGO’s artists. With Rice University, HGO is piloting AI and data-model projects with business-intelligence students. And in a thoughtful nod to Porgy and Bess—a work braided from Gershwin’s Jewish heritage, Tin Pan Alley craft, jazz, and Gullah musical traditions – HGO programmed a dialogue with Holocaust Museum Houston. Recent collaborations have included Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church and the annual Giving Voice celebration.
The company’s resilience is part of Houston lore. When Hurricane Harvey sent 18 feet of water into the Wortham’s lower level – flooding dressing rooms, the orchestra pit, wig and costume storage—HGO improvised the Resilience Theater inside the George R. Brown Convention Center and did not miss a single performance that season. That through-line of grit and excellence continues: HGO has logged 76 world premieres, is the only American opera company with three Emmys, two Grammys, and a Tony, and was named a finalist for Best Opera Company at the International Opera Awards. The New York Times recently cast Houston as the exception in a struggling national landscape.
If you want the business case, Thakkar has that too. Since COVID, ticket revenue is up 44%, new ticket buyers up 131%, and donor households up 24%. In the 2024–25 season alone, HGO will employ 1,068 people, and its activity generates roughly $8 million in local and state revenue. Statewide, arts and culture contributed $7.3 billion to the Texas economy in 2023. “HGO is an arts organization,” Thakkar says, “but we’re also a business that drives Houston’s economy.” It’s why corporate suites at the Wortham feel a little like suites at NRG: relationship hubs where culture and commerce meet.
The bricks-and-mortar bragging rights are real – the Wortham Theater Center remains one of the world’s great acoustic halls – but Thakkar keeps steering back to belonging. Opera, at its best, is a shared pulse: an old subscriber handing a student a tissue during La Bohème; a first timer stunned by the overture; a family lingering downtown for a late dinner after the curtain. “Artistic excellence draws people from anywhere,” she says. “You don’t have to know the form to feel it.”
So, if you’re opera-curious, start where you are: grab a single ticket to Porgy and Bess, try an Under-40 Friday, or circle Feb. 14 for Hansel and Gretel Family Day. If you want a deeper stake, become a donor at any level, join the young patrons, or bring your company into the fold. The invitation is simple and, in a city of strivers, perfectly pitched: come for the music, stay for the community – and help Houston keep sounding like a world-class city.