Mercury Opera Rochester Awarded Grants

Mercury Opera Rochester was awarded a grant from the NY State Music Fund in the amount of $57,000 for a series of performance/learning sessions in public school classrooms throughout Western New York to introduce students to opera and musical theater, its relevance to their lives, and the influence of opera on current popular music and theater.

The program consists of 6 consecutive sessions in each of 8-10 high schools, which compare the Broadway musical Rent (Jonathan Larson) with the opera La Bohème (Puccini).  The culmination of the program in each participating school will be a performance by the students for a younger class in the same district. The final performance project will be videotaped.  Each participating class will be visited weekly by 3 teaching professional musicians (2 vocalists and an accompanist) who will begin each session with a performance from either Rent or La Bohème or both.

The entire program is free to the participating schools, and is meant to target primarily inner city and rural districts - students without access to opera or musical theatre.

Mercury Opera Rochester was awarded a grant in the amount of $5,000 from the Arts & Cultural Council of Greater Rochester and the Rochester Area Community Foundation as part of their annual Capacity Building Grant funding cycle.

The purpose of the grant money is to support the conversion of the company's data from MS-Excel to MS-Access, to purchase software for internet marketing (PatronMail®), and to purchase software for bulk US Postal Service mailings (BCC Mail Manager).

Mercury Opera Rochester was awarded a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts in the amount of $10,000 for its productions and performances in the 2006-2007 season. This is the first year that the company was able to apply directly to NYSCA for support, and this is a very large grant for a "first time" applicant.

NYSCA was very impressed with the programs generated and productions that the company has performed. NYSCA sent auditors to two out of three of the first season's productions, and also the first production in this season. The auditors were suitably impressed, especially after hearing the budget that the company is operating on.

Mercury Opera Rochester was awarded a grant in the amount of $10,000 from the New York State Legislature under the advice of Assemblyman Joe Alessi. Additionally, the company was awarded a second grant in the amount of $5,000 from the New York State Legislature under the advice of Assemblyman Joe Robach.