Italian-Canadian soprano and Principal at Cesaroni Consulting, Lucia Cesaroni, is a regular contributor to Opera Canada's print publications. She writes the Stage Business and Essential Perspectives columns. The Opera Glasses host, Elizabeth Bowman, chats with Cesaroni about the state of the opera business, more specifically what audiences want, music education, the worth of artists in business, and funding.
Lucia Cesaroni has established an international opera career, singing with companies in Italy, the U.S. and Canada. Living between Toronto, New York and Raiano, Italy, Lucia employs her skills and discipline as a performer as well as her international network to coach executives and teams at Salesforce, Bell Canada, Everlane, Google, Forward Together, Archer Daniels Midland, Masters Insurance as well as MBA students at Carleton University. She embodies the artist-entrepreneur, articulating the value of strategic creativity, art and artists outside of the arts.
All episodes of The Opera Glasses podcast are hosted by Opera Canada Editor-In-Chief, Elizabeth Bowman. Follow Opera Canada on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Visit OperaCanada.ca for all of your Canadian Opera news and reviews.
Italian-Canadian soprano and Principal at Cesaroni Consulting, Lucia Cesaroni, is a regular contributor to Opera Canada's print publications. She writes the Stage Business and Essential Perspectives columns. The Opera Glasses host, Elizabeth Bowman, chats with Cesaroni about the state of the opera business, more specifically what audiences want, music education, the worth of artists in business, and funding.
Lucia Cesaroni has established an international opera career, singing with companies in Italy, the U.S. and Canada. Living between Toronto, New York and Raiano, Italy, Lucia employs her skills and discipline as a performer as well as her international network to coach executives and teams at Salesforce, Bell Canada, Everlane, Google, Forward Together, Archer Daniels Midland, Masters Insurance as well as MBA students at Carleton University. She embodies the artist-entrepreneur, articulating the value of strategic creativity, art and artists outside of the arts.
All episodes of The Opera Glasses podcast are hosted by Opera Canada Editor-In-Chief, Elizabeth Bowman. Follow Opera Canada on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Visit OperaCanada.ca for all of your Canadian Opera news and reviews.
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Bowman, and this is the Opera Glasses Podcast. Today on the podcast, I have Italian Canadian soprano and principal at Eroni Consulting Lucia Cone . Lucia not only writes for Opera Canada, but has also established an international opera career singing with companies in Italy, the United States and Canada. She lives between Toronto, New York, and Italy, and employs her skills and discipline as a performer, as well as her international network to coach executives and teams. Her clients have included Salesforce, WeWork, bell, Canada, Google Forward, together, and many more. I'm so glad she's here. So, let's talk to my friend Lucia. Lucia, welcome to the Opera Glasses podcast. Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Lizzie . You know, I love you. Happy to be here
Speaker 1:Also. Yeah, happy birthday .
Speaker 2:Thanks. It's a festival, you know, it's all month long, so, yeah,
Speaker 1:I, I hear it's a big birthday, but I won't, I won't talk about that. It's , I think, I think it's wonderful. <laugh> Gotta celebrate these things. Okay, so let's circle back. We've been working together since, since I joined, and you've been working with the magazine before I joined Opera Canada. And so before I joined, you had your, your own column that expressed the goings on in the business. And Yeah,
Speaker 2:I , I said to John Mako at the time, do you realize you don't have a singer writing regularly for your magazine? Does that not strike you as odd out of balance? And , uh, yeah. So I was writing , um, with Jam Marco on sort of more general topics, singer's, point of view, insider perspective, and then you came into my life, <laugh> . Well,
Speaker 1:I found when, when we first chatted, I found, I found you had a , a very, sort of unique perspective, not just from the perspective of, of a singer, which is of course, an important perspective to have in the magazine, but you, you have business acumen that I think that many might not necessarily have to the degree that you have. You run a consulting company, right? Yes . Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:As so many of us experienced during the pandemic , uh, you know, full calendar to empty calendar in a very short space of time. And so I pivoted, started, has Ioni Consulting, and now I balance that with my performing. So in the consulting sphere, I go into corporate America and I teach performance skills, dealing with nerves, communication skills, listening skills, presentation, all the things a singer has practiced intentionally for many years and can be translated into the corporate sphere wherein there is desperate need of charisma and, you know, energy and a , a , a truly unique perspective. And so I come to Amer the corporate space with a beginner's mindset, having very few sort of preconceptions. And I bring, you know, the sequence as I like to say, or , or the , or the eyelashes either. Um , but it's, it's great because I learn a lot too. I, I, we, I think we as artists still don't recognize our value extra industry, you know? So that's, that's how you , I sort of pitched to you. We need to talk about how artists have value everywhere, because this is a particular, it's a challenge everywhere, but it's a particular challenge in the classical music space and in Canada where, you know, arts are still, and artists are still sort of considered the first thing to be cut in a budget, the frill, the extra. And yet, quite to the contrary, I am putting in black and white the truth that the people make the big money and, and are the engines of our economy need us. So that's what we write about now.
Speaker 1:Right ? Yeah. Well, congratulations on a very successful pivot in a, in a really tough time. I know all the artists were struggling, but not all were able to sort of put their ducks in a row like that and find a sort of new niche that compliments all your stage work. And I love that you're continuing to do it. And through our conversations, we agreed that it would be good to have you take on, I guess it's not new anymore, but when did we start the stage business and essential perspectives in the fall issue, 2022 ?
Speaker 2:That's ,
Speaker 1:And your first interview is with Kate Poni , who's fantastic digital marketing design, all the things visual. She's so fantastic. I was so glad to have her perspective in the magazine and also from your perspective, it was great. Can you tell us a bit about the conversation you had with her?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, I liked her immediate. I mean, the three of us have had subsequently wonderful times in New York together. I'm very, very glad that I got that opportunity to meet her in the context, you know, with you as the connector, because apropos , um, we all really connect on the importance of aesthetic beauty for beauty's sake , um, and design as a serious thing. Again, not a frill, not an afterthought, but , um, it's not just content. It has to be the how. Um, the delivery system has to also be beautiful. We are artists. We're in the creative sphere after all. And I think classical music, and this is something she spoke to a lot, classical music and performing arts in general, undervalue the importance of, of design and beauty and , um, all the things surrounding the art itself and the content itself, right? Which can only enhance, and she's been a part of some really cool projects because her clients are, you know, the most important classical musicians in the world. Um, UJA and Joyce cdo , et cetera, et cetera, right ? So they are really sort of at the, at the vanguard of cool in our industry. If there's such a thing as cool an opera , I don't know the jury's out on that, but <laugh>, you get my meaning , uh, the idea that they wanna interact with their audiences more. They wanna find more opportunities, not just that the poster is beautiful, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> , but that they actually are , uh, before and after the show. And even during finding innovative ways to connect and bring the audience in , remove the intimidation factor, remove the frankly preciousness and pretentiousness that I call out a lot. If you read my columns, <laugh> , you know , you do. I mean, you know , listeners read my columns. Um, there's just simply isn't time for that anymore. And Kate really gets that, and her artist with whom she works really gets that. So yeah, it , it was , that was a really fun interview. And we're , and we became fast friends. So
Speaker 1:How , how you frame that with the importance of design just reminded me of, you know, do you know Marshall McCluen ? He was a philosopher. Yeah. Yeah . The medium , the medium is a message. And that really sort of rings true here when I hear you say that, because yeah, Kate really has this three D view of a project. When you look at just Joy Dato's Eden Project, you can see all the levels, like they, they handed out seeds, the audience, and so that they can continue to grow , uh, with , with the experience that they just had. So it's, it's an all encompassing thing. And then also the essential perspectives being , um, a column about people, I guess, with subjects that aren't necessarily marinating in opera but are successful in another industry. I love this column. I think it's very important for our business, especially as we consider ways to, to grow or yeah . Maybe move in a new direction.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, so first of all, you are exemplary of this notion. What I pitched to you was we don't have to reinvent the wheel. We need to look at what's already being done well elsewhere, and implement, adapt, be a little more agile, actually do some change management here. Um, and as I said, I think you, coming from communications and PR and understanding, like that to me is a , is a perfect example of someone coming from outside of opera who can lend a lot to opera best practices, right? How it's being done well in another sector, but a sector that's adjacent enough that they're gonna be, the Venn diagram has, you know, multiple overlaps. And, and so we've, you know, I've leveraged my, both my personal and professional network to talk to people like Debra La Yu , who is an entrepreneur and leader in the Chinese Canadian community, about how can we meaningfully build community , um, using arts as the nexus point around which to rally around, which to bring people in this, you know, I use this phrase a lot, as much as geography is destiny, and we have this huge sprawl in Toronto and in Canada, right? It's , it's actually representative of the whole country. How can we bring people together and all these amazing and very successful immigrant communities to opera. Um, and so I talked to her, I talked to my dear friend , um, Derek , who is an entertainment lawyer, Derek Chua about, again, he's also a theater producer, which is interesting, again, adjacent enough. And then , um, a client of mine and friend executive at Salesforce, Julie Hanson, we talked about what are some of the best practices in a tech company, right? That we can implement easily fluidly into a creative art space. Um, and the , I'll never forget this insight , um, which was, she wanted to talk a little bit about marketing and how can we create, how can we use opera as an event to market opera? So, which is to say, using the example of Airbnb, which I won't get into now 'cause it's a bit, you know, detail heavy, the point being, learning from the lessons Airbnb garnered during the pandemic, we can create a multi-phase or stage event in which opera plays like a third or even a quarter of the , of the parts, right? So it has, it has to start with cocktails or a petty tv. Then we have something opera then , or performing arts in general, right? Or it's site specific, but then we go to dinner, then we have, we have a place, most importantly, where we can come together and we've just had this shared experience of big emotions. It's gotta go somewhere, like, where does that energy go? And we don't do that very well. And so that was one of the biggest insights of all the people that I've interviewed for essential perspectives. A person outside of opera had this very , um, incisive , uh, commentary and, and , and sort of constructive feedback for the industry, which is we could be creating events, not just a production of an opera.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, it makes , um, absolute sense when you think of what people are doing post pandemic, what the importance of an experience of an all encompassing thing. That's what people are buying tickets for now. They wanna have multi-layered experiences, and they want something that is conversation starting and not something where they're , they're sort of passively being entertained and then they leave. No ,
Speaker 2:Lizzie , I don't wanna do that. I'm sorry. I don't wanna sit at the opera for four hours. I am an opera singer and I don't wanna do that. I wanna experience, I wanna have a place, I want to be moved and experience the joy of classical music, but then I wanna be able to digest it and talk about and make sense of it with other interesting people. For example. Um, the thing is, this is actually happening all around us slowly. I mean, there are really cool iterations. And in the latest , uh, column that I wrote, I name checked a few of them , um, Simponi in , in the Gardens at Castle Loma is very, they're doing this for , with my, with, I partnered with my business, the , with the Italian Contemporary Film Festival in the distillery, which does this incredible, I wish more people knew about this. Um, we did a huge event opera event with them where we did just that. We created a v i p pre-launch and after party , and then 90 minutes of Carmen in the middle. And the most important piece that I wish opera would do more, I collected a lot of data. So I did surveys before and after I talked to people. I got everybody's information. Um, and I'm going to leverage that because I can prove, you know, the dollar value to businesses, right? I brought specifically corporate clients together. We can be doing so much more of this. It's, again, none of this is reinventing the wheel. I'm not suggesting anything that doesn't already exist in similar iterations elsewhere. I just wanna see, I do wanna see our institutions in Canada pull together more. You know , uh, we've, we've got Banff and we've got, you know, the C O C and we've got the rom. You know, like, I want us , what's, what's the partnership there? How can, how can all of those, 'cause they're not all the same audiences at all. Yeah . They bring in totally different demos of, of Canadians, and I want to smash them together and see what they think and what do they wanna see.
Speaker 1:I wanna just say on this topic, for a couple years, I was the executive director of the, the Amichi Chamber Ensemble. Yeah . In Toronto. When I came on board , the , uh, the financial situation was dire . I mean, which is a common issue in not-for-profit , uh, organizations. Anyway, the only way out was through what I, what I called cultural collaboration, right. Uh, we needed help presenting. So I reached out to , um, the Toronto International Film Festival, and we did a partnership with them. We did a, a , a concert with them , um, with, with film and music. Yeah , yeah . And the whole thing . And they had live musicians, and it was awesome. And I, I thought it was fantastic. I'd love to see more of that. Also, in the same season, we did a collaboration with a local up and coming chef. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:<affirmative> .
Speaker 1:Oh . And they, I , I , I loved this concert so much , um, but the chef didn't know anything about classical music. So for half of the program, I gave them , uh, program notes , um, like the history of the piece, the story, why it was written, and all the context that comes with classical , um, music. And then for the other half, I let them have free reign on what they created, just based on what they listened to. And then they needed to explain what they heard and create hor d'oeuvres that matched each piece. And so this was in 2011. Oh, wow. And , um, and then we obviously needed some sort of translator, right? So we had James Chatto host the concert, and he reviews restaurants. Yeah , yeah , yeah . Uh , and wine and all the things. Wonderful person loves classical music. So it was all very linked together. And then also we partnered with Kerner Hall because it was , uh, their, I think it was their 25th anniversary season. And they , uh, we did a , a co-production with them , uh, as well in that season, and ended up succeeding based on this piggybacking with , uh, other cultural institutions helping us along with some operating costs and that kind of thing. Um, I mean, it was not a cheap season. There were some expenses that needed to, to happen in order for it to, to work, but , um, at the end of the day, everyone helping each other helped, helped an organization really up the bar. Um , and I'm not saying it had anything to do with all of that collaboration, but then they won the , the Juno that year.
Speaker 2:Oh , <laugh>. You , I mean, you and I are on text about this all the time. We, we actually exist in abundance, but we're taught that it's scarcity, that there's, we have no chance in this industry, but that's because we look inward, inward, inward instead of, you know, where there's money, hospitality, and food. You know what people, you know, what's sensual, you know, opera and vibrating in your body and having these like big intense emotional experiences and then eating incredible food and, and wine tasting also . It's all right there. And again, there's abundance. There are so many people who are making these connections. Uh, but we are not, that is not, that message is not being disseminated to the generations coming up, which, you know, is another thing. You and I talk about a lot, music education and how, how can we better prepare , uh, not just opera singers, but classical music, classical musicians and, and performing artists in general for the reality of, you know, post-graduation of , of the professional world. And one of these ways we have to, they have to learn about those kinds of projects, but then they have to learn what it takes to implement them. So we need to be teaching kids not only that, there are many possibilities, and that we're not sort of, it's not all over in 20 years for opera, which is the message that is consciously and subconsciously , uh, fed us Instead , um, we need to teach them strategic thinking. We need to sit them down with an org chart. Do you understand how an opera company functions? Of course they don't. No one's ever taught them. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> , you know, or generally, how does that compare to , uh, a consulting firm? How does that compare to a tech startup? How does the world work? Basically, we're not teaching musicians because once they understand those sort of general frameworks and mental models, then they can start to make those connections as you have done. And I'm starting to do, and, and many of us in the industry are starting to do , um, but we have to teach the upcoming young musicians differently in this way. More critical thinking, more strategic thinking, right? <laugh> , I'm working on a couple projects bringing, I already do , uh, workshops for MBAs mm-hmm . <affirmative> at a couple of universities. But I am working on some projects bringing music kids and M b a kids together. And I mean, kids, I mean, they're not that young, whatever, by the time they're doing their M B A , but for all intents and purposes, bringing them together to say, you see the world completely differently than you see the world. So talk to each other. You know, let's, let's, where are the commonalities? Where are the differences? What kind of questions do you ask each other that someone in your own sector would never think to ask because they would think it obvious, or, you know, we all, we all sort of don't know what we don't know. Right. And so I appreciate the connections that you're making.
Speaker 1:It's cool . Yeah. I think, I think ultimately it's about having an open mind and going into these experiences , uh, with that open mind and readiness to experience something new. Because there is also a group of people who are not open to new experiences and then limiting themselves to only, only the experience they've always had. Um, and that you see a lot of, if you go to a new music concert or something like that where they may not enjoy that piece of music, but it's, it's not because that piece of music is terrible or anything. Sometimes you have to hear it three or four times before you can really understand it or, or get into the vibe of that thing. And it's the same thing with all of, all of these conversations that we're, that we're talking about here.
Speaker 2:Oh. And it's, we need to create cultivated citizens, right? Art can do that, and music can do that, but you have to take people by the hand also. So don't ask them to sit through a four hour opera all the time. There's a place for that. You know , uh, bring them to something maybe contemporary, a story in their own language , vernacular, perhaps, you know, whatever. We all know sort of many of the ways we can , uh, remove some of those barriers to entry. Couple things that you and I talk about a lot, the arts organizations are still, for all the government money they receive, and I write about this a lot too, <laugh> , all the government money they receive, they are absolutely absent in terms of being out and in the community and in events that are not directly related to niche on niche on niche opera, or, you know, strings or classical music or whatever. We're woefully underrepresented out in other, other events, other milieu to challenge ourselves to just be known and then go together. Not just one arts institution. I wanna see four coordinate and strategically start going to the chambers of commerce's. <laugh> . Yeah . Is that even the right collective? Now, you , you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:Obviously that's a great thing. I think ultimately the reason why those things aren't happening is that they're under-resourced, you know, it's like they're too big and then people are wearing too many hats and then they get stressed. There is a lot of burnout in the arts. So there's, there is a circular issue here with the way that the workflow happens. And we've all seen it, and it's, and it's a challenge. Of course, these are all great ideas, and this is, this is where, where we need to go. I guess it's sort of a , maybe there just needs to be a focus on doing like one project in the year to start. Yeah . Where it's a hundred percent the focus of collaborating, you know, and making it more bite-sized for these bigger organizations so that they can say, alright, this is, we have six productions. Say, let's just throw that out there. Um, who knows what, what the company is. And , um, <laugh> . And then, and then we, we are gonna also have this collaborative event that we put on and see, see what happens with that and what is that
Speaker 2:More agility. You're right, the first time we don't have to iterate on sort of a grandiose scale. Absolutely not. Yeah. Bite-size. It's a good, good, good phrase. And however, you know, we also need , uh, evangelists the way to, you're right, companies are under-resourced, but they also lack good leadership. So I've called out, and I'll continue to call out the lack of charismatic leadership in arts institutions in Canada. It's not that there aren't some good leaders, but we need a lot more, and we need them out in front of the public a lot more. And that is one way, it has to be a multi-pronged approach. There are no silver bullets, but we absolutely need better leadership. I, for one, our tax dollars pay their salary. I, for one, demand better leadership in the arts in my country. Um, and I recognize that for some of those institutions, it is difficult to compete with the private sector because they can't offer the compensation. That's why <laugh> , I advocate for a lot more artists in positions of leadership, because they might at first take a pay cut if they are, you know, trained not only as artists, but perhaps they went and got an M B A perhaps, who knows whether maybe they <laugh> are entrepreneurs, doesn't matter, right? But the fact that they could bring those transferrable skills to bear and then start leading arts organizations, they are charismatic. They can speak to why this is worth getting behind, you know, on a national scale, on a big city scale, you know, whatever we're talking about. Until we get more charismatic leadership, we are going to struggle to, as you say, get better resourced. Because a thing that a charismatic leader can do is raise money. And the thing you, and I know this well, and I talk about this a lot, I do not accept, again, this idea that, oh , fundraising. It , it , it is challenging. But the money is everywhere. This city and this country is very rich, actually, just in this city alone, we are not leveraging, we are not making the connections. We're not thinking strategically because we lack the leaders to do it. The leaders who frankly give it .
Speaker 1:Hmm . I have to say that on , on, on that sort of topic of, you know, back to circling back to that partnership thing, when I did reach out to Tiff about Amichi doing the concert with them, I guess that must've been 2010. They, they were just thrilled about this idea, you know? Yeah . They were thrilled about the partnership. And , uh, oftentimes I think that we'll be surprised by the reaction that the company or corporation will have. Uh , that's my philosophy with everything. Ask , ask, ask, ask. Always ask. Even if you think the answer is gonna be no 90% of the time, because 10% of the time, it's gonna be a surprising Yes. We need more. Yeah . More ask <laugh>
Speaker 2:More . I was just gonna ask you, what do you think ask you? And you that's, I couldn't agree more. Ask more, be bolder. We're very , uh, always gets me in trouble. We're very Canadian, you know, we're very apologetic. We're very nice. We fetishize how polite we are. Well, raising money and being passionate is not a polite exercise. It simply isn't. It requires some ovaries, <laugh>, you know, it requires , uh, requires passion, which, you know, artists and, and , and creatives can, can lend in , in spades. I agree with you. Ask, ask, ask again. The money is out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. Speaking of money, let's go to your column from the winter issue, because it wasn't a column, it was a feature and it was entitled The New Patronage. And you were specifically talking about how to handle big philanthropists and what they want from the experience and why, why they might give you a Yes.
Speaker 2:Being an Italian citizen, Canadian citizen growing up and seeing the difference in arts funding models between Europe and North America. Okay. But then even more starkly and more sort of in a quo , Tian way here, we're seeing the difference between America and Canada. And of course, America's arts funding is built on individual or family patronage. That's the history of, of, of how that sort of came up. And we could be doing a lot more of than in Canada, because we're a younger country, so we have newer multimillionaires and billionaires, right. And we're talking about patrons, of course, they don't all have to all be the super rich, but it's not a bad place to start <laugh> because oftentimes they are already philanthropic. They already have foundations, you know, family foundations. There is a history in their family of giving to something. And I want a little bit more of that money in, in Canada to start to go to the arts. Another thing we fetishize, and I think deservedly in our country is our healthcare system. And weirdly, you and I have talked about this a little bit, but it's like somewhat counterintuitively, we have public healthcare , but it's the number one thing people also give to philanthropically, which is sort of interesting to me as a paradigm. But I guess because it's part of our national pride, we're proud of it. It also makes sense, you know, practically give to hospitals. But I would like a little bit more of patronage to start going to the arts. Right. Um, that is, number
Speaker 1:Two has to be education,
Speaker 2:Right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure that's, I'm sure that's true. I , I don't remember, do you remember, do you know, I know that number one is healthcare. I don't know what was ,
Speaker 1:I don't know . But number two has to be education. And I think that arts , as we've also had in previous conversations that have not been on this podcast, arts, education is a real , a really big and important issue that we need to address in our industry in order to create the di diversity that we are longing for. It's a systemic issue. And we need to educate kids from the age of four or five. If you talk to any professional instrumentalists, you'll ask, when did you start playing? The answer is usually when they're four or five years old, our big presenters that have more, I guess more money at their fingertips or more opportunity for getting out into the community mm-hmm . <affirmative> could expand on their educational outreach programs to include those younger , uh, potential patrons. Really. Well.
Speaker 2:And I actually think that this is an area to explore more in terms of grant matching. So many of the grants available for art funding are education based . So we could be soliciting, if any fundraisers are listening and they don't already do this, we could be soliciting individual patrons of certain income bracket to match the granting or vice versa. Right. Whichever way that works best synergistically. I totally agree. And we can all get behind children's education. That's an , that seems like relatively low hanging fruit, where we also are, you know, solving multiple problems at once, getting a far broader swath of children from different backgrounds exposed to art, right. Creating a pipeline so that in 20 years, 15 years, we have , uh, stages that better reflect our country. But that the problem with that is it doesn't happen overnight. That's a pipeline that takes time to do meaningfully and properly takes a generation takes time. Oh, yeah. Um , and it takes funding, it takes runway of years of committed funding, not ad hoc funding. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> , right ? It takes people and fundraisers who can strategically ask, make, make the case for give me three or five years spread out, you know, gifts over time, longer commitments. And then by the way, when we have these artists who are grown and in our communities, even if this mus music education does not produce, and of course it won't, right? Uh, r o i isn't just how many professional performers we have, right? The r o i is far greater than this. And again, I'm not saying anything that we don't already know, but making the case for why people who've never funded the arts should fund the arts. R o i means that when we have these musicians trained to think as creatives and musicians think they are incredibly valuable in other sectors as well. And this is proven now. I mean, there's, there's data on this. You can, you can read, there are talent and hiring trend reports, right? Big data from LinkedIn and Mackenzie and Deloitte that they're doing every year or two years and over and over again, the skills that are most in demand are the critical thinking and soft skills, right? It's all the EQ because, and , and the HR managers will say, we can train anybody in the technical skill. What we need are people who can work on a team. What we need are people who have emotional intelligence, self-awareness, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and musicians learn this, right? They're , that's part of music education. So we're actually producing really well-rounded citizens. And that's the biggest r o i I think for music education. Um, because talent , really, really talented kids in that upper echelon music will out, right? They will find it's, it's , but I wanna capture far more kids to create more, frankly, more interesting Canadians like music and art makes people more interesting. And a pitch last thing I'll say about, about that education piece. And another way I wish that we pitched funding for music education. When you are moving up a ladder in a company, any company in any sector, distinguishing yourself as being able to speak intelligently to art, music, anything like that, that you have not only attended performances, but you actually understand the music history, the theory, you've practiced it yourself. This distinguishes you to your superiors. It just does. It's an incredible networking tool. Also, there's so much value to music education that we, we have not even close to juiced. There's a verb in Italian re right? And it's like to really like juice the last drop out of, out of , um, out of a concept. And that's what we should be doing with music education.
Speaker 1:When you talk about musicians , uh, performing artists being good at people skills communicating and that kind of thing. I mean, they learn how to communicate through their eyes, you know , when they're making, when you make music with somebody, you have to respond through the, through body language. Like you can't be like, I'm gonna now play the note, okay. Or I'm gonna sing. Now you have to feel each other and you have to be on the same page. That is the skill, right? That is that you are communicating without talking. And so that's what you learn. You learn how to, to read people.
Speaker 2:And that's, again, I teach this, right? When you talk about communicating non-verbally, which is exactly what you're talking about, team building, how about all of the permutations now of work culture, all the ways that's changing. And one way we can be more agile is be like an opera singer. Every two months I gotta show up to the first day of school and I have to bond, so to speak immediately and create trust, a foundation of trust on day one with my colleagues. So that, and a lot of that is non-verbal, exactly as you say, so that we can take emotional and vulnerable steps, you know, toward each other to make something beautiful and real and sort of truthful. So yeah, that it's incredibly valuable. And you're right. Chamber music, thinking about it in that sort of framework, I'm curious, has Ben, does Ben ever do these kinds of workshops? Does he ever taught , he must speak to, he must get asked to do this kind of thing ? No.
Speaker 1:You're referring to my husband Ben Bowman. Ben Bowman <laugh>.
Speaker 2:He's the yes. Concert master at the Met . Heard of it .
Speaker 1:Yeah. Um, he has not done any , um, workshops, workshops on this. But I do note when he is playing all the amount of communication that is happening during those performances, and it's really amazing, like to see. Yeah . And also conductors, I mean, conductors are fascinating. I mean, their instrument is their, is their body. Yeah. A hundred percent. Anyway , uh, we, I could talk to you all day. I know , I , I would like to have you on the podcast again. I'm really enjoying reading your stage business and essential perspectives columns and also the occasional features. So thank you so much for writing for Opera Canada. Uh , it's so great to have your presence, love your, your perspective and what you bring to everything here. And I hope everyone is reading the summer issue right now that's on, on the shelves and enjoying Lucia's piece on opera Evangelists. Check it out.
Speaker 2:Aw , thanks Lizzie . It's a pleasure, pleasure to be here. And , um, we need to cheer, lead for opera as you are doing, as I try and do so Thanks. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.