Let me start with a list of organizations who have recently received donations of surgical face masks from Maryland Lyric Opera (list provided by Marianna Gray, Director of Marketing and Communications):
Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore
St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore
Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring
Holy Cross Germantown Hospital
Shady Grove Adventist Hospital
Adventist Healthcare Germantown Emergency Center
Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless, Rockville, MD
The ARC of Montgomery County
The ARC of Prince Georges County
AFSCME Maryland
INOVA Fairfax Hospital
George Washington University Hospital
BayWoods of Annapolis Retirement Community
The Kensington in Falls Church, VA
Interfaith Works Women’s Shelter in Rockville, MD
Cobbdale Assisted Living in VA
Medstar Montgomery Hospital National Center for Children and Families Men’s Homeless Shelter on Taft Court, Rockville, MD
Bronx Lebanon Hospital
NYC Nassau University Medical Center, NY
The list is not exhaustive at this point. My communication from Ms. Gray stated that over 300,000 masks had been provided and another 200,000 were on hand for distribution.
Members of the Maryland Lyric Opera team delivering their donations of surgical masks; courtesy of Maryland Lyric Opera.
All of the arts, including opera, are going through a potentially disastrous period. The second half of the opera season had to be cancelled to meet social distancing guidelines, and frankly, we still don’t know when performances can begin anew. Singers and musicians are greatly limited in even their ability to practice and hone their crafts. Careers are paused and the future is uncertain. Companies, performers, and staffs do not have income coming in from performances; they must survive on the generosity of donors. You might think opera professionals would be closing up shop entirely or simply hunkering down in their basements. In reality, most companies are working hard to offer online streaming of concerts and opera performances, both recorded and live in the limited ways they can, and trying to maintain contact with their devotees through social media. Check out Maryland Lyric Opera on Facebook to get timely postings of upcoming opera performances across the globe that can be accessed online. Such efforts are much needed and greatly appreciated by their fans.
Maryland Lyric Opera also deserves a shout out for a special effort they are making. We’ve all read about the shortages of PPE’s (personal protective equipment) since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Doctors, nurses, hospital staff, and other medical personnel have been having to perform their jobs without adequate supplies of PPE’s. During the early days of pandemic, the US Coronavirus Task Force downplayed the importance of masks for the general public, instead emphasizing that the in demand, start-of-the-art N95 masks should be reserved exclusively for medical personnel and other at risk workers. On April 3, the CDC announced a new policy recommending that cloth face masks be worn by the general public. The supplies of secondary-defense surgical masks made of cloth had already begun to dry up.
Brad Clark, Founder and Artistic Director of Maryland Lyric Opera; photo courtesy of Maryland Lyric Opera.
Maryland Lyric Opera decided to do something about this, extending their reach as far into Maryland and the DC area as possible. At the beginning of last season, Founder and Artistic Director Brad Clark made a generous donation to MDLO’s Student Initiative “Hello Opera” which allowed Maryland Lyric Opera to offer students tickets to its performances at nominal cost. When the remainder of the MDLO performance season had to be cancelled due to this pandemic, Director Clark and the MDLO team decided to re-purpose those funds to provide surgical three-ply cloth masks to medical facilities and facilities with at risk populations in the area; they were able to use their world-wide opera connections to acquire masks.
For this important work, they have been acknowledged in articles in Bethesda Magazine and in the Baltimore Sun newspaper. In the Bethesda Magazine article, I am impressed by a statement from Susie Sinclair-Smith, CEO for the Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless, who said that they were struggling to find PPEs for a men’s homeless shelter in Rockville. She reports that the situation turned around on April 9 with support coming in from surrounding communities; the first donation they received that day was 4000 surgical masks from Maryland Lyric Opera. INOVA Health Systems gave MDLO this praise: “We are incredibly grateful for their support in providing face masks for our #InovaHeroes!” Their efforts have also been written about in Operawire.
Maryland Lyric Opera describes itself as a regional opera company. I think of it as a hometown opera company. Here are the opening lines from OperaGene’s blog report on MDLO’s performance last September of Il Tabarro and Cavalleria Rusticana: “Suburban Maryland now has a hometown opera company (I’m talking to you Bethesda, College Park, Kensington, Rockville, Silver Spring, and Wheaton). And folks, the hometown opera company can bring it!”. I noticed in their list above that their masks donations even made it to Northern Virginia and DC facilities. Okay, it’s a regional opera company that feels like a hometown company in bringing high quality opera to local communities. They see themselves as serving a regional community. Lucky community.
The Fan Experience: Looking back, I see over ten entries during the last two years in OperaGene on Maryland Lyric Opera, a still-young opera company. A main activity of the company is providing world-class training and enhancing the professional develop of young artists. I am always impressed with the quality of their young artists and their superb orchestra led by Conductor and Music Director Louis Salemno. Some of their performances have been season highlights for me. Their 2020-2021 season is scheduled to start on September 23, but has not yet been posted on their website, so I suggest you get on their email list to receive notices of their concerts and opera performances.