Welcoming Ryan Nauta to the AO team!
WE KEEP GETTING LOUDER! Please welcome the amazing Ryan Nauta (he/him), who has been helping and running Amplified Opera’s Holding Space program. We are incredibly honoured to have Ryan as a part of our team and feel he deserves to be amplified!
He is a well rounded individual who believes that there is a need for social change, and that opera artists are able to facilitate this change. At AO we believe in acceptance, inclusion, diversity, and the creation of a safe space, which is why we are thrilled to have Ryan running Holding Space.
He is an exceptional performer as well, and we want to highlight his experiences in the performing arts:
Ryan Nauta is a Canadian tenor who has earned recognition as “one to watch” (Die Zauberflöte, Le Devoir). During the pandemic, he has been proud to work with Amplified Opera as the lead facilitator of AO’s Holding Space sessions. He is a recent alumnus of the Sewanee WinterFest Opera Intensive, and is also an alumnus of the Franz-Schubert-Institut in Baden-bei-Wien, Austria and the Halifax Summer Opera Festival. Ryan has been awarded scholarships from the Art Song Foundation of Canada and the Kiwanis Foundation of Canada. He was also a finalist at the inaugural VOX Competition, hosted by Vancouver Opera. Ryan is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and McGill University.
Personal Artistic Statement
When I am asked the question “Why did you want to pursue a career in opera/the arts?”, I often give a very rote answer, on how it allows me to imagine myself as any other person in time and how that is exciting to me. While true, this is not a fair answer, in that it omits the fact that there simply are no roles imagined for a person with my social identities in the conventional operatic canon. I thought that the most meaningful way for me to engage in this art form would require me to constantly step outside of myself and my experiences.
Music and theatre have been a part of my life since childhood. Whether it was singing in a local choir or learning to play the piano or acting on stage in community theatre, the act of creating music and art gave me a sense of fulfillment. Part of what motivates me now is that I want to create a place for people of diverse identities to have that sense of fulfillment as well.
I am thrilled to be working with Amplified Opera with their Holding Space program. It is extremely meaningful to me to be able to create a place where BIPOC artists are able to come and talk about their experiences and how they envisage the future of this industry. I hope that we are able to have conversations in which my colleagues are able to speak frankly about what we need in this time of social change, and how we as opera artists can effect that change.