Portland Opera to Receive $31,669 Grant from the Oregon Cultural Trust

Portland Opera has announced that it has been awarded an Oregon Cultural Trust grant for $31,669 in support of the company’s upcoming workshop of The Factotum. This spring, Portland Opera will collaborate with the creative team to support the development of this exciting new opera for a future season.  

This grant is one of 136 arts, heritage, and humanities awards totaling $2,917,149 across the state that were announced Cultural Trust last week. Made possible by generous Oregonians who invested $5.2 million in the Cultural Tax Credit in FY2023, this year’s awards bring the cumulative total of Cultural Trust grants to almost $40 million since its founding in 2001. 

“These awards will enrich the cultural life of every county in Oregon,” said Niki Price, chair of the Cultural Trust board. “Every year it is an honor to fulfill the vision of the Cultural Trust’s founders by ensuring our funding has broad geographic impact and benefits every part of the state.”  

“We are so grateful for the Cultural Trust’s support of our work to develop new operas and tell more stories from our stages,” said Portland Opera General Director Sue Dixon. “This exciting project celebrates the breadth and vitality of what opera can be, and this grant helps support the creative process of new works development.” 

Composed by Grammy Award-winning baritone Will Liverman and DJ and multi-instrumentalist DJ King Rico, The Factotum is inspired by Figaro, one of the most enduring characters in opera, a barber/jack-of-all-trade who appears in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. Updating the action to a Black barbershop on Chicago’s South Side, The Factotum infuses operatic singing with a variety of musical forms, from gospel and funk to rap, hip-hop, barbershop quartet, and R&B.   

The creative team of The Factotum will be in residence at Portland Opera in spring of 2024, to further develop and workshop the opera after a sold-out debut at Lyric Opera of Chicago, in advance of a full production, planned for spring, 2025. The Factotum was commissioned by Lyric Opera of Chicago and Houston Grand Opera. This production is a Co-Production of Portland Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, and Washington National Opera- Kennedy Center.

"I’m so excited that Portland will get to meet The Factotum!” shares Will Liverman. “It’s still almost surreal that our soul opera about family and community is reaching longtime opera-goers and bringing in fresh faces, due to how we wanted to push boundaries of the traditional art form but also create a personal story that deeply resonates with me, DJ King Rico, everyone else involved production-wise, as well as the audience. I’m really looking forward to the workshop at Portland Opera, where we can improve upon what we did in Chicago." 

For more information on the Oregon Cultural Trust, visit https://culturaltrust.org/.