OPERA America has announced the creation of a Business Innovation Research & Development Lab.

The Lab is being supported by a $125,000 planning grant from The Dr. M. Lee Pearce Foundation, Inc and is designed to help opera companies identify challenges, test potential solutions, measure outcomes and share findings across the field.

Harrison Lee and Daniel Gomez Seidel of the NYC Cultural Innovation Lab has been selected to lead the lab’s design and initial implementation. Lee is director of the NYC Cultural Innovation Lab, and Gomez Seidel’s background includes helping build an R&D lab at Capital One and leading innovation work involving the World Bank and the United Nations.

The initial phase of the lab is set to run through March 2027 with the team reviewing results from OPERA America’s A/B Testing Grants, which supported 14 opera companies in testing newcomer retention strategies, and will develop a shared experimentation framework drawn from three to five of those experimental concepts. Two concepts will then be beta tested by five to seven opera companies, supported by $25,000 in grants.

The Lab aims to build on OPERA America’s “Understanding Opera’s New Audiences” study of newcomer motivations, experiences and barriers, published in 2024 in partnership with Arts & Culture at NORC at the University of Chicago, with leadership support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Opera doesn’t have a shortage of creativity. What we need is a stronger infrastructure for applying that creativity to the business of opera,” said Michael J. Bobbitt, president/CEO of OPERA America, per an official press release. “For too long, companies have been asked to solve challenges independently, often without the time, resources, or research capacity to know whether a promising idea actually works. The R&D Lab changes that equation. It will equip companies across North America with practical tools and the much-needed capacity to try different things.”