There is a moment in the history of every great institution when it stops looking inward and starts looking outward. When the work of building an audience becomes the work of building a world.

For Florida Grand Opera, celebrating its 85th anniversary season, that moment appears to have arrived.

The Miami-based company has quietly assembled something with no direct precedent in American regional opera: a working alliance spanning four countries and some of the most historically significant opera institutions on earth. Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Teatro Real in Madrid. Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. The Puccini Festival and Puccini Foundation in Torre del Lago.

At the center of it all is a company that opened its doors in 1941 and has spent eight decades serving as the New World’s landing point for one of Europe’s greatest art forms.

OperaWire spoke to leaders from all of these six institutions on their perspective on the opera house as the site of cultural diplomacy. 

Miami

For Maria Todaro, General Director and CEO of Florida Grand Opera, geography is destiny. 

“Miami is already the hinge point between North America, Latin America, and Europe,” Todaro said. “Florida Grand Opera sits inside that — a Latin American diaspora audience, deep ties to Italian and European tradition, and the logistics to move artists and ideas in both directions. That’s not a coincidence. That’s exactly why FGO is built for this role.”

FGO has already demonstrated the model domestically through resource and talent sharing with The Atlanta Opera and Opera Carolina. It is now extending that model across the Atlantic through studio artist exchanges, audience development, and joint planning with European counterparts.

For Todaro, whose father, Italian tenor José Todaro, launched his career at the Théâtre de la Monnaie before a decade at the Opéra de Paris, and whose husband, baritone Louis Otey, has performed Scarpia at the Metropolitan Opera and Covent Garden, cultural diplomacy is not an abstraction. She considers it a “family inheritance.” Todaro addressed the Italian Senate on the subject last year and this summer she directed her own production of “Tosca” at the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago.

“Opera is a language that outlasts politics,” she said. “When I go to direct ‘Tosca’ in Puccini’s hometown, I’m not making a diplomatic statement — I’m building a relationship. Those relationships between artists and institutions often do more lasting work than anything official.”

The View from Europe

From Milan, Fortunato Ortombina, Sovrintendente and Artistic Director of Teatro alla Scala, frames the conversation in historical terms. Opera, he notes, has always been an international art form with Italian composers shaping musical culture across Europe and the United States long before the word globalization existed.

“At a time when the world often feels fragmented, opera remains a powerful reminder of our shared humanity,” Ortombina said. “Cultural diplomacy is ultimately about building lasting relationships, and opera is uniquely suited to achieve this.”

He noted that Arturo Toscanini was a model. The famed conductor created an enduring bond between Italy and the United States built on musical excellence and a shared commitment to artistic rigor.

Meanwhile, Ignacio García-Belenguer Laita, General Director of Teatro Real, is offering a more concrete example of what that collaboration looks like in practice. On Oct. 17,  just before FGO’s 85th season opens, Teatro Real will bring the Orchestra of the Royal Opera of Spain to Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center under conductor Gustavo Gimeno, in a concert tied to the 250th anniversary of American independence (Gimeno will also be bringing a similar program to New York City on Oct. 15 at David Geffen Hall). Florida Grand Opera is supporting and promoting the Oct. 17 event, which features soprano Gabriella Reyes. 

“Collaborating on the staging of a production, engaging in co-productions, and taking one’s own productions to other countries — all of this serves as an unparalleled tool for foreign relations,” he said.

Puccini’s Seal

Among FGO’s most essential network expansions is its deepening relationship with the three institutions entrusted with Giacomo Puccini’s legacy in Torre del Lago, including The Fondazione Simonetta Puccini per Giacomo Puccini, the Puccini Foundation, and the Puccini Festival. The leaders at all of these institutions see Miami as an essential site for their own expansion.

“From the moment I arrived, Miami reminded me of Nagasaki during the period in which ‘Madama Butterfly’ is set — a gateway through which culture entered a nation,” said Luigi Viani, Amministratore of the Puccini Foundation. “In my view, however, Miami is much more than that: it is not only a gateway to the United States, but also a bridge to Latin America, making it a uniquely strategic meeting point for cultures, ideas, and artistic exchange.”

Puccini Festival President Fabrizio Miracolo added that “The growing relationship between the Puccini Festival Foundation and Florida Grand Opera demonstrates how meaningful international partnerships can create opportunities far beyond the stage. Together, we are strengthening cultural ties between Italy and the United States while opening new paths for artistic collaboration, education, and innovation.”

Bringing the Southern Hemisphere to the Table

Another essential relationship for FGO is the Teatro Colón, which represents something the European partnerships alone cannot: a conversation with South America not as an audience to be reached but as an equal partner at the table.

Gerardo Grieco, Director General of Teatro Colón, noted that opera as diplomacy is not a novelty but an inherent part of the art form historically.

“From the beginning of time to the present day, culture and the arts have been the forces that build citizenship, coexistence, and community. They allow us to dream of the future and to embrace one another beyond race, religion, sexual orientation, and all borders. When a hall fills and the lights go down, there are no longer passports: there is a community gathered around a shared emotion,” he noted. “Opera has known this since its birth. It was diplomacy before it became an industry: the first operas were premiered to seal royal marriages and treaties between nations, and the great works of the repertoire have often served as bridges between cultures. Aida, commissioned by Egypt as a way of engaging Europe on equal terms, is perhaps the most eloquent example, but history is full of them: Fidelio reopening the Vienna State Opera as a symbol of regained freedom, Porgy and Bess crossing the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, an opera house chosen as the place where peace would be signed. Opera houses have always been just that: reciprocal embassies where nations receive one another, night after night.”

Moreover, he noted that for Teatro Colón, the alliance with FGO is built around what he calls four pillars: sharing, collaborating, cooperating, and co-producing.

“Florida Grand Opera is the ideal gateway through which to develop them throughout North America: because of its location, because of its diverse community that speaks our languages and the languages of the world, and because of its vocation for encounter.”

He also noted major obstacles, including distance, administrative procedures, customs costs that make it expensive or impossible for productions and artists to travel between theaters. The answer, he argues, ” lies in networks and in the model of co-production: theatres from different continents sharing costs, risks, casts, and knowledge, weaving institutional relationships that endure beyond the fluctuations of governments. The circulation of artists, knowledge, and crafts; the training of talent; and new ways of sharing, collaborating, cooperating, and co-producing are the keys to the future of opera and of our producing theatres across all continents.”

Miracolo concluded, “When institutions share knowledge, talent, and vision, they do more than produce great performances — they help build a world where culture becomes a common language of peace, friendship, and mutual understanding.”