When Ben Robinson stepped into the role of General Director and CEO of Kentucky Opera this fall, it felt less like a new hire and more like the closing of a very personal circle. “Kentucky is where I got my start,” he said during a recent interview.
Back in the 2008-09 season, Robinson was a studio artist at the Kentucky Opera — fresh out of school, singing five productions in five different languages. “It was like being shot out of a cannon,” he laughs, “but one thing was crystal clear: this is a town that really has a great investment in the arts.”
Listen to the full interview here:
Back in the 2008-09 season, Robinson was a studio artist at the Kentucky Opera — fresh out of school, singing five productions in five different languages. “It was like being shot out of a cannon,” he laughs, “but one thing was crystal clear: this is a town that really has a great investment in the arts.”
Seventeen years later, after a singing career that took him across the country with various roles in Anchorage, Alaska, New York, New Hampshire, and Colorado, Robinson has returned to Louisville — not as a young artist, but as the person charged with steering one of the city’s flagship arts organizations into its next chapter.
Connecting with Modern Audiences
His mission is straightforward, if ambitious: Make opera feel as immediate, surprising, and emotionally overwhelming as the best shows you’ll find on HBO or Netflix and or even a Broadway show.
“I’ve staked my entire career on finding ways to connect a modern audience to opera,” he says, “making it feel relevant and important while sticking to the core truth of what opera is — fantastic music paired with fantastic storytelling.”
That core truth, Robinson insists, is actually the opposite of the art form’s dusty reputation. “Opera is such a low-barrier art form to access,” he says, “even though its perception is completely the opposite.”
All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914. (Photo by Andrew Kung Group)
The unamplified human voice, delivering heightened drama in real time, creates an emotional punch that no screen can match. Death scenes? Sure, opera does those spectacularly. But the humor, the social commentary, the sheer humanity — “There’s so many things that are funny, so many things that feel newly relevant even if they were written 300 years ago.”
Breaking down intimidation starts with practical bridges. Every Kentucky Opera production, regardless of language, uses supertitles. “Operatic singing is different from microphone singing in say a Broadway show,” Robinson explains. “We need to build that bridge so the audience is with us on every step of the journey.”
But subtitles are only the beginning. Robinson is obsessed with the total audience experience — from the moment a season brochure lands in a mailbox to the post-show buzz in the lobby. He wants productions that surprise, that exceed expectations, that compete with the high-quality entertainment people experience on the phones in their pockets.
Part of that means leaning into the intimacy of the Kentucky Opera Center for Cultural Health. “Instead of being 30 feet away from the action, you’re three feet away — in the ‘spit zone,’ so close you can get spit on,” he says. “There’s something thrilling about a giant operatic voice hitting you at point-blank range.”
Bridging New Worlds
Yet, he’s equally excited to return to the grand spaces. Next season will feature productions at both the Brown Theatre and The Kentucky Center’s Whitney Hall. “We’re going to transform those spaces and take you to a completely different, unexpected world,” he promises.
Robinson is also planning site-specific, roving work that invites audiences to move with the action, to see a piece from multiple angles, to feel enveloped by it. And because most of the standard repertory is in the public domain, directors have extraordinary freedom to reimagine.
“The composers are dead,” he says wryly. “What are they going to do — send a bolt of lightning if we do something too crazy?”
That flexibility will be on full display this season. February brings Songbird (Feb. 13, 15 & 17), a jazz-inflected, speakeasy-set adaptation of Jacques Offenbach’s classic rom-com La Périchole, where two struggling singers and lovers arrive in Prohibition–era New Orleans to find success. Then April 10, 12, 16 and 17, the company presents Scalia/Ginsburg, a hilarious one-act operatic comedy by Derrick Wang that explores the unlikely friendship between U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia.
What to Expect This Season
For first-timers wary of jumping in, Robinson has simple advice: do five minutes of homework. “Listen to a few arias on YouTube, skim the synopsis — like you’d listen to a cast album before seeing a musical. Knowing a little bit helps you get invested.” Then buy a ticket, come to the Opera Center, sit three feet from a world-class singer, and let the unamplified voice do the rest.
“This season, audiences are going to experience opera up close in a nontraditional space, in highly theatrical productions that rival all the theater, Broadway, and orchestra events they regularly attend,” he says. “They’re going to feel the impact of the music and the drama in a way they really don’t expect. And when people experience opera in the right way, they want to come back for more.”
Seventeen years after his Louisville debut, Robinson is betting everything on that addictive power — the power of a 400-year-old art form that can still stop a 2026 audience dead in its tracks.
Welcome home, Ben. Louisville can’t wait to see (and hear) what happens next.
By Doug Dreisbach
For tickets and information, visit KyOpera.org.
