Family Opera Initiative is a major program of Ardea Arts Inc., a not-for-profit development and producing company dedicated to creating and performing new opera and music-theater works of the highest professional quality, which challenge as well as entertain, speak to our diverse global community and champion the human spirit.  Our commitment extends to global audiences of all ages and from all walks of life. We bring together unexpected artists to redefine and revitalize opera for the twenty-first century. Our goal is to create work that brings new audiences and new generations to opera, and that travels into diverse communities to engage people far outside the walls of the opera house.

These "opera-musicals" are accessible. They embrace an indigenous vernacular energy; they burst forth in our own American-ness; and they resonate with our own language(s). They enchant, challenge and inspire multigenerational audiences - our definition of family - they make us laugh, cry and acknowledge who we are. These are, in fact, the same ideas that inspired the beginnings of opera back in 1590; and they are what we re-capture in these new works by American composers and writers of today.