50th Anniversary Memory Campaign!
2025 will mark 50 years of Cimarron Opera! As a part of the 50th celebration, we want to hear your memories or general experience with Cimarron Opera and the Careys legacy. Do you have a favorite performance you saw at Cimarron Opera? Did you perform with Cimarron? Did you study/work with Thomas Carey or Carol Brice Carey at OU or somewhere else? We would love to hear about it! These memories will be collected in a digital memory book to honor Cimarron's 50th anniversary. Memories will be shared on Cimarron's website and at 50th anniversary events.
Statement of Solidarity
At Cimarron Opera, we stand in complete, unequivocal solidarity with the fight against systemic racism and injustice towards the Black community in our nation. We stand with all Black families, our Black colleagues and friends, as we take action using our hearts, our souls, our compassion, our love and our voices to fight a just fight because we believe silence is acceptance and inaction is complicity.
Our visionary founders Dr. Thomas Carey and Carol Brice Carey created Cimarron Opera to serve as a platform for Black artists during a time when our town of Norman, Oklahoma was not yet racially integrated. We continue their legacy by renewing our commitment to provide an avenue for Black and Brown artists, and allies, to express their voices through the power of art, to listen and learn, and help drive positive change. The mandate for justice, compassion, and equality is bigger than any one of us and the responsibility for change is all of ours.
- The Cimarron Opera Board and Staff
Photo Credit: Julia Ayala Harris. June 6, 2020
Cimarron Opera’s mission is to provide aspiring performing artists and creative technicians a forum for their talents and opportunities to gain valuable training and stage experience, while providing cultural enrichment and education to various audiences across the state and beyond.
Cimarron Opera’s history began in the spring of 1975 when Thomas Carey and Carol Brice Carey founded the Church Circuit Opera Company, which was renamed Cimarron Circuit Opera Company in 1981. Thomas Carey and Carol Brice Carey were renowned international performers and professors of music at the University of Oklahoma who sought opportunities for aspiring artists to sing on stage. They also hoped to bring superior operative productions to Oklahoma. The artistic spirit of the Cimarron Circuit Opera Company’s founders continue to provide inspiration to succeeding artists and directors.
