Become a Sponsor!

What is the Badlands Opera Project?

Begun in the spring of 2019, the Badlands Opera Project became an official North Dakota non-profit corporation in June of 2022. We are excited to announce that we are now a federally registered non-profit organization (501(c)3)! Our mission is to bring professional opera and vocal music to our community, both through professional performances and a variety of community outreach. Over the last three seasons (2022-2025) over 2,800 people in Southwestern North Dakota were able to attend one of our performances. Last year’s performances included the reprise of the beloved Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, A Night of Music: Christmas Concert, Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim, and our third annual Youth Summer Camp. Past performances have included the world premier of Fairy Tale Suite: Three Short Operas, the musical Godspell by Stephen Schwartz (the composer for Wicked), an opera gala, and two youth summer camp productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals—The Sound of Music and Cinderella (both Youth Editions). 

Our outreach performances have taken opera and musical theater into Dickinson High School, Berg Elementary, Heart River Elementary, Lincoln Elementary, Roosevelt Elementary,  Beach school, Richardton-Taylor school, and the Benedictine Living Community, in addition to supporting a recital benefitting the AMEN Food Pantry.

Perhaps our most popular event is our youth summer camp, in which youth ages 8-18 in our community get to participate in a week of classes and rehearsals, culminating in a live, fully-staged, and costumed performance. During all three summers, our campers have been able to open the Medora Musical, and the last two summers Dickinson native and Medora Musical alumnus Damon Fichter was the show director! 

Our work has been honored and supported by the reception of Artist in Residence and Community Arts Access grants from the North Dakota Council of the Arts, as well as a Main Street Vibrancy grant. In addition, this past season, we were able to begin a five-year partnership with Dickinson State University. They are generously providing us the opportunity to use their theatrical space and resources, and we are grateful for the way this helps us to be able to continue bringing unique musical opportunities to Southwestern North Dakota.

In this upcoming season - our fourth! - we will journey back into Ancient Greece with the opera Dido and Aeneas, by Henry Purcell. At just over an hour in length, and in English, Dido and Aeneas challenges our expectations of opera, while also fulfilling them with its tragic love story. In Dido and Aeneas, we are excited to be featuring a mix of local and regional performers, including some guests coming from the Fargo and Twin Cities areas. Our season will also include a production of Once Upon a Mattress by Mary Rodgers in March of 2026. This hilarious take on the story of the princess and the pea is sure to be an audience favorite.

In December 2025, we will continue our Christmas Concert, a tradition begun in 2023 by Eagle Scout and Trinity High graduate Andrew Jacobs as his Eagle Scout project. Andrew—who participated in our first two summer camps and had the lead male role in both The Sound of Music and Cinderella—took it upon himself to organize a Christmas Concert to directly benefit the Badlands Opera Project. We are proud of not only the music we get to present at this concert but the ownership Andrew has felt in our company. For us, quality music is important not only for its own sake, but for the way it builds community and creates a sense of place.

We will continue to build that community and sense of place, as our fourth season closes with our annual youth summer music camp in June of 2026. During our summer camp, 8-18 year olds mostly from the area will get together for just one week to produce Matilda Jr. We have been thrilled to watch our summer campers grow each year, and we can’t wait to see what they do this time!

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Why become a corporate sponsor and advertise with us?

As you can see from the wide variety of activities we engage in, advertising with us will not only bring exposure and awareness to your company, but associate your business with an organization that brings excellent musical arts to our area as well as one that reaches out to children and underserved populations. It will give an element of both high class and community engagement to your brand, two brand characteristics that don’t often coincide, but that we can offer by your support of our company.

At this writing, our Facebook following includes over 1,100 followers, and one of our posts reached over 2,400 people. In addition, as noted above, we’ve had over 2,800 people attend one of our events. Besides wonderful branding opportunities, we offer a large and growing base of supportive patrons that will see your business in conjunction with our organization.

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Your advertising sponsorship will remain in place for the rest of our season (which runs from August 1 – July 31), or six months, whichever lasts longer. The sooner you sign up for sponsorship, the better!

You are guaranteed advertising in programs if received two weeks prior to a show, and on posters if received two months prior to the show. If received later than this, it will be included on the following production. 

If you have questions, you may contact Artistic Director Kelsey K. Rogers at contact@badlandsopera.org, or give her a call/text at (701) 260-6349. Thank you for considering corporate sponsorship of the Badlands Opera Project!