Common Thread Opera aims to share the musical art form with wider audiences
Opera is often misunderstood.
Many assume it’s stuffy, old, and only sung in foreign languages. Others think it requires donning formal attire for lengthy performances or having a music degree to understand it.
“I think as soon as people hear it, that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s really living, breathing art,” says Sarah Davis, the founder and executive director of Common Thread Opera, Greenville’s new non-profit opera company.
The company’s mission: performing “beyond the stage” to show audiences just how accessible opera can be. “It’s unreasonable to say, ‘You have to sit in your seat and enjoy it and only clap when we say you should clap’,” Davis says. “We want as much as we can to lessen that pressure.”
Usually defined as a story told through music–either instrumentally or through singing–opera’s origins date to the 1600s. That’s when a group of Italian artists, called the Florentine Camerata, “wanted to fuse all the art forms together, but specifically music, visual art, and dance,” Davis says. “I think what kind of separates it from musical theater, which is its probably closest cousin, is that the music drives the story.”
There also “is this human nature to the opera singing voice that you don’t get in other vocal genres,” adds Davis, a soprano who first discovered opera in college after a childhood spent singing. “When you hear opera, regardless of the language, you know if somebody is wailing in pain. You know if somebody is laughing with joy through their singing voice, through the music.”
Inspiration behind Common Thread Opera
Founding Common Thread Opera–a project started before Davis and her husband moved from her native south Florida to Greenville in February 2025–sprung from a found passion for sharing opera with people who typically don’t understand it and a desire to produce performances instead of always auditioning for them.
Common Thread Opera started operations Jan. 1, under the name Full Body Opera, and held its first performances at First Presbyterian Church and Brandon Mill in February.
In the months since, its auditioned singers have sung commonly heard music “audiences don’t realize is from an opera,” Davis says, everywhere from art galleries to Greenville’s Main Street. Those outdoor performances–the next is Nov. 7–are part of a Metropolitan Arts Council grant-funded pop-up series.
The new year will bring more recitals, a performance and chef-curated dinner at Hotel Domestique, and a collaboration with Grenville Symphony Orchestra on a performance of Carmen. The non-profit also hopes to one day commission new pieces that tell of the region’s textile industry roots and to introduce American operas to its audiences.
“I thought I would get this company started and keep it slow moving, but it really has kind of gained this momentum. That feels like the universe is just showing me this is wanted, this is needed,” Davis says, adding that Common Thread wouldn’t be possible without its supporters and the efforts of its volunteer arts administrators Lindsey Brakhage and Chelsea LaCourse and its seven-member board.
“We want people to know that opera is really a come-as-you-are event, and we really try to make it as warm and inviting as possible,” she says. “I think that if people give it a chance, they’re going to find that it is really something that can touch them and move them.”
Hearing Voices
Who do you hear?: Each opera singer has a distinct voice type, Davis says, adding that “no voice is ever the same . . . and no performance is ever the same as the last time, because our voices are tied to our bodies. Whatever our body is going through affects our voices.”
Women’s voice types range from sopranos, the higher voices, to contralto, the lowest voice type. There’s also mezzo-soprano, a middle voice. Men’s voice types include tenors, the higher voice part, and basses, the lower voices.
“Operas can get even more specific with the flavors of voices, so there are probably four to five different types of sopranos, and that kind of contrast goes through all the men’s parts,” Davis says, adding that selecting an opera singer often depends on what character he or she will play.
“If you’re looking or someone to play a commandeering old man, that’s typically a lower voice part, If you’re looking for someone to play a young maiden, it’s usually a soprano, and it’s usually very sweet.”
To learn more about or support Common Thread, visit commonthreadopera.com or follow @commonthreadopera.
A Life-Changing Passion
A South Florida native who says she started singing “before I could fully even talk,” Davis discovered and fell in love with opera in college via a retired star of The Metropolitan Opera who became her voice teacher.
“I was convinced I was going to be a music teacher in schools,” says Davis, who earned a bachelor’s degree in music from the Palm Beach Atlantic University, followed by a master of music and a performance diploma at the Boston University Opera Institute.
“She planted this bug in me, and I’ve found a lot of my confidence and myself through this art form,” Davis says. “Working on my voice as a singer has really changed my life for the better, and I feel that that’s why singers fall in love with opera, because it’s just finding the core of your essence and really bringing it out to its fullest extent.”
For more about Davis, visit sarahdavismusic.com.
