{"id":552290,"date":"2026-01-29T20:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T20:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/552290\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T20:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T20:00:08","slug":"fort-worth-opera-brings-western-art-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/552290\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Worth Opera Brings Western Art to Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fort Worth is about to experience a collision of music, imagery, and Western spirit when Fort Worth Opera presents “Cowboys & Culture” on Feb. 5, at 6:30 p.m. in the Kimbell Art Museum\u2019s Renzo Piano Pavilion. The event lands during the final week of the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo<\/a>, promising an evening that\u2019s part operatic showcase, part visual narrative, and all heart.<\/p>\n

At the center of the performance is Clifton Forbis, the internationally acclaimed dramatic tenor and chair of voice at SMU\u2019s Meadows School of the Arts, returning to a city that shaped his early career. On stage with him will be the Fort Worth Opera 2025\u201326 Hattie Mae Lesley Resident Artists \u2014 soprano Melissa Martinez, mezzo-soprano Madeline Coffey, tenor Coleman Dziedzic, and bass-baritone Jos\u00e9 Olivares \u2014 a quartet of voices poised to carry the next chapter of opera. The program spans Puccini\u2019s “La Fanciulla del West” to Craig Bohmler and Steven Mark Kohn\u2019s “Riders of the Purple Sage” and H\u00e9ctor Armienta\u2019s “Zorro”, alongside traditional songs that evoke the enduring pull of the American West.<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t opera as usual. Projected across the Kimbell walls will be the work of Fort Worth-born contemporary Western painter Kevin Chupik, whose pieces overlay mid-century Americana and Southwestern landscapes with a wink of surrealism. In one recent painting, “The Moment”, a lone cowboy contemplates directions under a disembodied neon sign \u2014 a scene part myth, part modernist dream. \u201cI find that it\u2019s compelling to try and reinvent a contemporary West that really isn\u2019t being done by too many people,\u201d Chupik says, describing how he pairs architecture, iconic figures like James Dean, and classic Western motifs into one cinematic frame. \u201cJames Dean is definitely the prototype for the look that I like using. It\u2019s almost like a rebirth of cowboy sentiment, which appeared in the 1800s with cattle drives; it reappeared in the mid-20th century, and now, in our current times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chupik\u2019s connection to the West has been lifelong. \u201cOne way or the other, the Southwest has been in my blood since the beginning,\u201d he says. \u201cI used to be a backcountry enthusiast, subsequent mountain bike guide, canyon-year backpacker; anyway, I could get out to remote places.\u201d That intimate knowledge of desert and canyon informs every brushstroke, even as he nods to mid-century Hollywood icons. His paintings are, in a sense, a time machine, bridging eras with an ironic but affectionate lens.<\/p>\n

Fort Worth Opera Producing Director Kurt Howard saw the perfect fit immediately. \u201cWe saw his actual works and saw what was currently on exhibit at the William Campbell Museum, and we realized that a lot of his artwork is storytelling. You look at the art and see a complete story. It\u2019s an interesting mix of styles between what would be a traditional Western with more contemporary objects.\u201d Howard and his team deliberately paired specific pieces with the program\u2019s music. \u201cRather than just sort of doing \u2018here are Kevin\u2019s works,\u2019 we sort of did like a food and wine pairing of what is the song and what is the music that\u2019s being performed, and how does that connect to his images?\u201d<\/p>\n

Preparation for the evening was\u00a0meticulous. Howard said that the music had been sent to the artists six or seven months in advance, with the company\u2019s music coach working with the resident artists over the last couple of months. Meanwhile, Forbis was\u00a0preparing independently in Dallas and had coordinated his parts with the pianist during a single rehearsal before the full ensemble would gather to shape the performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason I’m involved with the project is not just as a producing director with Fort Worth Opera, but I do have some rodeo experience in my past as a competitor, even though I grew up in a Southern California metropolis, not on a ranch or a farm,\u201d Howard said. \u201cI used that background to sort of think about what the aesthetic of these very lone cowboys that you see in this art is, what the stories are with them, and how the physical nature of it gets sort of reflected in these very still moments.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those still moments Howard described were partly inspired by Chupik\u2019s upbringing. \u201cI\u2019m a child of Fort Worth. I was born here, and I grew up here,\u201d Chupik says. His family\u2019s history is woven into the Stock Show & Rodeo itself: \u201cMy grandmother was for 30-something years a founding member of the stock show. She was bringing in these classic acts like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, and my mother grew up playing in the president\u2019s office.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond the local, Chupik has made his work part of broader pop culture. His artwork has even appeared on\u00a0“Landman”<\/a>, a testament to his ability to blend Americana and surreal narrative. \u201cSomehow my work has made the rounds quite heavily on the internet and places other than Fort Worth, so Fort Worth is just now kind of discovering what I\u2019ve been doing,\u201d he says. Yet his work remains deeply rooted in the Southwest. \u201cI tend to seek things out if I can find them and use them in a tasteful way without being overpowering or clich\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Howard, the collaboration represents a philosophy he holds dear: \u201cI think it\u2019s important that cultural institutions also connect with artists that live in their community or are of their community. We are not a completely separate entity from them, but have a connection to them.\u201d By pairing Chupik\u2019s visual storytelling with operatic voices, Fort Worth Opera creates an immersive experience\u2014one that feels alive, immediate, and distinctly Texan.<\/p>\n

As the performance unfolds, audiences will encounter cowboys who could have walked the plains in the 1800s, strutted onto screens in the 1950s, or are quietly contemplating their place today. \u201cThis is a homecoming in a lot of ways,\u201d Chupik says, \u201cboth the way I work and how it\u2019s being received, and the timely nature that it\u2019s happening right now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fort Worth is about to experience a collision of music, imagery, and Western spirit when Fort Worth Opera…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":552291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,8067,12043,7371,98095,7372,40401,11878,81798,3395,22220,10763,5921,358,7453,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,45747],"class_list":{"0":"post-552290","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-artist","10":"tag-arts-and-culture","11":"tag-fort-worth","12":"tag-fort-worth-opera","13":"tag-fortworth","14":"tag-kimbell-art-museum","15":"tag-live-music","16":"tag-modern","17":"tag-modern-art","18":"tag-performances","19":"tag-stephen-montoya","20":"tag-style","21":"tag-texas","22":"tag-top-story","23":"tag-tx","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-united-states-of-america","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","28":"tag-us","29":"tag-usa","30":"tag-western"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}