After years of roving, the Boston Lyric Opera celebrates its new home

It’s a milestone moment for the Boston Lyric Opera. The 50-year-old company, which is also New England's largest, finally has a permanent place to call home.

The BLO is welcoming the public to its newly renovated performance and community studios in Fort Point with an intimate production of a work by Gustav Mahler. We got a peek inside the BLO’s new digs at the final dress rehearsal.

In an onsite cafe overlooking a large rehearsal and performance studio, director Anne Bogart said she was thrilled her staging of Mahler’s “Song of the Earth” is ringing in a new era for the BLO.

“It’s great to be a guinea pig,” she said. “We’re the first performance to happen here, everything is new. I wouldn't want to be the second, I like being the first."

Bogart, a theater pioneer, has collaborated on four productions with the BLO since 2019.

“I return because I love them, and because they take big chances. And when I first worked here on ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ they didn't have a space — we rehearsed in an ice rink.”

And “Handmaid’s Tale” was performed, to critical acclaim, in Harvard’s basketball pavilion.

The BLO has been something of a nomad after ending its relationship with the Shubert Theatre a decade ago. Over the years it has brought innovative works to a slew of unconventional locations including the Castle at Park Plaza, the Cyclorama and the Cruiseport terminal in South Boston. While the company steadily performs at historic Boston venues like the Emerson Colonial, preparing for their big productions has scattered the company around the city, and beyond, for years.

“When we’re putting a show together we’re moving around to about five different rehearsal locations over a two- to three-week period,” the BLO’s general director and CEO Bradley Vernatter explained. “Everywhere from Back Bay to downtown to Worcester sometimes and Quincy. And the Opera and Community Studios are now a center where that creative activity and that process can happen before we move into our main stage theater spaces.”

The BLO moved its administrative offices to the Midway Artist Studios building in 2020. Then the company signed a long term lease in 2024 with a vision to bring together all of the company’s operations. Over the course of a year, the organization will employ as many as 800 artists. And to date, fundraising has yielded more than $10 million for the BLO's new home. Now Vernatter is eager to welcome the public to the multi-purpose, state-of-the-art 16,000-square-foot space that can also host smaller-scale performances.

Vernatter walked through a lounge on the upper-level where audiences and artists can gather before shows.

“What makes the Opera and Community Studios lounge pretty extraordinary are these glass walls that we're walking past right now,” he said. “These provide visibility and a relationship into what's happening in the studios.”

Looking down into the larger of the two studios, we watched the orchestra warming up as the staff buzzed around preparing seating for the dress rehearsal. The tech crew streamed past us to their well-appointed production booth. “We're able to experience the process in a way that audiences and the public generally don't have access to,” Vernatter said.

Building deeper relationships with audiences and collaborating with Boston’s artist community are priorities, Vernatter said. Even before the renovations, organizations including the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company rented rehearsal space or performed here. He said the expanded venue will help fill a void in Boston. "We know firsthand how critical physical space is for artists and for creating art of all kinds.”

Partnerships with creatives who live and work at Midway Studios are also part of the plan. The BLO’s neighbors created a soundscape in the lounge and are also producing light projection and video for “Song of the Earth.”

“We're in the show,” Ryan Edwards said proudly. He co-founded MASARY Studios, which is on Midway's ground floor. “This theater coming to life right now is such an affirmation of the vision of this building, and of this neighborhood’s legacy as an arts district.”

At curtain time, the chamber-sized orchestra of 13 BLO musicians and two singers — Raehann Bryce-Davis and Brandon Jovanovich — filled the beautifully-lit performance studio with the opera company’s lifeblood: music.

“This piece is one that's been on my hit list for years,” longtime BLO music director David Angus said after conducting the 80-minute work.

“I think this is my 16th year, and 15 of those were spent on my bike racing around — and finally we've got our space. Now I feel that we can start to really put down roots and be part of the community in a way that we've never been.”

The BLO celebrates its new home with performances of “The Song of the Earth” through March 29, with more to come throughout the 50th anniversary season.