A few years ago, sibling performers Tiffany Brannan and Rebekah Brannan were individually pursing their dreams in the performing arts, but weren’t finding the creative freedom and opportunities the were looking for. So in 2023, they launched Cinballera Entertainment, a multidiscipline producing organization that each year stages ballets, operas and concerts — sometimes all in the same program.
Both in their early 20s and residents of Fallbrook, the Brannan sisters have since produced more than a dozen shows at historic venues, churches, dance studios and theaters around the region. Besides planning and producing the shows, the siblings also perform in them, as both are trained ballet dancers and singers.
The company’s unusual name, Cinballera, was derived from their family’s ion for films from the golden era of Hollywood cinema, along with ballet and opera.
Cinballera’s next two shows take place in early June. First is the concert version of Donizetti’s comic opera “The Elixir of Love” June 1 through 3 at the 1887 mansion Villa Montezuma in Sherman Heights. That will be followed by “A Dream Before Summer,” featuring John Nettles’ children’s opera “Wild Things” and a ballet-infused performance of the Puccini one-act opera “Le Villi” (“The Fairies”), on June 7 and 8 at the Wilson Performing Arts Center in City Heights.
Tiffany recently answered some questions about herself and her sister, their company and future plans. This interview has been edited for length.
Q: Where did you and Rebekah grow up and where do you live now?
A: I was born in Long Beach, but we spent our formative years in the mountain community of Idyllwild. We were home-schooled, so that small rural community was a great place to study our arts as well as our academics. There is a great arts high school in Idyllwild, the Idyllwild Academy of the Arts. We ended up being in high school years before the usual ages, so we never were enrolled in Idyllwild Arts, but we studied privately with some great teachers from the school. I started taking singing lessons with one of the professors, Paul Sahuc, when I was 7, and he introduced me to classical singing, foreign languages, and opera within a year. We both studied with him for years. In August of 2022, our family moved to Fallbrook. I was about to be in my first professional opera, “Carmen” with the Pacific Lyric Association, in Escondido, so we were looking throughout North San Diego County. We happened to find the right house in Fallbrook, where we have lived for almost three years now.
Q: Why did you and your sister decide to start Cinballera?
A: Being in “Carmen” right after I turned 21 was my introduction to the local opera scene. That fall and winter, I was in three more operas with three different regional companies in San Diego and Los Angeles counties. In the fall of 2022, Rebekah got into San Diego Ballet at the age of 18, and she ended up dancing with them for two seasons.
In April of 2023, I had the opportunity to be in an opera in Santa Clarita, which is a really long drive from San Diego County. At this point, my mother, who is a classical flautist herself and the greatest mentor in our artistic development, encouraged me to really think about what I wanted for my opera career. I wasn’t satisfied with being in the chorus for show after show, yet I knew that would be all I would get for years as a young soprano.
By this point, I had had a chance to get a glimpse of the professional opera world, and Rebekah was entrenched in the life of a professional ballet dancer. Being in these companies was an interesting adventure for both of us, but we began to feel stifled by it. We were used to creating our own opportunities, coming up with programs of themed songs and especially writing our own ballets.
At the point when I decided not to be in the opera in Santa Clarita, we began thinking about putting on a show of our own in the summer. For over a year, we had talked about the idea of putting on Gian Carlo Menotti’s “The Old Maid and the Thief,” since it’s a one-hour opera with only four characters.
Near the end of the season, Rebekah began dancing with one of the men in San Diego Ballet outside of the company, since pas de deux (ballet partner dancing) is her ion. We came up with the idea of a ballet inspired by the 1956 film “The Rainmaker” to be a prequel to “The Old Maid and the Thief,” and we decided to put them on together as a double feature called “Stolen Love: A Chamber Ballopera” on July 29, 2023, at the Grand Ritz Theater in Escondido.
When we started planning this show in late May, we weren’t necessarily thinking of making it the start of a production company. We rented the theater as Brannan Productions since we didn’t even have a name for the company yet. It wasn’t until a little while into the production that I started thinking that we should make ourselves a company, instead of just two sisters putting on a random show.
Q: Starting an arts production company right after the pandemic must have been hard. What led you two to decide that the time was right to create your own company?
A: I think 2023 was a fortuitous time to start a new artistic venture. As things were finally starting to get back to normal after the pandemic, there was a growing hunger for live events. After years of not being able to the arts live, people realized how much they missed it. At the same time, many of the larger or bigger artistic companies were struggling because of the financial toll the pandemic had taken on them. This left it wide open for independent organizations like our company to blossom.
Q: What is your process for developing the shows you present?
A: Rebekah and I definitely share in the planning of all our shows. I’d say that I’m the instigator and organizer, and she has a lot of creativity. I see the big picture while she focuses on the details, so we’re a great team. In of who develops the shows, it varies. There are definitely some shows which are more her ion projects, while others are my ideas. I tend to think of what would be good for the company from a business standpoint, while Rebekah is a real artist who looks for things which inspire her.
I’m the producer, since I handle hiring the talent, communicating with everyone, renting venues, most of the marketing, and basically the business aspects of the company. Rebekah does most of the development of the ballets. We often work together on choosing the music, but she does the majority of the choreography, directing, and teaching of the dancing. If I’m in the ballet, I may choreograph the steps for myself and my dance partner, who is usually John Nettles. She sometimes directs the opera, especially if I have a much larger role in it than she does. Ultimately, we’re a team, so we share the responsibilities and help each other with everything.
Q: Your history of shows has lots of ballet and opera. Where does the cinema come in?
A: It can be a challenge to find ideas which fit all three of our fields of interest. Not every show has had the Old Hollywood tie-in, but we always have that inspiration. For instance, like movies from the 1930s’-50s, all our shows are acceptable for all ages, but they aren’t just for children. They are clean enough for everyone, since they are made with restraint, purity and good taste.
In February 2024, we started a monthly opera night at the Villa Montezuma, this beautiful historic mansion in Sherman Heights. We call it the Cinballera Salon: Opera at the Villa. The Cinballera Salon isn’t able to accommodate dancing, and there have only been a few cinema connections.
The reason we want to combine ballet and opera is because those are our two ions. It’s not a new idea to blend these two beautiful art forms on the same stage. For centuries, operas have featured ballet sequences. It was very convenient for opera companies like the Paris Opera, since they had a resident ballet company. With the modern setup of opera and ballet companies, which have their own specialized needs, it is much harder and more expensive to combine both specialties.
Q: Do both of you perform in each production?
A: Yes, we both perform in all our productions. I don’t dance in every show, and Rebekah doesn’t sing in every show. We both sing at every Cinballera Salon.
Q: How would you say Cinballera shows are unique from those of other performing arts organizations?
A: What we’ve discovered is that our company offers a unique opportunity to present one story through two very different media. We can tell the story in more detail with the words of vocal music in the opera, whereas the ballet focuses on the core essence of the story, told through movement, pantomime, and dance. We’ve been working toward doing the first true “ballopera,” combining ballet and opera in one work rather than doing two separate works. I think we’re finally achieving it with our performance of “Le Villi” by Giacomo Puccini in “A Dream Before Summer.” This was Puccini’s first opera, and it was his only work to feature ballet.
Q: Your first production in June, Donizetti’s “L’elisir d’amore” (“The Elixer of Love”) will feature a cast of five singers accompanied by piano. Can you tell me more about the production?
A: We will be performing “L’elisir d’amore” in Italian. We’re doing most of the opera, including recitative. We’ve cut most of the chorus parts, but we’re keeping the majority of the music. It will be a concert performance in the sense that there isn’t room for a lot of staging at the Villa Montezuma. It’s a very intimate setting. We will be in costume and doing full acting and as much blocking as we possibly can. We’ll have some occasional narration from Dulcamara (in English) to make the story clear.
Q: Your second, all-ages production in June, “A Dream Before Summer,” will feature a one-act children’s ballet and one-act Puccini opera with ballet, choir and orchestra. Can you tell me more?
A: We call “Wild Things” a children’s ballet because it’s about a little boy’s dream with a storybook setting. However, it’s not immature. The opera, “Le Villi,” transports us to the world of European folk legends and myths.
“Wild Things” features a young male dancer as the main character, the boy, Rebekah and her dance partner as the Queen of the Wild Things and her Cavalier, a corps de ballet of six ballerinas, and I will be playing the boy’s mother. John Nettles, the composer, will be playing guitar onstage as the story’s musical narrator.“Le Villi” has just three soloist characters, a soprano, a tenor, and a baritone. John Nettles and I will be ed by Igor Vieira, an international opera star from Brazil who played a lead role in our first grand opera, “La Fanciulla del West,” last August. We’re flying him in for a two week stay so that he can be in both “L’elisir d’amore” and “Le Villi.”
The voices of the opera’s chorus are being provided by a choir which John conducts, the Pacific Coast Chorale, supplemented by two onstage choristers. Rebekah, her dance partner, and the six ballerinas will be the physical representation of the chorus by dancing throughout the opera. In Act 2, the joyous celebrations of spring give way to a haunted winter night as the Villi (spirits of women who died before their weddings) return to dance and torment the men who wronged them.
I think “Le Villi” is a masterpiece, and it was really successful when it was first debuted in 1884. However, it now rarely performed. One of the biggest criticisms is that the most dramatic part of the story, the leading man’s temptation in the big city, happens offstage. Well, we’ve solved that problem by inserting an 8-minute ballet sequence to another early work by Puccini, his “Capriccio sinfonico.” This way, we see how Roberto is tempted.
The orchestra is the20-piece City Ballet Orchestra, conducted by Dr. Joseph Valent. We’re very excited to be using an orchestra for the first time with this production!
Q: What are your long-term plans and hopes for Cinballera?
A: Our plans are to keep putting on innovative shows, looking for more collaboration opportunities, and seeing where those connections and openings arise. “A Dream Before Summer” is the finale of our second season, so we have lots of ideas for Season 3, which we hope to begin with a show in August. We’ll keep doing our monthly Cinballera Salon at the Villa Montezuma and planning three or four mainstage shows along the way.
Since our first production, we’ve been very proud of the quality we put onstage; the challenge is just getting people in the audience to see that. Of course, we also dream of having more sponsors, donors, and grants to our endeavors, since we fund at least 75% of the production costs out of our own incomes. We’ve been non-profit since January 2024. If we have more funding, we can keep expanding and putting on bigger productions.
‘The Elixir of Love: In Concert at the Villa Montezuma’
When: 3 p.m. June 1; 7 p.m. June 2
Where: Villa Montezuma, 1925 K St, San Diego
Tickets: $36.20
Online: sdartstix.com/music/l-elisir-d-amore
‘A Dream Before Summer’
When: 3 p.m. June 7 and 8
Where: Wilson Performing Arts Center, 3838 Orange Ave., San Diego
Tickets: $36.20; $25.20, students
Online: sdartstix.com/dance/a-dream-before-summer
More information: cinballera.org
