The College Light Opera Company(CLOC) is an educational summer stock theatre company based in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. It produces and performs 9 operettas and musicals during a nine-week season each summer with performances taking place in Falmouth's historic Highfield Theatre.
The company was founded by D. Thomas Tull and Robert Haslun in 1969 immediately following the demise of the Oberlin College Gilbert & Sullivan Players who had performed in Falmouth from 1953 to 1966 [1] Haslun had been an Oberlin College student himself and went on to become Secretary of the College, a post which he held from 1978 to 2007. [2] Although many Oberlin students still participate in College Light Opera Company each summer, it is no longer officially associated with Oberlin College nor is it solely a Gilbert and Sullivan troupe. The company's repertoire now also includes comic operas and operettas by other composers as well as contemporary and classic Broadway musicals such as Evita , Jekyll & Hyde , Brigadoon , and Carousel .
CLOC is run by a Board of Trustees with Mark A. Pearson as Executive and Artistic Director. Its aim is to provide young actors and musicians with the opportunity to perform with professional directors and conductors during an 11-week resident program while providing cultural and musical entertainment to the people of Cape Cod. It is a non profit organization.
The company consists of a staff between 25-30, a technical crew and costume crew of 6 members each, a 32-person vocal company and 17-20 person orchestra.
In addition to the Executive and Artistic Director, Mark A. Pearson, there is a publicity director, a business manager, and two box office treasurers. CLOC also employees a Chef de Cuisine, Director of Plant and property, and resident Costume, Set and Lighting Designers in addition to a technical director, stage manager and a crew of scenic and costume technicians. The creative staff consists of around 4-6 Stage Directors and 4-6 Musical Directors, a choreographer, two Associate Conductors and two Accompanists. The Chef de Cuisine, Director of Plant and Property, Design Staff and Directorial staff are often professionals in the field, while the other positions are mostly filled by undergraduate/graduate students, or recent graduates.
The vocal company consists of 32 members. All members are taken on an ensemble contract, with casting for principal roles taking place throughout season. CLOC is well known for its choral training and high standard of vocal performance.[ citation needed ]
The College Light Opera Company Orchestra consists of 17-20 musicians. Many are music majors, majoring in the instrument they have been contracted to play. In addition to performing in the CLOC theatre productions, the orchestra holds its own concert hosted by the College Light Opera Company Orchestra and the Cape Cod Conservatory. These concerts were started in the early 1990s by John and Avery Funkhouser and were initially held in the main hall of the West Falmouth Library until moving to the recital hall of the Cape Cod Conservatory in 2006. Summer 2008 marked the CLOC Orchestra's first symphonic concert.
Since 1975, The College Light Opera Company has called Bridgefields Hall in West Falmouth, MA home. The main building houses the rehearsal space and dining facilities as well as the costume shop. In addition to The Hall, there are four cottages on the campus.
Victor August Herbert was an American composer, cellist and conductor of Irish ancestry and German training. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I. He was also prominent among the Tin Pan Alley composers and was later a founder of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). A prolific composer, Herbert produced two operas, a cantata, 43 operettas, incidental music to 10 plays, 31 compositions for orchestra, nine band compositions, nine cello compositions, five violin compositions with piano or orchestra, 22 piano compositions and numerous songs, choral compositions and orchestrations of works by other composers, among other music.
Thomas Z. Shepard is an American record producer who is best known for his recordings of Broadway musicals, including the works of Stephen Sondheim. Shepard is also a composer, conductor, music arranger and pianist.
Music Theater Works is a resident professional not-for-profit musical theatre company in Evanston, Illinois. It was founded in 1980 by Philip Kraus, Bridget McDonough, and Ellen Dubinsky.
The Greek National Opera is the country's state lyric opera company, located in the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center at the south suburb of Athens, Kallithea. It is a public corporation under the supervision of the Greek Ministry of Culture and administered by the Board of Trustees and its Artistic Director, currently George Koumedakis.
Brown Opera Productions (BOP) is dedicated to the promotion and performance of classical vocal music both on campus and in the greater Providence, Rhode Island, community and is a space for singers and musicians to collaborate on exciting classical performance projects. BOP produces a full-length opera every spring, and throughout the year produces concerts of classical vocal music on campus and in local hospitals, nursing homes, and schools. As the name implies, the group is composed of Brown University students, who also work with Rhode Island School of Design students at times. BOP does not charge admission for its performances but depends on individual donations.
Light Opera of Manhattan, known as LOOM, was an off-Broadway repertory theatre company that produced light operas, including the works of Gilbert and Sullivan and European and American operettas, 52 weeks per year, in New York City between 1968 and 1989.
American Savoyards was an Off-Broadway and touring repertory theatre company that produced light operas, principally the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, in New York City and on tour between 1948 and 1967.
The Ohio Light Opera is a professional opera company based in Wooster, Ohio that performs the light opera repertory, including Gilbert and Sullivan, American, British and continental operettas, and other musical theatre works, especially of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The company is also known for its recordings of these works.
New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players is a professional repertory theatre company, based in New York City that has specialized in the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan for over 40 years. It performs an annual season in New York City and tours extensively in North America.
The Hawaii Opera Theatre (HOT) is the islands' only major opera company established in 1960. The company performs three or more operas in a season. Opera seasons start in October and end in the early summer of the following year. It performs mostly in the Blaisdell Concert Hall, Honolulu.
Broadway by the Bay, is a community-based musical theatre company located in the San Francisco Bay Area and performing in Redwood City. It also provides a "Theatre Arts Academy" offering performing arts experiences to local children. After beginning in with productions of three annual Gilbert and Sullivan productions, the company shifted its focus to modern musicals in 1966. Since then, it has produced musicals continuously in San Mateo County. In 1983, the group changed its name to Peninsula Civic Light Opera, and again in 1999, to Broadway by the Bay.
LOOK Musical Theatre (LOOK) was a professional musical theatre company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The organization, governed by an elected board of directors, followed a repertory model in presenting a summer festival program of musicals and comic opera. LOOK's annual summer season of performances at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center is known as "The LOOK Festival."
Albert Ernest Alsor Clair Ford was an English composer of operas and ballet music and a conductor.
Cape Town Opera (CTO) is a professional opera company in Cape Town, South Africa. CTO was founded in 1999 by the management and staff of the former South Africa Arts Council Opera and the Cape Performing Arts Board (CAPAB), itself a successor to the Cape Province Performing Arts Council and the previous Opera School at the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town, which had been founded in the early 1920s under the Italian tenor Giuseppe Paganelli.
Gervase Alfred Booth Hughes was an English composer, conductor and writer on music. From 1926 to 1933, Hughes pursued a career as a conductor and chorus master, principally at the British National Opera Company, and also co-produced Shakespeare plays. He left the musical profession in 1933, raising a family and working first as an executive in a railway company and later running luxury European tours. From 1960 to 1972 he published a series of books on musical subjects, beginning with a study of the music of Arthur Sullivan, published in 1960.
Eaton Operatic Society was a Canadian musical organization located in Toronto, Ontario that presented operas, operettas, musicals, and choral works from 1919 to 1965. Originally a choir that specialized in mounting oratorios, the group eventually morphed into a light opera company in the early 1930s.
Helena Holl is a Russian dramatic soprano. In addition to numerous other performances, she has been a regular performer at the broadcast gala concerts for New Year's Eve in Budapest, Hungary.
Derby Gilbert & Sullivan Company, based in Derby, England, produced the works of Gilbert and Sullivan from 1966 to 2018. The company won the amateur competition at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival an unprecedented six times and have been called "one of the most highly acclaimed nonprofessional theatre companies in the UK". The company also won awards from the Waterford International Festival of Light Opera.
The Greenville Light Opera Works (GLOW) is a non-profit professional opera, operetta and musical theatre company in Greenville, South Carolina. In 2013, the company began operating under the name Glow Lyric Theatre.
The National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company is an English professional repertory company that performs Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas. Founded in 1995 to perform at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival, the company generally stages three or four productions each summer, giving up to 16 performances in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, and also touring.
