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Cleveland Opera was incorporated by David Bamberger, Carola Bamberger, and John D. Heavenrich in March 1976 and presented its first season in October and November of that year with sold-out productions of Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Rossini's The Barber of Seville . By 1984, it had become the resident opera company at Playhouse Square, with performances at the State Theater. The company played an integral part in the revitalization of Cleveland's historic Cleveland Theater District and was a leader in the movement to make theaters accessible to the physically challenged. There was considerable overlap between the orchestra personnel of the Cleveland Opera, Cleveland Ballet, and the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, to the advantage of all three organizations.
The company was managed from March 1976 to April 2004 by David Bamberger as General Director and Carola Bamberger as Associate Director. In that period, it presented 122 full productions of 74 works by 43 different composers spanning the history of musical theater from Monteverdi to the present. Its casts included some of opera's greatest artists, among whom were Roberta Peters, Jerome Hines, Sherrill Milnes, and (in concert) Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, and José Carreras.
In addition to operas and operettas, Cleveland Opera presented several musical theatre favorites, such as West Side Story , Man of La Mancha and My Fair Lady. It received international attention by commissioning and presenting a world premiere opera by a noted Rock musician, Stewart Copeland of "The Police", with his opera Holy Blood and Crescent Moon. The company was also noted for “Cleveland Opera on Tour,” an extensive education and outreach program. It was a member of OPERA America, a national organization which oversees and helps the development of opera across the North American continent.
Following the departure of David Bamberger, the company pursued financial policies that weakened it considerably. The decision was made to merge with another struggling company that operated largely in the summer, Lyric Opera Cleveland. The merged company was named Opera Cleveland and gave its first staged production in April 2007. Mismanagement plagued the company, however, and it became defunct in the fall of 2010.
In subsequent years, two small Cleveland companies changed their names to incorporate the words "Cleveland Opera." In 2014, "Opera per tutti" became "Cleveland Opera Theater" [1] and, in 2017, "Opera Circle" became "The Cleveland Opera." [2] Neither institution is connected to the organization described above.
Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House accompanied by the Opera Australia Orchestra runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent in the Arts Centre Melbourne, where it is accompanied by Orchestra Victoria. In 2004, the company gave 226 performances in its subscription seasons in Sydney and Melbourne, attended by more than 294,000 people.
The Cleveland Orchestra, based in Cleveland, is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1918 by the pianist and impresario Adella Prentiss Hughes, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall. As of 2021, the incumbent music director is Franz Welser-Möst.
The Metropolitan Opera is an American opera company based in New York City, resident at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager. As of 2018, the company's current music director is Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
English National Opera (ENO) is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with The Royal Opera, Covent Garden. ENO's productions are sung in English.
Houston Grand Opera (HGO) is an American opera company located in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1955 by German-born impresario Walter Herbert and three local Houstonians, the company is resident at the Wortham Theater Center. In its history, the company has received a Tony Award, two Grammy Awards, and three Emmy Awards, the only opera company in the world to win these three honours. Houston Grand Opera is supported by an active auxiliary organization, the Houston Grand Opera Guild, established in October 1955.
The New York City Opera (NYCO) is an American opera company located in Manhattan in New York City. The company has been active from 1943 through 2013, and again since 2016 when it was revived.
Broadway theatre, also simply known as Broadway, refers to the theatrical performances which are presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world.
Artur Rodziński was a Polish conductor of opera and symphonic music. He is especially noted for his tenures as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic in the 1930s and 1940s.
Cleveland Play House (CPH) is a professional regional theater company located in Cleveland, Ohio. It was founded in 1915 and built its own noted theater complex in 1927. Currently the company performs at the Allen Theatre in Playhouse Square where it has been based since 2011.
Opera Omaha is a major regional opera company in Omaha, Nebraska. Begun in 1958, the professional company is widely known for the International Fall Festival events it held in the 1980s and 1990s, which garnered international attention and served as the U.S. and world premieres for a number of notable works. One of these performances, the 1990 U.S. premiere of the 1841 work Maria Padilla, was among the primary debuts for noted soprano Renee Fleming. "I’ve been calling all my singer friends and saying, 'You’ve got to sing for this company.'" Fleming said at the time. It has "a lot of vision." In 2007, the Toronto Star said "Opera Omaha has grown into one of the continent's most enterprising regional opera companies."
The Bass Performance Hall is a performing arts venue, located in Fort Worth, Texas.
Arizona Opera is an opera company which operates in both Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona.
Judy Kaye is an American singer and actress. She has appeared in stage musicals, plays, and operas. Kaye has been in long runs on Broadway in the musicals The Phantom of the Opera, Ragtime, Mamma Mia!, and Nice Work If You Can Get It.
Virginia Opera is an opera company based in the Commonwealth of Virginia which was first organized in 1974 by a group of Norfolk, Virginia community volunteers.
John Doyle is a Scottish stage director of musicals and plays, as well as operas. He has served as artistic director at several regional theatres in the United Kingdom, where he has staged more than 200 professional productions during his career spanning over 40 years. For his 2005 Broadway production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, he won a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award.
Harry Lawrence Freeman was an American neoromantic opera composer, conductor, impresario and teacher. He was the first African-American to write an opera that was successfully produced. Freeman founded the Freeman School of Music and the Freeman School of Grand Opera, as well as several short-lived opera companies which gave first performances of his own compositions. During his life, he was known as "the black Wagner."
A concert performance or concert version is a performance of a musical theater or opera in concert form, without set design or costumes, and mostly without theatrical interaction between singers.
The Texas Ballet Theater was founded by Margo Dean in 1961 as the Fort Worth Ballet Association, in Fort Worth, Texas. At the invitation of Dean, Fernando Schaffenburg was invited to direct the company the following year. It became a fully professional ballet company in 1985. In 1988, after the demise of Dallas Ballet, the company began adding performances of The Nutcracker in Dallas in a business partnership with The Dallas Opera, producing Nutcracker performances in The Music Hall and using The Dallas Opera Orchestra.
Musiktheater im Revier (MiR) is the venue for performing opera, operetta, musical theatre and ballet in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. It opened on 15 December 1959; it is listed since 1997 as a protected cultural monument.
Mary Chun is an American conductor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is Music Director of the Cinnabar Theater and has been the conductor of Earplay since 2000.