Cincinnati Opera

Cincinnati Music Hall, the home of Cincinnati Opera

Cincinnati Opera is an American opera company based in Cincinnati, Ohio and the second oldest opera company in the United States (after the New York Metropolitan Opera).^[1]

History

The company, originally named Cincinnati Opera Association, gave its first performance, Flotow's Martha, on June 27, 1920. During its early days, members of the Association also raised funds to mount the world premiere of Ralph Lyford's opera Castle Agrazant which took place at the Cincinnati Music Hall on April 29, 1926.^[2]

Andrew Foldi as Dr. Dulcamara and Bruce Cooper as his assistant Cochise in Act 1, Scene 2 of Cincinnati Opera's 1968 "Wild West" production of L'elisir d'amore directed by James de Blasis.

For most of its first fifty years, Cincinnati Opera's performances were held at the Cincinnati Zoo Pavilion. During that time, many prominent singers appeared in the company's productions including Plácido Domingo, Beverly Sills, Norman Treigle, Sherrill Milnes, Montserrat Caballé, Jan Peerce, Robert Merrill, Roberta Peters, Shirley Verrett, Lawrence Tibbett, Richard Tucker, Martina Arroyo, James Morris, and Barbara Daniels. In 1972, Cincinnati Opera moved its performance base to the newly renovated Cincinnati Music Hall.

James de Blasis became the company's Resident Stage Director in 1968. He then served as its General Director from 1973 to 1987. In 1988 he became its Artistic Director, a post which he held until 1996. Under his tenure, the company began to program rare operas such as Maxwell Davies' Resurrection and Weinberger's Schwanda the Bagpiper. It also added musicals to its repertory in an effort to broaden its audience base. One of the highlights of the de Blasis era was a new interpretation of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore which changed the setting from the Basque region of Spain in the 1820s to the "Wild West" of late 19th century Texas. The production was filmed by PBS and nationally televised in 1968.

In 1996, the internationally known stage director, Nicholas Muni, succeeded James de Blasis as Artstic Director of the company. Under his leadership Cincinnati Opera further enlarged its repertory with many company premieres including Janáček's Jenůfa, Britten's The Turn of the Screw, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, Schoenberg's Erwartung, Verdi's Nabucco, Heggie's Dead Man Walking, Strauss' Elektra, Poulenc's La Voix Humaine, Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins, Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis, and the U.S. premiere of Peter Bengtson's The Maids.^[3] The company also performed its first mainstage commission, Richard Danielpour's Margaret Garner (co-commissioned with Michigan Opera Theatre and Opera Company of Philadelphia). The Cincinnati performances coincided with the opening of Cincinnati's National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and starred Denyce Graves in the title role.

In 2006, Evans Mirageas, an influential casting director and former head of Decca's Artists & Repertoire division, became Cincinnati Opera's new Artistic Director. Following his first season with the company, Opera News magazine listed him as one of the "25 Most Powerful Names in U.S. Opera".^[4] The 2008 Summer Festival was the first to be fully programmed by Mirageas and included the classics, Madama Butterfly and La Traviata, as well as Lucia di Lammermoor in Donizetti's 1839 French version and the company premiere of Daniel Catán's Florencia en el Amazonas. The company's 2009 season, "Opera Goes to Spain", presented Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Carlo, Carmen, and the regional premiere of Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamar. The 2010 season presented a 90th Anniversary Gala Concert (featuring, among others, guest host Ryan Seacrest and soprano Angela Brown), Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Otello, and La Bohème. The 2011 season will present Rigoletto, John Adams' A Flowering Tree, Euguene Onegin, and The Magic Flute.

References

Notes

1. ^ Salzman (July 2, 1961)
2. ^ Hipsher (1927) p. 306
3. ^ Gelfand (October 1, 2004)
4. ^ Driscoll and Kellow (August 2006)

Sources

• Driscoll, Paul and Kellow, Brian, "The 25 Most Powerful Names in U.S. Opera", Opera News, August 2006, vol 71, no. 2. Accessed 28 September 2009.
• Gelfand, Janelle, "Opera losing influential artistic director", Cincinnati Enquirer, October 1, 2004. Accessed 28 September 2009.
• Hipsher, Edward Ellsworth, American Opera and Its Composers, Theodore Presser Company, 1927
• Kellow, Brian, "Central Casting" (profile of Evans Mirageas), Opera News, June 2008, vol 72, no. 12. Accessed 28 September 2009.
• Salzman, Eric, "A Zoo Story: Cincinnati Opera Revitalized", New York Times, July 2, 1961, p. X7. Accessed 28 September 2009.
• Thea Dispeker Artists Management, James de Blasis: Stage director. Accessed 28 September 2009.

External links

• Official web site of Cincinnati Opera
• The Cincinnati Opera Archives at the Public Libr­ary of Cincinnati and Hamilton County