The Bronx Opera is a Bronx, New York opera company founded in 1967 by artistic director

Artistic director

An artistic director is the executive of an arts organization, particularly in a theatre company, that handles the organization's artistic direction. He or she is generally a producer and director, but not in the sense of a mogul, since the organization is generally a non-profit organization...

 and music director

Music director

A music director may be the director of an orchestra, the director of music for a film, the director of music at a radio station, the head of the music department in a school, the co-ordinator of the musical ensembles in a university or college , the head bandmaster of a military band, the head...

 Michael Spierman.
The company performs two operas a year, both with full orchestra, one lesser known opera in the fall, and an opera from the Standard repertoire in the spring.

Performances are at Lehman College

Lehman College

Lehman College is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, USA. Founded in 1931 as the Bronx campus of Hunter College, the school became an independent college within the City University in 1968. The college is named after Herbert Lehman, a former New York governor,...

, Hunter College

Hunter College

Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...

, and Hofstra University

Hofstra University

Hofstra University is a private, nonsectarian institution of higher learning located in the Village of Hempstead, New York, United States, about east of New York City: less than an hour away by train or car...

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Origins

In 1966, a group of musicians were attempting to put together a performance of Handel's MESSIAH. While this performance never happened, it was the genesis of what became the Bronx Opera. Michael Spierman, a recent graduate of New York University's University Heights campus in The Bronx (now Bronx Community College of the City University of New York) took the hub of the group that was to perform the Handel and combined it with his intention to form an opera company that would be based at the Bronx NYU campus. This organization was to be known as the "Heights Opera." It was as the Heights Opera Company that the group first performed on November 24, 1967, at Vladeck Hall of the Amalgamated Housing Corporation. The opera was Mozart's Cosi fan tutte

Così fan tutte

Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....

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