Chicago Opera Theater
Encyclopedia
The Chicago Opera Theater (COT) is an opera company that was founded as the Chicago Opera Studio in 1974 by Alan Stone
to give vocal students performance experience, although it has grown into a professional opera company. The stated mission of COT is to provide first class productions of operatic repertoire that include the greatest works of the 17th through 20th centuries, and in the past it has had an emphasis on American composers and performers who sing in English. Currently, COT extends the Chicago opera season by scheduling its performances after the Lyric Opera of Chicago
's season ends in spring.
The company's home is the 1,525-seat Harris Theater for Music and Dance
in Chicago's Millennium Park
. The Harris Theater was built in 2003 as a mostly underground, state-of-the-art downtown performance facility, and is also home to the Hubbard Street Dance Company. Prior to the 2004 season, COT was most recently at the Athenaeum Theatre on the city's north side.
Brian Dickie is the current General Director of COT, a position he has held since September 1999. His first season with COT in 2000 was met with such acclaim that he was honored by the Chicago Tribune
as a Chicagoan of the Year. This honor was repeated in 2002. He was recently named by New City Chicago as one of "The Players—50 people who really perform for Chicago."
Alexander Platt
is COT's resident conductor and music advisor. His work with COT has included leading the Chicago premiere of Benjamin Britten
's Death in Venice
, and directing the Maurice Sendak
/Tony Kushner
version of Hans Krása
's Brundibár
and an adaptation of Pyotr Tchaikovsky
's Iolanta
. Additionally, in 2006, he led the Chicago premiere of John Adams' Nixon in China
, and in May 2007 conducted the dual Chicago premieres of Béla Bartók
's Duke Bluebeard's Castle
and Arnold Schoenberg
's Erwartung
(Expectation).
COT's 2008 season offered Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
's Don Giovanni
in April/May; John Adams's A Flowering Tree
in May; and George Frideric Handel
's Orlando
in May and June.
The 2009 season, from April 18 through May 26, featured Benjamin Britten
's Owen Wingrave
, Mozart's La clemenza di Tito
, and Carmen
by Georges Bizet
and adapted by Marius Constant
.
The 2010 season, from April 17 to May 16, offered Jake Heggie
's Three Decembers, Gioachino Rossini's Mosè in Egitto
, and the Chicago professional premiere of Francesco Cavalli
's Giasone
.
The 2011 season, opening April 2 and closing May 8, featured Tod Machover
's Death and the Powers, Marc-Antoine Charpentier
's Médée
, and He/She – a combination of the song cycles The Diary of One Who Disappeared
by Leoš Janáček
, and "Frauenliebe und -leben
" by Robert Schumann
.
Alan Stone (opera director)
Alan Stone was an American opera director, opera singer, and vocal coach. Born and raised in Chicago, Stone notably founded the Chicago Opera Theater in 1974...
to give vocal students performance experience, although it has grown into a professional opera company. The stated mission of COT is to provide first class productions of operatic repertoire that include the greatest works of the 17th through 20th centuries, and in the past it has had an emphasis on American composers and performers who sing in English. Currently, COT extends the Chicago opera season by scheduling its performances after the Lyric Opera of Chicago
Lyric Opera of Chicago
Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the leading opera companies in the United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1952, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox, Nicolà Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, with a season that included Maria Callas's American debut in Norma...
's season ends in spring.
The company's home is the 1,525-seat Harris Theater for Music and Dance
Harris Theater (Chicago)
The Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance is a 1,525-seat theater for the performing arts located along the northern edge of Millennium Park on Randolph Street in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, US...
in Chicago's Millennium Park
Millennium Park
Millennium Park is a public park located in the Loop community area of Chicago in Illinois, USA and originally intended to celebrate the millennium. It is a prominent civic center near the city's Lake Michigan shoreline that covers a section of northwestern Grant Park. The area was previously...
. The Harris Theater was built in 2003 as a mostly underground, state-of-the-art downtown performance facility, and is also home to the Hubbard Street Dance Company. Prior to the 2004 season, COT was most recently at the Athenaeum Theatre on the city's north side.
Brian Dickie is the current General Director of COT, a position he has held since September 1999. His first season with COT in 2000 was met with such acclaim that he was honored by the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
as a Chicagoan of the Year. This honor was repeated in 2002. He was recently named by New City Chicago as one of "The Players—50 people who really perform for Chicago."
Alexander Platt
Alexander Platt
Alexander Platt is an American symphony orchestra conductor. He is the Resident Conductor and Music Advisor for Chicago Opera Theater and is presently the Music Director for Maverick Concerts, the Wisconsin Philharmonic, the Marion Indiana Philharmonic, The La Crosse Symphony Orchestra and the...
is COT's resident conductor and music advisor. His work with COT has included leading the Chicago premiere of Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
's Death in Venice
Death in Venice (opera)
Death in Venice is an opera in two acts by Benjamin Britten, his last. The opera is based on the novella Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. Myfanwy Piper wrote the English libretto. It was first performed at Snape Maltings near Aldeburgh, England on 16 June 1973.The astringent score is marked by some...
, and directing the Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Bernard Sendak is an American writer and illustrator of children's literature. He is best known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, published in 1963.-Early life:...
/Tony Kushner
Tony Kushner
Anthony Robert "Tony" Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film, Munich.-Life and career:Kushner was born...
version of Hans Krása
Hans Krása
Hans Krása was a Czech composer who was killed in the Holocaust at Auschwitz. He helped to organize cultural life in Theresienstadt concentration camp.-Life:...
's Brundibár
Brundibár
Brundibár is a children's opera by Jewish Czech composer Hans Krása with a libretto by Adolf Hoffmeister, originally performed by the children of Theresienstadt concentration camp in occupied Czechoslovakia...
and an adaptation of Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
's Iolanta
Iolanta
Iolanta, Op. 69, is a lyric opera in one act by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by the composer's brother Modest Tchaikovsky, and is based on the Danish play Kong Renés Datter by Henrik Hertz. The play was translated by Fyodor Miller and adapted by Vladimir Zotov...
. Additionally, in 2006, he led the Chicago premiere of John Adams' Nixon in China
Nixon in China (opera)
Nixon in China is an opera in three acts by John Adams, with a libretto by Alice Goodman. Adams' first opera, it was inspired by the 1972 visit to China by US President Richard Nixon. The work premiered at the Houston Grand Opera on October 22, 1987, in a production by Peter Sellars with...
, and in May 2007 conducted the dual Chicago premieres of Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
's Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Bluebeard's Castle
Duke Bluebeard's Castle is a one-act opera by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. The libretto was written by Béla Balázs, a poet and friend of the composer. It is in Hungarian, based on the French fairy tale "Bluebeard" by Charles Perrault...
and Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
's Erwartung
Erwartung
Erwartung , Op.17 is a one-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg to a libretto by Marie Pappenheim. Composed in 1909, it was not premiered until June 6, 1924 in Prague conducted by Alexander Zemlinsky with Marie Gutheil-Schoder as the soprano. The work takes the unusual form of a monologue for solo...
(Expectation).
COT's 2008 season offered Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
's Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
in April/May; John Adams's A Flowering Tree
A Flowering Tree
A Flowering Tree is an opera in two acts composed by John Adams with libretto by Adams and Peter Sellars, and commissioned by the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna, the San Francisco Symphony, the Barbican Centre in London, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, and the...
in May; and George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
's Orlando
Orlando (opera)
Orlando is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel written for the Royal Academy of Music . The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Carlo Sigismondo Capece's L'Orlando after Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, which was also the source of Handel's operas Alcina and...
in May and June.
The 2009 season, from April 18 through May 26, featured Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
's Owen Wingrave
Owen Wingrave
Owen Wingrave is an opera for television in two acts with music by Benjamin Britten, his Opus 85, and a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, after a short story by Henry James....
, Mozart's La clemenza di Tito
La clemenza di Tito
La clemenza di Tito , K. 621, is an opera seria in two acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Caterino Mazzolà, after Metastasio...
, and Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
by Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
and adapted by Marius Constant
Marius Constant
Marius Constant was a Romanian-born French composer and conductor. Known primarily for his television soundtracks, his most widely heard score was the iconic Twilight Zone theme song....
.
The 2010 season, from April 17 to May 16, offered Jake Heggie
Jake Heggie
Jake Heggie is an American composer and pianist.Jake Heggie is the composer of the operas Dead Man Walking , The End of the Affair , At The Statue of Venus , To Hell and Back , and Moby-Dick , as well as the stage work For a Look or a Touch...
's Three Decembers, Gioachino Rossini's Mosè in Egitto
Mosè in Egitto
Mosè in Egitto is a three-act opera written by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola, which was based on a play by Francesco Ringhieri, L'Osiride, of 1760....
, and the Chicago professional premiere of Francesco Cavalli
Francesco Cavalli
Francesco Cavalli was an Italian composer of the early Baroque period. His real name was Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni, but he is better known by that of Cavalli, the name of his patron Federico Cavalli, a Venetian nobleman.-Life:Cavalli was born at Crema, Lombardy...
's Giasone
Giasone
Giasone is an opera in three acts and a prologue with music by Francesco Cavalli and a libretto by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini. It was premiered at the Teatro San Cassiano, Venice on 5 January 1649, during carnival. Giasone was "the single most popular opera of the 17th century"...
.
The 2011 season, opening April 2 and closing May 8, featured Tod Machover
Tod Machover
Tod Machover , is a composer and an innovator in the application of technology in music. He is the son of Wilma Machover, a pianist and Carl Machover, a computer scientist....
's Death and the Powers, Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Marc-Antoine Charpentier, , was a French composer of the Baroque era.Exceptionally prolific and versatile, he produced compositions of the highest quality in several genres...
's Médée
Médée (Charpentier)
Médée is a tragédie mise en musique in five acts and a prologue by Marc-Antoine Charpentier to a French libretto by Thomas Corneille. It was premiered in Paris on December 4, 1693. Médée is the only opera Charpentier wrote for the Académie Royale de Musique...
, and He/She – a combination of the song cycles The Diary of One Who Disappeared
The Diary of One Who Disappeared
The Diary of One Who Disappeared is a song cycle for tenor, alto, three female voices and piano, written by Czech composer Leoš Janáček.- Background :...
by Leoš Janáček
Leoš Janácek
Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...
, and "Frauenliebe und -leben
Frauenliebe und -leben
Frauenliebe und -leben is a cycle of poems by Adelbert von Chamisso, written in 1830. They describe the course of a woman's love for her man, from her point of view, from first meeting through marriage to his death, and after. Selections were set to music as a song-cycle by masters of German Lied,...
" by Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
.