Opera Quotannis was a New York-based opera company which was founded in 1990, with conductor Bart Folse as Music Director and stage director Brian Morgan (formerly of The New Opera Theatre

The New Opera Theatre

The New Opera Theatre was a New Orleans-based opera company founded in 1986, with conductor Louise LaBruyère as Music Director and stage director Brian Morgan serving as Artistic Director...

) serving as Artistic Director. It specialized in experimental productions of both ancient and contemporary opera.

The ensemble's first production was in January 1991, Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, with counter-tenor Derek Lee Ragin

Derek Lee Ragin

Derek Lee Ragin is an American countertenor.Ragin studied as a piano major at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. While at Oberlin he took secondary voice lessons with Richard Anderson. He began his operatic career at Oberlin in Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream as Oberon...

 as Orpheus and soprano Tracey Mitchell as Euridice, with a period-instrument orchestra, at the Church of St Paul the Apostle at Lincoln Center. Later in 1991, they mounted Monteverdi's Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, again with a period orchestra.
In 1992, OQ produced the New York premiere of Louise LaBruyère's Everyman, after the mediæval Morality Play. Mitchell sang the title role, with Cyril and Libbye Hellier

Cyril and Libbye Hellier

Cyril and Libbye Hellier are identical twins and American operatic sopranos. Natives of Houma, Louisiana, they are the great-grandchildren of the Confederate Colonel John Henry Hellier....

 as Kindred and Cousin, respectively. The production then toured to New Orleans. In 1995, the company presented a staged version of Schönberg's Pierrot lunaire (with Christine Schadeberg), at the New School for Social Research.

In March 1997, Opera Quotannis presented their final production, the original opéra-comique version of Cherubini's Médée, at Alice Tully Hall

Alice Tully Hall

Alice Tully Hall is a concert hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. It is named for Alice Tully, a New York performer and philanthropist whose donations assisted in the construction of the hall...

, Lincoln Center, marking the bicentennial of the work's premiere. In the cast were Phyllis Treigle

Phyllis Treigle

Phyllis Treigle is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and is a noted American soprano, and the daughter of the great bass-baritone Norman Treigle...

, Carl Halvorson, D'Anna Fortunato

D'Anna Fortunato

D'Anna Fortunato is a noted American mezzo-soprano. Among her teachers were Phyllis Curtin and Gladys Childs Miller...

, David Arnold, Thaïs St Julien

Thais St Julien

Thaïs St Julien is a native of New Orleans, and is argurably the South's foremost singer of Early Music. The soprano studied under Charles Paddock, Virginia MacWatters and Norma Newton, and is Co-Director of the New Orleans Musica da Camera, which specialises in music of the Middle Ages and the...

, Jayne West

Jayne West

Jayne West is an American operatic soprano, who was born in White Plains, New York, and was raised in Framingham, Massachusetts. After graduation from Oberlin College, she moved to Boston, where she studied at the Boston Conservatory....

and Andrea Matthews. Subsequently, Newport Classic recorded the production for release on Compact Discs.