The Chautauqua Opera is the resident summer opera company of the
Chautauqua Institution. It is one of the oldest continuously active summer opera companies in the U.S, having been founded in 1929 as the Chautauqua Opera Association, and it has produced several operas during the Institution's nine-week summer season every year since. Generally opera productions are performed in English in
Norton Memorial Hall Norton may refer to:
Places
Norton, meaning 'north settlement' in Old English, is a common place name. Places named Norton include: Canada
*Rural Municipality of Norton No. 69, Saskatchewan
*Norton Parish, New Brunswick
**Norton, New Brunswick, a ...
, usually on specific Monday and Friday evenings throughout the season. Recently, however, Chautauqua opera has increasingly been performed in concert productions at the Chautauqua Amphitheater.
The first production director of the company was Alfredo Valenti, who began Chautauqua's rich opera tradition with Flotow's "Martha" on July 19, 1929. Henry Ford and Mrs. Thomas A. Edison were in the audience. Valenti, who served as director for twenty-eight years, championed young American singers such as Rose Bampton, who performed that season and in 1930 and who, like many other stars at Norton Hall (such as
Charles Kullman and
Helen Jepson) went on to fame at the Metropolitan Opera and elsewhere. Currently, the Chautauqua Opera is under the general direction of
Jay Lesenger
A jay is a member of a number of species of medium-sized, usually colorful and noisy, passerine birds in the Crow family, Corvidae. The evolutionary relationships between the jays and the magpies are rather complex. For example, the Eurasian m ...
. The 2014 season included performances of
Puccini's ''
Madama Butterfly
''Madama Butterfly'' (; ''Madame Butterfly'') is an opera in three acts (originally two) by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa.
It is based on the short story "Madame Butterfly" (1898) by John Luther ...
'' and
Moore
Moore may refer to:
People
* Moore (surname)
** List of people with surname Moore
* Moore Crosthwaite (1907–1989), a British diplomat and ambassador
* Moore Disney (1765–1846), a senior officer in the British Army
* Moore Powell (died c. 1573 ...
's ''
The Ballad of Baby Doe
''The Ballad of Baby Doe'' is an opera by the American composer Douglas Moore that uses an English-language libretto by John Latouche. It is Moore's most famous opera and one of the few American operas to be in the standard repertory. Especially ...
''. The former was performed at the Amphitheater, along with two "pops" concerts; "The Ballad of Baby Doe" was performed at Norton Hall. This indicates a significant contraction of opera productions, which require substantial resources to rehearse and put on, and also suggests that Norton Hall is becoming less of the home for opera at Chautauqua; this pattern was repeated in 2015, with Verdi's Macbeth performed at the Amphitheater, and Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin performed at Norton Hall. In contrast, there were six separate productions at Norton Hall during the 1967 season.
In addition, the Chautauqua Opera runs the Young Artists Program, training highly talented young singers who plan to pursue careers in operatic music. Members of the Young Artists program present recitals on Thursday afternoons at the Institution's Hall of Christ, as well as two concerts with the
Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, and two revue performances during the summer season.
See also
*
List of opera festivals
External links
Chautauqua Opera official website
{{Authority control
Opera festivals
Chautauqua Institution
Musical groups established in 1929