The Civic Opera Company (1922–1931) was a

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

company that produced seven seasons of

grand opera Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterized by large-scale casts and Orchestra, orchestras. The original productions consisted of spectacular design and stage effects with plots normally based on o ...

in the

Auditorium Theatre The Auditorium Theatre is a music and performance venue located in the Auditorium Building at 50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive in Chicago, Illinois. Inspired by the Richardsonian Romanesque Style of architect Henry Hobson Richardson, the building was d ...

from 1922 to 1928, and three seasons at its own Civic Opera House from 1929 to 1931 before falling victim to financial difficulties brought on in part by the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

. The company consisted largely of the remnants of the Chicago Opera Association, a company that produced seven seasons of grand opera in the Auditorium Theatre from 1915 until its bankruptcy in 1921.

Chicago Opera Association

The Chicago Opera Association produced seven seasons of

in Chicago's

from 1915 to 1921. The founding artistic director and principal conductor was Cleofonte Campanini, while the general manager and chief underwriter was Harold F. McCormick. When Campanini died in December 1919 he was replaced by the composer Gino Marinuzzi, who staged his own ''

Jacquerie The Jacquerie () was a popular revolt by peasants that took place in northern France in the early summer of 1358 during the Hundred Years' War. The revolt was centred in the valley of the Oise north of Paris and was suppressed after over tw ...

'' as the opening production of the 1920–21 season. In January 1921, operatic diva

Mary Garden Mary Garden (20 February 1874 – 3 January 1967) was a Scottish-American operatic lyric soprano, then mezzo-soprano, with a substantial career in France and America in the first third of the 20th century. She spent the latter part of her chil ...

was appointed music director (or "Directa" as she styled it) and the recently divorced McCormick promised to pay that year's difference exceeding $100,000, the previous high being $300,000. He planned on this being his last season, and he called in Mary Garden to finish the company with style. The subsequent blow-out season was finished with the hugely expensive world premiere of Sergei Prokofiev's ''

The Love for Three Oranges ', Op. 33, is a 1921 satirical French-language opera by Sergei Prokofiev. He wrote his own libretto, basing it on the Italian play '' L'amore delle tre melarance'', or ''The Love for Three Oranges'' ( ''Lyubov k tryom apyelsinam'') by Carlo Goz ...

'', which had been commissioned by the Opera Association. This, and other extravagances on Mary Garden's part, ended the season with a deficit of $1,100,000, most of which was paid for by the McCormick fund. Mary Garden as "Directa" for one season cost $750,000 more than any single season of opera in Chicago at that time. Coming as it did during a business recession, these deficits bankrupted the company.

Notable singers

Georges Baklanoff Georgy Andreyevich Baklanoff, known as Georges Baklanoff (sometimes spelled Baklanov; 6 December 1938) was a Russian operatic baritone who had an active international career from 1903 until his death in 1938. Possessing a powerful and flexible v ...

Charles Dalmorès Charles Dalmorès (January 1, 1871 – December 6, 1939) was a French dramatic tenor. He enjoyed an international operatic career, singing to public and critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic during the first two decades of the 20th ce ...

* Alice D'Hermanoy * Hector Dufranne * Florence Easton *

Anna Fitziu Anna Fitziu (April 1, 1887 – April 20, 1967) was an American soprano who had a prolific international opera career during the early part of the 20th century. Her signature roles included Fiora in ''L'amore dei tre re'', Mimi in ''La bohème'', ...

Amelita Galli-Curci Amelita Galli-Curci (18 November 1882 – 26 November 1963) was an Italian lyric coloratura soprano. She was one of the most famous operatic singers of the 20th century and a popular recording artist, with her records selling in large numbe ...

* Gustave Huberdeau * Frances Ingram * Nina Koshetz * Edith Mason * Mary McCormic *

Carmen Melis Carmen Melis (15 August 1885 – 19 December 1967) was an Italian operatic soprano who had a major international career during the first four decades of the 20th century. She was known, above all, as a verismo soprano, and was one of the most int ...

Tamaki Miura , was a Japanese opera singer who performed as Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's ''Madama Butterfly''. Early life Miura was born the first daughter of Shibata Mōho and Shibata Towa () on February 22, 1884, in Tokyo, Japan. Shibata, a music lover had h ...

* Lucien Muratore * Claudia Muzio * Giovanni Polese * Rosa Raisa * Tito Schipa *

Emilio Venturini Emilio Venturini (1878–1952) was an Italian operatic lyric tenor known for his portrayal of character roles. He made his professional opera debut in 1900 in Italy where he remained for the next several years. In 1901 he sang the role of Brighel ...

* Alice Verlet * Olivia Monona

Formation of the Civic Opera Company

The Civic Opera was formed by reorganizing the bankrupt of the Chicago Opera Association in 1921. Opera Association general manager Harold F. McCormick resigned and was replaced by utilities magnate

Samuel Insull Samuel Insull (November 11, 1859 – July 16, 1938) was a British American business magnate. He was an innovator and investor based in Chicago who helped create an integrated electrical infrastructure in the United States. Insull created hold ...

, while sixteen of the eighteen directors were carried over from the old company. The new Civic Opera also fell heir to

as musical director as well as all of the costumes, scenery, and other resources of the defunct Opera Association. The Civic Opera Company was Chicago's first real world class Opera Company, it was also a "democratic" opera company, aiming for a popular audience. Productions were supposed to based upon what the people wanted, though they turned out to be the Italian repertory that the sponsors and the executives favored and the modern French operas beloved of reigning diva Mary Garden, while German works and operetta were sadly neglected. The Civic Opera Company opened on November 13, 1922 with a stunning performance of '' Aïda''. This was a traditional opera to start with and was obviously the choice of Insull and not Mary Garden, who was the champion of French opera and had a more modern taste in music. Typical of what she would have chosen would have been '' Pelléas et Mélisande'', a role

Debussy Achille Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionism in music, Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influe ...

had written for her. This is almost the opposite of Insull's taste in opera, he preferred older pieces in Italian, such as works by

Verdi Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi ( ; ; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto, a small town in the province of Parma, to a family of moderate means, recei ...

Puccini Giacomo Puccini (22 December 1858 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer known primarily for his operas. Regarded as the greatest and most successful proponent of Italian opera after Verdi, he was descended from a long line of composers, s ...

, and

Rossini Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. He gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano p ...

. This tension was resolved by having an almost equal number of Italian and French operas a year, contrary to practice at virtually any other opera house outside France, with other languages wildly under represented. Sometimes even Russian operas, such as ''

Boris Godunov Boris Feodorovich Godunov (; ; ) was the ''de facto'' regent of Russia from 1585 to 1598 and then tsar from 1598 to 1605 following the death of Feodor I, the last of the Rurik dynasty. After the end of Feodor's reign, Russia descended into t ...

'', were performed in French.

New Opera House

Originally, like Chicago Opera Association, the Civic Opera Company was housed in the Auditorium theater. This theater was superlative for singing, the acoustics were and are second to none, but there was no back stage to speak of. This limits the productions possible to put on and that can be housed at one point in time, a limit that both Insull and Garden chafed under, so very early on, Insull decided that there would be a new opera house. The new Civic Opera House would be marginally smaller in seat capacity than the auditorium, but this was out-weighed by the back stage space which was to be larger than any other back stage space at that time, and the acoustics were not quite as good as that of the auditorium, but they are still very good. The building of the new opera house was to be semi-financed by Insull, and the rest would be leveraged in with bonds to be held by the

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company MetLife, Inc. is the holding corporation for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MLIC), better known as MetLife, and its affiliates. MetLife is among the largest global providers of insurance, annuities, and employee benefit programs, w ...

. The original plan was that the Civic Opera would retire these bonds over the next eighty years with rents from a 28-story office tower above the theatre. Thus they would completely own the building and rentals from the office space would subsidize the Civic Opera Company. In the 1950s the theater became the home of the

Lyric Opera of Chicago Lyric Opera of Chicago is an American opera company based in Chicago, Illinois. The company was founded in Chicago in 1954, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox (Chicago opera), Carol Fox, Nicola Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, w ...

Bankruptcy

This was a magnificent plan and would have worked wonderfully, except that opening night ironically fell on November 4, 1929 (again with a delightful performance of Aida) less than a month after the Black Tuesday stock crash. This catastrophe, coupled with the extravagance of the new house, were body blows at the financial health of the civic Opera, starting a chain reaction. Soon Insull, the financial mainstay, lost control of his utilities and transportation companies and became unable to under-write Civic Opera. Mary Garden, the star-power and resident genius of Civic, never happy with the new opera house, retired abruptly after a performance of Massenet's '' Le jongleur de Notre-Dame'' at the end of the 1931/2 season. Finally, on June 23, 1932, Civic Opera declared bankruptcy and was forced to liquidate.

References

General references

* Davis, Ronald L., ''Opera in Chicago'', Appleton, New York City, 1966. * Marsh, Robert C. and Norman Pellegrini, ''150 Years of Opera in Chicago'', Northern Illinois University Press, Chicago 2006.