Opera Cleveland is Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

's professional opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 company, formed in 2006 following a merger between two existing opera companies: the Cleveland Opera (which operated from 1976 to 2006), and the area's other professional opera company, Lyric Opera Cleveland.

Cleveland Opera

Cleveland Opera was incorporated by David Bamberger, Carola Bamberger, and John D. Heavenrich in March 1976 and presented its first season in October and November of that year with sold-out productions of Puccini

Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...

's Madame Butterfly and Rossini

Gioacchino Rossini

Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces...

's The Barber of Seville

The Barber of Seville

The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...

. By 1984, it had become the resident opera company at Playhouse Square Center

Playhouse Square Center

The Playhouse Square Center, in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, is the second-largest theater complex in the United States . Constructed in a span of nineteen months in the early 1920s, the theaters were subsequently closed down, but were revived through a grass-roots effort...

, with performances at the State Theater

State Theater (Cleveland)

The State Theatre is a theater on Euclid Avenue, Cleveland in downtown Cleveland, Ohio that is part of Playhouse Square. It was designed by architect Thomas W. Lamb to be the flagship of Marcus Loew's Loew's Ohio Theatres company....

. The company played an integral part in the revitalization of Cleveland's historic theater district and was a leader in the movement to make theaters accessible to the physically challenged. There was considerable overlap between the orchestra personnel of the Cleveland Opera, Cleveland Ballet

Ballet San Jose

Ballet San Jose in San Jose, California, USA, was founded in 1986 as the "San Jose Cleveland Ballet," a co-venture with the ten-year old Cleveland Ballet which offered to the dancers added performing exposure, and each city a ballet company for a moderate, shared investment...

, and the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, to the advantage of all three organizations.

The company was managed from March 1976 to April 2004 by David Bamberger as General Director and Carola Bamberger as Associate Director. In that period, it presented 122 full productions of 74 works by 43 different composers spanning the history of musical theater from Monteverdi to the present. Its casts included some of opera's greatest artists, among whom were Roberta Peters

Roberta Peters

Roberta Peters is an American coloratura soprano.One of the most prominent American singers to achieve lasting fame and success in opera, Peters is noted for her 35-year association with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York...

, Jerome Hines

Jerome Hines

The American Jerome A. Hines was a basso opera singer who performed at the Metropolitan Opera from 1946 to 1987...

, Sherrill Milnes

Sherrill Milnes

Sherrill Milnes is an American operatic baritone most famous for his Verdi roles. From 1965 until 1997 he was associated with the Metropolitan Opera....

, and (in concert) Plácido Domingo

Plácido Domingo

Plácido Domingo KBE , born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range...

, Luciano Pavarotti

Luciano Pavarotti

right|thumb|Luciano Pavarotti performing at the opening of the Constantine Palace in [[Strelna]], 31 May 2003. The concert was part of the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of [[St...

, and José Carreras

José Carreras

Josep Maria Carreras i Coll , better known as José Carreras , is a Spanish Catalan tenor particularly known for his performances in the operas of Verdi and Puccini...

.

In addition to operas and operettas, Cleveland Opera presented several musical theatre

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 favorites, such as West Side Story, Man of La Mancha

Man of La Mancha

Man of La Mancha is a musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion and music by Mitch Leigh. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes's seventeenth century masterpiece Don Quixote...

and My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...

. It received international attention by commissioning and presenting a world premiere opera by a noted Rock musician, Stewart Copeland

Stewart Copeland

Stewart Armstrong Copeland is an American musician, best known as the drummer for the band The Police. During the group's extended hiatus from the mid-1980s to 2007, he played in other bands and composed soundtracks...

 of "The Police

The Police

The Police were an English rock band formed in London in 1977. For the vast majority of their history, the band consisted of Sting , Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland...

", with his opera Holy Blood and Crescent Moon. The company was also noted for “Cleveland Opera on Tour,” an extensive education and outreach program. It was a member of OPERA America

Opera America

Opera America, officially OPERA America, is a service organization in North America promoting the creation, presentation, and enjoyment of opera...

, a national organization which oversees and helps the development of opera across the North American continent.

Opera Cleveland

After April 2004, the company pursued financial policies that weakened it considerably. The decision was made to merge with a smaller company that operated largely in the summer, Lyric Opera Cleveland, and that was also facing financial challenges. The merged company was newly-named Opera Cleveland and gave its first staged production in April 2007. The national economic crisis that began about the same time was more than the struggling company could handle, and it suspended performing in the fall of 2010. A committee has been established to consider what type of opera company Cleveland might be able to sustain in the future.