Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
Encyclopedia
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL) is a summer opera festival held in St. Louis
, Missouri
. Typically four operas, all sung in English, are presented each season, which runs from late May to late June. Performances are accompanied by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra
, which is divided into two ensembles, each covering two of the operas, for the season. The company's performances are presented in the Loretto-Hilton Center on the campus of Webster University
. In 2005, OTSL adopted projected English-language supertitles in the theatre.
, who at the time was working at the Santa Fe Opera
, along with a group of opera enthusiasts who wished to see festival-quality opera in the St. Louis area. The model for OTSL was the Santa Fe Opera
, as Gaddes noted:
The first season in 1976 presented eleven performances of Britten's Albert Herring
, Mozart's The Impresario, Menotti's The Medium
, and Donizetti's Don Pasquale
, a mixture of some standard works and some new and unconventional operas which was to continue in future seasons and characterize the company's approach. This was achieved on a budget of $135,000. The young singers included Sheri Greenawald and Vinson Cole
.
During the early seasons, the company made a major impact with such achievements as first joint BBC
/WNET
telecast of Albert Herring
and the first appearance by any U.S. opera company at the 1983 Edinburgh International Festival
. The first production of a Japanese opera in Japan
by any American company was followed by a return to Tokyo
in September 2001 to present the Japanese premiere of the classic Genji Monagatari
adapted into an opera by Minoru Miki
's as The Tale of Genji.
Well-known directors Graham Vick
, Jonathan Miller
, and Mark Lamos
have made U.S. operatic debuts with OTSL, as did conductor
s Leonard Slatkin
and Christopher Hogwood
. Colin Graham
served as OTSL's Director of Productions from 1978-1985. John Nelson
was OTSL's Music Director from 1985 to 1988, and Principal Conductor from 1988 to 1991.
Other outstanding U.S. singers including Christine Brewer
, Susan Graham
, Dwayne Croft
, Thomas Hampson, Jerry Hadley
, Patricia Racette
, and Sylvia McNair
have made appearances in St Louis productions. All told, there have been 12 world premieres, including Stephen Paulus
' The Postman Always Rings Twice
in 1982, The Loss of Eden by Cary John Franklin in 2002; and, most recently, David Carlson's
Anna Karenina, with a libretto by Colin Graham
. In addition, there have been 14 American premieres, including Michael Berkeley
's Jane Eyre; Benjamin Britten
's Paul Bunyan
; Rossini
's Il viaggio a Reims
(The Journey to Reims); and Judith Weir
's The Vanishing Bridegroom
.
The company also trains young artists in the Gerdine Young Artists
program, named for Opera Theatre's founding board chairman, Leigh Gerdine.
, who has held the post since 1985 and had served as OTSL Executive Director beginning in 1984. MacKay has led the campaign to construct and fund the new Sally S. Levy Opera Center, a new and permanent administrative home and year-round rehearsal facility for the organisation. From 1985 until his death in April 2007, the OTSL Artistic Director was Colin Graham
. Since 1991, the Music Director is Stephen Lord.
In September 2007, OTSL named James Robinson as the company's next Artistic Director, and Timothy O'Leary to the position of Executive Director. In November 2007, Santa Fe Opera
named MacKay their next general director to succeed Gaddes, effective 1 October 2008, and MacKay concluded his OTSL tenure as General Director on 30 September 2008. In June 2008, OTSL named O'Leary as its third General Director, effective 1 October 2008.
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
, Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
. Typically four operas, all sung in English, are presented each season, which runs from late May to late June. Performances are accompanied by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra
Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra
The Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra based in St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1880 by Joseph Otten as the St. Louis Choral Society, the SLSO is the second-oldest symphony orchestra in the United States as it is preceded by the New York Philharmonic.-History:The St...
, which is divided into two ensembles, each covering two of the operas, for the season. The company's performances are presented in the Loretto-Hilton Center on the campus of Webster University
Webster University
Webster University is an American non-profit private university with its main campus in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. Webster University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission and is a member of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools...
. In 2005, OTSL adopted projected English-language supertitles in the theatre.
First seasons and achievements
OTSL was founded in 1976 by Richard GaddesRichard Gaddes
Richard Gaddes is an English-born opera company administrator based in the United States.-Career in England:Gaddes was born in Wallsend, England. He studied at Trinity College of Music in London. At Wigmore Hall, London’s famed recital hall, he created a series of lunchtime concerts designed to...
, who at the time was working at the Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe Opera
The Santa Fe Opera is an American opera company, located north of Santa Fe in the U.S. state of New Mexico, headquartered on a former guest ranch of .-General history:...
, along with a group of opera enthusiasts who wished to see festival-quality opera in the St. Louis area. The model for OTSL was the Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe Opera
The Santa Fe Opera is an American opera company, located north of Santa Fe in the U.S. state of New Mexico, headquartered on a former guest ranch of .-General history:...
, as Gaddes noted:
"That was not a coincidence. I always say that John Crosby sired the Opera Theater of St. Louis. The whole concept was modeled on Santa Fe, and part of the idea was that the apprentices here would feed into St. Louis. Which they did."
The first season in 1976 presented eleven performances of Britten's Albert Herring
Albert Herring
Albert Herring, Op. 39, is a chamber opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten.Composed in the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947, this comic opera was a successor to his serious opera The Rape of Lucretia...
, Mozart's The Impresario, Menotti's The Medium
The Medium
The Medium is a short two-act dramatic opera with words and music by Gian Carlo Menotti. Commissioned by Columbia University, its first performance was there on 8 May 1946. The opera's first professional production was presented on a double bill with Menotti's The Telephone at the Heckscher...
, and Donizetti's Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....
, a mixture of some standard works and some new and unconventional operas which was to continue in future seasons and characterize the company's approach. This was achieved on a budget of $135,000. The young singers included Sheri Greenawald and Vinson Cole
Vinson Cole
Vinson Cole is an American operatic tenor.A native of Kansas City, the tenor studied at the University of Missouri, Kansas City; the Philadelphia Musical Academy; and at the Curtis Institute of Music with Margaret Harshaw...
.
During the early seasons, the company made a major impact with such achievements as first joint BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
/WNET
WNET
WNET, channel 13 is a non-commercial educational public television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey. With its signal covering the New York metropolitan area, WNET is a primary station of the Public Broadcasting Service and a primary provider of PBS programming...
telecast of Albert Herring
Albert Herring
Albert Herring, Op. 39, is a chamber opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten.Composed in the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947, this comic opera was a successor to his serious opera The Rape of Lucretia...
and the first appearance by any U.S. opera company at the 1983 Edinburgh International Festival
Edinburgh International Festival
The Edinburgh International Festival is a festival of performing arts that takes place in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, over three weeks from around the middle of August. By invitation from the Festival Director, the International Festival brings top class performers of music , theatre, opera...
. The first production of a Japanese opera in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
by any American company was followed by a return to Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
in September 2001 to present the Japanese premiere of the classic Genji Monagatari
The Tale of Genji
is a classic work of Japanese literature attributed to the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century, around the peak of the Heian period. It is sometimes called the world's first novel, the first modern novel, the first psychological novel or the first novel still to be...
adapted into an opera by Minoru Miki
Minoru Miki
is a Japanese composer and artistic director, particularly known for his promotional activities in favour of Japanese traditional instruments and some of their performers....
's as The Tale of Genji.
Well-known directors Graham Vick
Graham Vick
Graham Vick CBE is an English opera director. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester....
, Jonathan Miller
Jonathan Miller
Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE is a British theatre and opera director, author, physician, television presenter, humorist and sculptor. Trained as a physician in the late 1950s, he first came to prominence in the 1960s with his role in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with fellow writers and...
, and Mark Lamos
Mark Lamos
Mark Lamos is an American theatre and opera director, producer and actor. Under his direction, Hartford Stage won the 1989 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre and he has been nominated for two other Tonys...
have made U.S. operatic debuts with OTSL, as did conductor
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
s Leonard Slatkin
Leonard Slatkin
Leonard Edward Slatkin is an American conductor and composer.-Early life and education:Slatkin was born in Los Angeles to a musical family that came from areas of the Russian Empire now in Ukraine. His father Felix Slatkin was the violinist, conductor and founder of the Hollywood String Quartet,...
and Christopher Hogwood
Christopher Hogwood
Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood CBE, MA , HonMusD , born 10 September 1941, Nottingham, is an English conductor, harpsichordist, writer and musicologist, well known as the founder of the Academy of Ancient Music.-Biography:...
. Colin Graham
Colin Graham
Colin Graham, OBE was a British-born stage director of opera, theater, and television.Graham was educated at Northaw School , Stowe School and RADA...
served as OTSL's Director of Productions from 1978-1985. John Nelson
John Nelson (conductor)
John Wilton Nelson is an American conductor. Nelson studied at Wheaton College, and later at the Juilliard School of Music with Jean Morel ....
was OTSL's Music Director from 1985 to 1988, and Principal Conductor from 1988 to 1991.
Other outstanding U.S. singers including Christine Brewer
Christine Brewer
Christine Brewer is an American soprano. She grew up in the Mississippi River town of Grand Tower, Illinois. She attended McKendree University in Lebanon, Illinois and concentrated on music education. She was a music teacher for several years before embarking on a professional music performing...
, Susan Graham
Susan Graham
Susan Graham is an American mezzo-soprano.Raised in Midland, Texas, she is a graduate of Texas Tech University and the Manhattan School of Music. She studied the piano for 13 years...
, Dwayne Croft
Dwayne Croft
Dwayne Croft is an American baritone who has sung in more than 300 performances in 25 roles at the Metropolitan Opera.He won the Richard Tucker Award in 1996....
, Thomas Hampson, Jerry Hadley
Jerry Hadley
Jerry Hadley was an American operatic tenor. He received three Grammy awards for his vocal performances in the recordings of Jenůfa , Susannah , and Candide...
, Patricia Racette
Patricia Racette
Patricia Lynn Racette is an American operatic soprano. A winner of the Richard Tucker Award in 1998, she has been a regular presence at major opera houses internationally. Racette has enjoyed long-term partnerships with the San Francisco Opera, where she has been a regular performer since 1989,...
, and Sylvia McNair
Sylvia McNair
Sylvia McNair is an American opera singer and classical recitalist who has also achieved notable success in the Broadway and cabaret genres. McNair, a soprano, has made several critically acclaimed recordings and has won two Grammy Awards....
have made appearances in St Louis productions. All told, there have been 12 world premieres, including Stephen Paulus
Stephen Paulus
Stephen Paulus is an American composer, best known for his operas and choral music. His best-known piece is his 1982 opera The Postman Always Rings Twice, one of several operas he has written for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, which prompted The New York Times to call him "a young man on the road...
' The Postman Always Rings Twice
The Postman Always Rings Twice (opera)
The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1982 opera with a libretto written by Colin Graham and music by Stephen Paulus, based on the 1934 novel by James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice....
in 1982, The Loss of Eden by Cary John Franklin in 2002; and, most recently, David Carlson's
David Carlson
David Carlson American composer.Carlson studied theory and composition at the Los Angeles High School of the Arts and with Leonard Stein at the California Institute of the Arts...
Anna Karenina, with a libretto by Colin Graham
Colin Graham
Colin Graham, OBE was a British-born stage director of opera, theater, and television.Graham was educated at Northaw School , Stowe School and RADA...
. In addition, there have been 14 American premieres, including Michael Berkeley
Michael Berkeley
Michael Berkeley is a British composer and broadcaster on music.-Early life:His father was the composer Sir Lennox Berkeley...
's Jane Eyre; 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 Paul Bunyan
Paul Bunyan (operetta)
Paul Bunyan is an operetta in two acts and a prologue composed by Benjamin Britten to a libretto by W. H. Auden. It premiered at Columbia University on May 5, 1941 to largely negative reviews, and Britten revised it in 1976...
; 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 Il viaggio a Reims
Il viaggio a Reims
Il viaggio a Reims, ossia L'albergo del giglio d'oro is an operatic dramma giocoso, originally performed in three acts, by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Balocchi, based in part on Corinne, ou L'Italie by Mme de Staël.Rossini's last opera in the Italian language Il viaggio a...
(The Journey to Reims); and Judith Weir
Judith Weir
Judith Weir CBE, is a British composer.-Biography:Her music has been appreciated by audiences and critics alike. She trained with John Tavener while still at school and subsequently with Robin Holloway at King's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1976...
's The Vanishing Bridegroom
The Vanishing Bridegroom
The Vanishing Bridegroom is an opera by composer Judith Weir. Commissioned by the Glasgow District Council, the opera was premiered by the Scottish Opera as a part of the 1990 European Capital of Culture celebrations in Glasgow. The United States premiere of the opera was given by the Opera Theatre...
.
The company also trains young artists in the Gerdine Young Artists
Gerdine Young Artists
The Gerdine Young Artists is an opera young artist program named for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis' founding board chairman and the National Medal of Arts recipient, Leigh Gerdine. The Gerdine Young Artists receive training and professional experience from internationally established opera stars...
program, named for Opera Theatre's founding board chairman, Leigh Gerdine.
Administration
Succeeding Gaddes as OTSL General Director was Charles MacKayCharles MacKay (US arts administrator)
Charles MacKay is an American arts administrator, currently the General Director of The Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico...
, who has held the post since 1985 and had served as OTSL Executive Director beginning in 1984. MacKay has led the campaign to construct and fund the new Sally S. Levy Opera Center, a new and permanent administrative home and year-round rehearsal facility for the organisation. From 1985 until his death in April 2007, the OTSL Artistic Director was Colin Graham
Colin Graham
Colin Graham, OBE was a British-born stage director of opera, theater, and television.Graham was educated at Northaw School , Stowe School and RADA...
. Since 1991, the Music Director is Stephen Lord.
In September 2007, OTSL named James Robinson as the company's next Artistic Director, and Timothy O'Leary to the position of Executive Director. In November 2007, Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe Opera
The Santa Fe Opera is an American opera company, located north of Santa Fe in the U.S. state of New Mexico, headquartered on a former guest ranch of .-General history:...
named MacKay their next general director to succeed Gaddes, effective 1 October 2008, and MacKay concluded his OTSL tenure as General Director on 30 September 2008. In June 2008, OTSL named O'Leary as its third General Director, effective 1 October 2008.