The Chicago Opera Company was a
grand opera
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterized by large-scale casts and orchestras, and (in their original productions) lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on o ...
company in Chicago, organized from the remaining assets of the bankrupt
Chicago City Opera Company
The Chicago City Opera Company was a grand opera company in Chicago, organized from the remaining assets of the bankrupt Chicago Grand Opera Company, that produced four seasons of opera at the Civic Opera House from 1935 to 1939 before it too suc ...
, that produced six seasons of opera at the
Civic Opera House
The Civic Opera House, also called Lyric Opera House is an opera house located at 20 North Wacker Drive in Chicago. The Civic's main performance space, named for Ardis Krainik, seats 3,563, making it the second-largest opera auditorium in North ...
from 1940 to 1946 (excluding 1943). Artistic directors included
Carlo Peroni (1941–1942) and
Fausto Cleva (1944–1946), and until 1945
Fortune Gallo
Fortune Thomas Gallo (May 9, 1878 – March 28, 1970) (born Fortunato Gallo) was an Italian-born opera impresario. Gallo was owner and General Manager of the traveling San Carlo Opera Company from 1913 until its disbandment in the late 1950s.
...
was general manager. After the war, when consumer goods became more abundant and people spent less money on entertainment, interest in opera collapsed and the company went bankrupt. Rather than try to re-organize, the remaining assets were given to the largest creditor, the landlord of the Civic Opera House,
Household Finance
HSBC Finance Corporation is a financial services company and a subsidiary of HSBC Holdings. It is the sixth-largest issuer of MasterCard and Visa credit cards in the United States. HSBC Finance Corporation was formed from the legal entity tha ...
, who then paid off the other remaining creditors. After the final collapse of an opera company that had been re-organized five times, there was no resident Chicago opera company until the founding of the
Lyric Opera
Lyric may refer to:
* Lyrics, the words, often in verse form, which are sung, usually to a melody, and constitute the semantic content of a song
* Lyric poetry is a form of poetry that expresses a subjective, personal point of view
* Lyric, from t ...
in 1954. One of the original group of organizers was
Max Rabinoff
Max A. Rabinoff (March 9, 1877 – April 19, 1966) was a Russian-born, naturalized American opera and ballet impresario and international economic adviser. By the time he had become a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1898 he had already started an in ...
.
See also
*
San Carlo Opera Company
The San Carlo Opera Company was the name of two different opera companies active in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century.
Henry Russell's San Carlo Opera
The first company was founded by impresario Henry Russell, initi ...
*
Chicago Lyric Opera
Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the leading opera companies in the United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1954, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox, Nicola Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, with a season that included Maria ...
References
* Davis, Ronald L., Opera in Chicago, Appleton, New York City, 1966.
* Marsh, Robert C. and
Norman Pellegrini Norman Pellegrini (July 18, 1929 – July 2, 2009) was an American radio executive, producer, and personality. He was the program director for WFMT radio in Chicago from 1953 to 1996. On air he led WFMT's internationally syndicated broadcasts of ...
, 150 Years of Opera in Chicago, Northern Illinois University Press, Chicago 2006.
Opera companies in Chicago
Musical groups established in 1940
Musical groups disestablished in 1946
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