American Opera Company

The American Opera Company was the name of four different opera companies active in the United States. The first company was a short-lived opera company founded in New York City in February, 1886 that lasted only one season. The second company was based out of Rochester, New York and was active from the mid-1920s up until 1930 when it went bankrupt not too long after the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The third opera company was a short lived company located in Trenton, New Jersey that was active in 1937. The fourth and last opera company was actively performing in Philadelphia from 1946 through 1950.

Jeannette Thurber's American Opera Company

The first American Opera Company was founded in 1886 by well known arts patron Jeannette Meyers Thurber who had just founded the National Conservatory of Music of America a few months earlier. Based in New York City, the American Opera Company was under the musical direction of Theodore Thomas with Gustav Hinrichs and Arthur Mees assistant conductors and Charles E. Locke was the business manager. It rented the premises of the Academy of Music in New York City for local performances during 1886. It also toured, playing in April, May and June 1886 in, among other cities, Boston, Indianapolis, Philadelphia and St. Louis. The repertoire included Verdi's Aida, Wagner's Lohengrin, and Gounod's Faust. In August, the company announced an ambitious plan to travel to Paris, a trip that never came about.

Opera

Opera /ˈɒprə/ (Italian: [ˈɔːpera]; English plural: operas; Italian plural: opere [ˈɔːpere]) is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text (libretto) and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. In traditional opera, singers do two types of singing: recitative, a speech-inflected style and arias, a more melodic style. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 1800s has been led by a conductor.

Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. It started in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri's lost Dafne, produced in Florence in 1598) and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Schütz in Germany, Lully in France, and Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the 17th century. In the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe (except France), attracting foreign composers such as Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his "reform" operas in the 1760s. Today the most renowned figure of late 18th century opera is Mozart, who began with opera seria but is most famous for his Italian comic operas, especially The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze Di Figaro), Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, as well as The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), a landmark in the German tradition.