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Opera Company of Boston


The Opera Company of Boston was an American opera company located in Boston, Massachusetts, that was active from the late 1950s through the 1980s. The company was founded by American conductor Sarah Caldwell in 1958 under the name Boston Opera Group.

At one time, the touring arm of the company was called Opera New England. Caldwell served as both director and conductor for most of the company's productions throughout its more than three decade-long history. Under her leadership, the company presented a repertoire of more than 75 operas that came from a wide array of musical periods and styles, including a large number of works previously unheard in the United States, and a significant number of contemporary operas.

This commitment to innovative repertoire as well as Caldwell's brilliant stage direction garnered the company international acclaim and earned it a place among the world's leading opera companies during the 1970s and 1980s. After 32 consecutive opera seasons, the company was forced to close due to financial difficulties in 1990.

In 1958, Sarah Caldwell and Linda Cabot Black, among others, started the Opera Company of Boston with just $5,000, beginning with a production of Jacques Offenbach's Voyage to the Moon that was presented on Boston Common with a cast that included Adelaide Bishop as Queen Popotte. Hailed by The Boston Globe as a masterful production, the company was invited to present the work on the lawn of the White House in a performance attended by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. On the heels of this success, Caldwell decided to stage a production of Puccini's La bohème.

At this point the opera company did not have a home theatre. The fifty-year-old Boston Opera House had been in disuse for a long time and was torn down just months before Caldwell founded her company. Caldwell eventually settled on renting the Donnelly Theater for the company's performance of La Boheme, and that theatre became the company's performance venue until it was torn down ten years later in 1968.


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