Baltimore Opera Company

The Baltimore Opera Company (BOC) was an opera company in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A., based at the Baltimore Lyric Opera House.

On 12 March 2009, the 58-year-old opera company announced plans to pursue Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation, the result of the company having filed a petition on 10 December 2008 under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maryland.

Amongst the reasons cited were "dwindling ticket sales and contributions". Productions of Gioachino Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia and George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, scheduled respectively for March and May 2009, were canceled, and ticket-holders did not receive refunds.

The former home of the now defunct BOC, the Lyric Opera House, is a music venue modeled after the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, building inaugurated on 31 October 1894 with a performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Australian opera singer Nellie Melba as the featured soloist. Not long after, Enrico Caruso appeared there with the Metropolitan Opera in a performance of Flotow's Martha. One former opera singer for the Baltimore Opera is Mike Rowe, now well known as the television host of Dirty Jobs on The Discovery Channel.

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