Israeli Opera

The Israeli Opera, formerly known as the New Israeli Opera, is the principal opera company of Israel. It was founded in 1985 after lack of Israeli government funding led to the demise of the Israel National Opera. Since 1994 the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center has been its main performance venue. The company also founded the Israeli Opera Festival which has performed large-scale outdoor productions, originally at Caesarea, and from 2010 in Masada.

The company's General Director is Zach Granite who replaced Hanna Munitz who held the post from 1995 until 2016. Its Music Director as of 2014 is Daniel Oren

Opera in pre-statehood Israel was established by Mordechai Golinkin. Having heard the Balfour Declaration in 1917, Golinkin, a Jewish conductor born in the Russian Empire, founded a Jewish choir, the purpose of which was making enough money to found an Opera in the fledgling Jewish state. The choir gave concerts around the Russian Empire, with the chief highlight being a concert in 1918 in Petrograd, in which Feodor Chaliapin sang Hatikvah. In 1923, having gathered sufficient funds, Golinkin emigrated to Mandatory Palestine. On July 28, 1923, the Erez-Israeli Opera held its first performance with Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata, conducted by Mordechai Golinkin. In the absence of an opera house, the performance was held in a cinema building.

It had been Golinkin's original intention to establish the opera in Jerusalem, but Tel Aviv was finally chosen because most of the performing artists lived in this city. In the four years following the première, 17 different operas were performed by the Erez-Israeli Opera. However, by the end of 1927 Golinkin had no more funds to continue running the opera. Golinkin travelled to the United States to find sponsors, but having returned in 1929, performances could not be restarted due to the 1929 Palestine riots.

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