Max Maretzek Italian Opera Company

The Max Maretzek Italian Opera Company (sometimes referred to as the Italian Opera Company, the Italian Grand Opera Company, or Academy of Music Opera Company) was a touring American opera company that performed throughout the United States from 1849-1878. The first major opera company in Manhattan and one of the first important companies in the United States, it had a long association with the Academy of Music in New York City where it presented an annual season of opera from 1854 until the company's demise in 1878 There the company performed the United States premieres of Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and La traviata among other works.

The company also presented an annual season of opera at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia from 1857-1873, in addition to touring throughout the United States and to Cuba and Mexico. Musicologist George Whitney Martin described the company as the only opera company in the United States to perform with a full opera orchestra during the Civil War era and as "possibly the country's strongest" opera company in its day.

The Max Maretzek Italian Opera Company was founded in 1849 by impresario Max Maretzek, a Czech violinist and composer who had previously served as the chorus master and an assistant conductor at the Royal Opera House in London from 1844-1848, and had come to America in 1848 to become the music director of the Astor Opera House in New York City. Dissatisfied with the singers at Astor, Maretzek went to Europe to create a second company of singers, initially to provide one season of operatic entertainment in 1849-1850 for performances in Boston and at the Astor Opera House. Maretzek described his hand picked group of European artists as vastly superior to the resident aritsts that were currently engaged at the Astor Opera House, and it was this group that ultimately became the Max Maretzek Italian Opera Company. The group of singers was led by soprano Teresa Parodi, whom Maretzek selected in hopes of rivaling P. T. Barnum's prima donna, soprano Jenny Lind.

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