Union Avenue Opera

Union Avenue Opera (previously Union Avenue Opera Theatre) is an opera company based in St. Louis, Missouri. The company was founded in 1994 by Scott Schoonover, the music director of Union Avenue Christian Church, which serves as the company's venue in St. Louis' Visitation Park neighborhood.

In the summer of 1995, Scott Schoonover, with the support of the Arts Group of Union Avenue Christian Church and on a shoestring budget, mounted Union Avenue Opera Theatre's first production: Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and since that time UAOT became an integral part of the St. Louis arts community. After two seasons of smaller productions from lesser known operatic repertoire, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Schoonover produced a full-scale production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, sung in English, in 1998. This production spurred increased audience attendance as well as a growing donor base. Professional singers from beyond St. Louis took an interest in auditioning for the company as well, causing the company to expand its audition cities to Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City. Early seasons featured operas either in English or foreign language works sung in the vernacular. However, with its 2000 production of Giacomo Puccini's La bohème sung in Italian, Union Avenue Opera Theatre began its ongoing practice of presenting opera in the original language with projected English supertitles.

Between 1998 and 2003, Union Avenue Opera Theatre usually produced one to two full productions per summer along with a concert staging of an operetta. For the company's 10th season in 2004, Schoonover expanded the season to three full productions in the summer. It was also during this season that, as a nod to the company's inaugural season, Dido and Aeneas appeared once again in the repertory to critical acclaim.

In 2005, the company began offering off-season productions in October which focused on suspense-driven, "spooky" repertoire including Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium, Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw, Béla Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and Puccini's Il tabarro.

...
Wikipedia