The company was the brainchild of the late Alan Stone, a former singer who had studied in Italy and then returned to Chicago, creating a prominent position as a vocal coach and mentor. Stone founded Chicago Opera Studio, Inc (COSI) in 1973 to provide performance opportunities for his students and colleagues. On April 26, 1974, the company was fittingly introduced with a critically acclaimed English language production of Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte at Jones Commercial High School.

The second season production was Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and the number of donors listed in the program had increased from 33 to over 90, including world-famous singer Grace Bumbry and choreographer Gerald Arpino. In keeping with the terms of a touring grant from the Illinois Arts Council, Figaro and Barber were also presented at the Court Theatre (then the courtyard to the adjacent Mandel Hall at the University of Chicago) and at other venues in the greater Chicago area.

COT soon became known for its dramatically engaged English-language productions, performed by skilled, age-appropriate singer-actors and staged by talented young directors like Ronald Combs, Frank Galati, Lou Galterio, Peter Amster, Michael Maggio, and Dominic Missimi. In 1983, Gian Carlo Menotti staged his own opera The Consul, stating, “This company is really an extraordinary company…I must say it’s one of the best companies that has ever been assembled to do The Consul, and God knows The Consul has been done practically in every country in the world.”

Among the core performers featured in those years were local standouts Maria Lagios, Robert Orth, Glenn Siebert, Philip Kraus, and Warren Fremling, among many others, later supplemented by noted visiting artists Richard Leech, Carol Gutknecht, Sheryl Woods, Karen Huffstodt, Joan Gibbons, Karen Beardsley, Nancy Gustafson, Gregory Kunde, Cynthia Munzer, Mignon Dunn, and Mark Thomsen. Robert Frisbee conducted all of the productions in the early years. He was succeeded by brilliant up-and-coming conductors Mark Flint, Steven Larsen, and Michael Morgen.

The company was renamed Chicago Opera Theater (COT) in 1977. Although Stone was not able to fully realize his intentions until 1979, his earliest vision for the company was a three opera season: “one contemporary, one standard, and one seldom-performed work,” or as he would sometimes style them, “one Mozart, one modern, and one mini-masterpiece.” Once this formula was established, he kept to it for many years.

Among the standard works presented in fresh, clearly understandable productions during the company’s first twenty years were the Mozart staples The Marriage of Figaro (1975, 1981) and Abduction from the Seraglio (1977, 1982), Rossini’s Barber of Seville (1976, 1983) and Italian Girl in Algiers (1980, 1996), and Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (1978, 1988) and Elixir of Love (1985). In the latter part of this period the company ventured into more ambitious repertory with Puccini’s Madame Butterfly (1991) and Verdi’s La Traviata (1992).

The American bicentennial was aptly celebrated by the company’s first foray into contemporary works: the highly successful 1976 Chicago premiere of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s The Mother of Us All, enthusiastically endorsed by the illustrious composer. At the dress rehearsal, Thomson stated to civic leader Joan Harris, who would go on to serve on Chicago Opera Theater’s board for over 20 years, “My dear, I’ve seen a hundred and twenty-five of these and this is the best one yet.” American opera brought COT into the big leagues, and this production generated sellout crowds, public recognition, international praise, and prestigious celebrity guests. Other Chicago premieres of 20th-century American works in the Alan Stone years included Lee Hoiby and Lanford Wilson’s Summer and Smoke (1977, 1980), Robert Kurka and Lewis Allan’s The Good Soldier Schweik (1981), Marc Blitzstein’s Regina (1982), and Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men (1988).

From the onset, the financial and personal generosity of Joan and Irving Harris provided stability for COT, cementing the place of a strong second opera company in Chicago. Harris underwrote telecasts of The Mother of Us All and Summer and Smoke on PBS, garnering international recognition for the young company. During this time, COT also introduced Chicago to several seldom performed operas by well-known composers. Among these were Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera, Rossini’s The Turk in Italy and Count Ory, Smetana’s The Two Widows, and Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz.

Most of the productions during this period took place at Chicago’s Athenaeum Theater on Southport. In the later years, in conjunction with General Manager Marc Scorca (now the President and CEO of OPERA America), the company ventured out to larger venues for ambitious productions. The famous Frank Corsaro/Maurice Sendak production of Oliver Knussen and Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are was presented in 1988 at the Auditorium Theatre in partnership with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and again in 1990 at the Chicago Theatre. The company’s first musical, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, was given at the Shubert Theatre in 1990. In 1992, COT’s production of Menotti’s The Medium was recorded by the new local record label, Cedille Records, who would later capture the 2001 return of The Good Soldier Schweik.

The final production of the Alan Stone era was a scintillating production of Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts (1993), with an almost entirely local African American cast. It was fitting that Alan Stone’s last production as Artistic Director was a work by the same team as the first Chicago premiere.

You can read more about Stone and other artists prominent in COT’s early years in interviews by Chicago-based radio announcer, interviewer, and producer Bruce Duffie on his website here.

After a series of health challenges rendered it impossible for Alan Stone to continue his role, the company was guided from 1993 to 1999 by Artistic Director Carl Ratner and Music Director Lawrence Rapchak (both previously associated with Chamber Opera Chicago, which merged with COT in 1993), soon after followed with the addition of Mark Tiarks as General Director. Support for the company was led by two important Chicago philanthropists, Barre Seid (who had been the producer of Chamber Opera Chicago) and Board President Charles Angell, who provided office and rehearsal space for the company in his factory, Newly Weds Foods.

During this period the company continued its commitment to opera in English and presented many local artists including Mignon Dunn, Karen Brunssen, Kurt Link, Bruce Hall, Sunny Joy Langton, William Watson, Tracy Mould Watson, Kimberly Jones, Michael Sokol, Arnold Voketaitis and William Powers, some of whom had also performed for the company during the Alan Stone years. These were supplemented with out-of-town singers, notably Elizabeth Comeaux, Brenda Harris, Melanie Sonnenberg, Bruce Fowler, Brandon Jovanovich, Carl Tanner, and Samuel Mungo.

As before, the company continued to feature favorites by Mozart and Rossini, often staged in more abstract, updated, or experimental productions by Ratner. MacArthur “Genius” grant winner Mary Zimmerman, Charles Newell of Chicago’s Court Theatre, and English stage director and designer John Pascoe were welcomed guest directors. As Music Director, Lawrence Rapchak conducted most of the performances, with guest appearances by Ted Taylor, William Curry, and Bruce Hangen.

Continuing the focus on Chicago professional premieres of operas by 20th-century composers including Aaron Copland and Horace Everett’s The Tender Land (1995), Daron Hagen and Paul Muldoon’s Shining Brow (1997), and a triple bill of one-acts in 1998: Viktor Ullmann and Peter Kein’s The Kaiser of Atlantis, Lee Hoiby’s Bon Appétit! and Henry Mollicone and John S. Bowman’s The Face on the Barroom Floor. The production of Shining Brow, an episode from the life of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, generated a multi-event seminar curated by Jesse Gram on Wright and the Chicago school of architecture. The Kaiser of Atlantis, originally presented in the Terezin concentration camp, was the centerpiece of a series of related events about “Entartete Musik” during the Nazi régime in Germany. Ratner and Rapcheck established a COT tradition of programing works reflecting the relevance of current events affecting contemporary society.

This period also featured two remarkable pastiches. New Yorker music critic Paul Griffiths assembled many of Mozart’s best concert arias and connected them with dialogue in The Jewel Box, directed in 1996 by Charles Newell. Leonard Bernstein protégée Angelina Réaux combined the composer’s Trouble in Tahiti with excerpts from selected Bernstein works to create There is a Garden in 1999.

In 1999, Chicago Opera Theater’s Board of Directors restructured the company, merging the positions of Artistic Director, Music Director, and Executive Director into the post of General Director. Eminent international opera producer Brian Dickie, previously associated with the Canadian Opera Company and the Glyndebourne Festival in England, assumed the position. He executed the 1999/2000 Season which was the last planned by the preceding team. It consisted of two popular favorites, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville directed and designed by John Pascoe, and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, along with the Chicago premiere of its sequel, Michael Ching’s Buoso’s Ghost. The season was completed by Mary Zimmerman’s production of Philip Glass’ Akhnaten, with the composer in attendance. The production was presented with Boston Lyric Opera, beginning a tradition of collaboration with other opera companies. This production also was offered in conjunction with other important multi-city events, including a major tour of Egyptian artifacts “Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen” on display at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

The 2000/01 Season, facilitated by projected surtitles recently adopted over the world’s opera houses, returned opera to the original language. Under Dickie’s guidance COT welcomed international conductor Jane Glover who continued to appear with COT over the next decade. Critics praised her outstanding leadership of Chicago’s first professional rendering of Monteverdi’s Orfeo. Dickie, Glover, and Broadway stage director, Diane Paulus’ “very stylish modern-day stagings” were a winning combination, and the Orfeo production was invited to participate in the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Monteverdi cycle, garnering national acclaim for the company’s new artistic team.

Dickie brought more early music repertoire as well as English opera and European guest artists to the company. Handel operas became a staple along with Benjamin Britten. More esoteric titles and fanciful contemporary operas, such as John Adams and Peter Sellars’ A Flowering Tree (2008), and COT’s first Russian opera, Shostakovich’s Moscow, Cheryomushki (2012), were becoming new ventures Chicago audiences embraced. Also, COT formalized Opera for All, its education program for Chicago Public Schools students, and its Young Artist program, which had, of course, been part of the company’s identity since its founding. Dickie was twice named Person of the Year by the Chicago Tribune. Nothing about COT’s continued growth was predictable and everything was exciting.

In 2004, the new 1500-seat Harris Theater (The Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance) was ready for a full season of COT featuring international singers, directors, and designers. Dickie reinforced strong networking within the city with local universities, Lyric Opera, the Newberry Consort, and Music of the Baroque, sharing musical forces and creating a stronger audience and donor base, coordinated calendars, programing, and contracting. Chicago audiences were now enjoying opera year-round. The programming of the first professional production in Chicago of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2005), the return to Mozart and Rossini, as well as the Chicago premiere of John Adams and Alice Goodman’s Nixon in China (2006) secured the reputation of the company as a leading musical arts organization in Chicago and the nation.

The continued collaborations of Jane Glover and Diane Paulus were both masterful and controversial: “Yes, we had a bit of a to-do over Mozart’s Don Giovanni (2008), the last of our Da Ponte cycle, because Diane Paulus, predictably, brought a bit of bare flesh into the production,” wrote Brian Dickie. “Not that this is inappropriate given the subject matter. But one man's ‘apt’ is another's ‘disgraceful.’ However, there were enough people to judge this production as the finest they had seen in recent years to put my mind at rest.”

Dividing roles between international stars and Chicago artists on the rise in their careers became a combination that worked. Baritone Robert Orth, whose career began at COT in 1973, gave the company an indelible sense of permanence as well as flexibility. He starred in 14 productions with COT and remained a Chicago favorite for four decades, culminating in his performance of the title role in Nixon in China.

From 2001 to 2012, Chicago Opera Theater enjoyed opulent, innovative productions featuring major American talents including Ken Cazan (Owen Wingrave, 2009), Samuel Ramey (Bluebeard’s Castle, 2007), Nancy Gustafson (Erwartung, 2007), Isabel Leonard (Don Giovanni, 2008), Suzanne Mentzer (Dido and Aeneas, 2006), Frederica Van Stade (Three Decembers, 2010), Danielle de Niese (L’incoronazione di Poppea, 2004, and Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2005), Amanda Majeski (La Clemenza di Tito, 2009), Raymond Leppard (The Padlock and Dido and Aeneas, 2006), and Tim Mead in title role of Orlando (2008).

COT leadership was mindful of economic restraints. The company suffered seriously from the economic fallout from the recession of 2008. COT Board and staff rallied creatively, resizing productions, budgets, international casting, orchestra size and staff, starting with Peter Brooks’ reduced adaptation of Bizet’s Tragedy of Carmen (2009). Always at the company’s helm stood a Board of Directors deeply committed to keeping the mission of expanding the tradition of opera as a living art form and engaging new audiences. Dorothy Osborn Walton served ten years as Board President during Dickie’s tenure, followed by Erika Bruhn, David O’Connor, and Gregory J. O’Leary, the latter of whom established the COT President’s Council, a group of dedicated donor partners who receive behind-the-scenes access and the opportunity to serve on a non-fiduciary Board committee that remains active to this day.

In 2010, the company received a $500,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a three-year program. The repertory was to include a three-opera cycle of works featuring the character of Medea at various stages in her “career,” and 20th and 21st century operas to be given their first performances in Chicago. This endorsement of COT’s achievements enabled a serious curatorship of new operatic repertoire. The Medea cycle featuring operas by Cavalli, Charpentier, and Handel was welcomed by the public and pivotal in reenforcing COT’s mission as a presenter of unusual and neglected repertoire. The critics were equally impressed, with Andrew Patner of the Chicago Sun-Times calling the company “indispensable.”

COT was an early co-producer of Tod Machover’s Death and the Powers (2011), which was developed at the MIT Media Lab and received its world premiere in Monte Carlo shortly before coming to Chicago. Dubbed the “robot opera,” it was COT’s first time being involved in the development of a new work, despite a long history of presenting contemporary repertoire. The years 2010-12 experienced shortened seasons due to financial constraints, but these ventures garnered major national and international attention. Resourceful Board leadership and generous donors made the departure of Brian Dickie after 13 dynamic seasons another moment to embrace growth and change.

In 2013, the company transitioned to a new leadership with General and Artistic Director Andreas Mitisek, who assumed an ambitious vision to expand production offerings as well as fundraising capacity. Under Mitisek’s artistic leadership, the 43-year-old company moved boldly into more productions of modern and contemporary work. It also began producing in a variety of theaters, depending on the requirements of each production. As a result, Chicago saw his signature site-based productions, such as Frank Martin and Joseph Bédier’s Le vin herbé (2016/17) played at the venerable Music Box Theatre, and Ricky Ian Gordon’s Orpheus and Eurydice presented aquatically at no charge to the public in a Chicago Park District swimming pool. Chicagoans lined up for blocks to see and hear this performance! This singular presentation caused a major stir and generated new and novel interest in the company. The company also commissioned its first opera, Stewart Copeland and Jonathan Moore’s The Invention of Morel (2017), presented at the Fine Arts Building’s recently restored Studebaker Theater. Mitisek often assumed roles of designer, director, and/or conductor, and he was compelling and successful in generating a unique presence in the city.

Mitisek also provided the opportunity to build and share productions with Long Beach Opera, where he maintained simultaneous leadership with Chicago Opera Theater. Cost savings on joint productions formed one of the advantages Mitisek brought to COT when he was hired. Three shared productions with LBO included Philip Glass and Arthur Yorkins’ The Fall of the House of Usher (2013), COT’s first venture in South American works performed in Spanish with Ástor Piazzolla and Horacio Ferrer’s Maria De Buenos Aires (2013), and Duke Ellington’s Queenie Pie (2014).

Mitisek ended his brief but impactful tenure in 2017. A skilled fundraiser, Mitisek had succeeded in securing some of the largest gifts in the company’s history, including a generous grant from the MacArthur Foundation establishing a cash reserve and a $1.5 million gift from Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson to name the General Director position. He was succeeded as General Director briefly by Douglas Clayton, who had collaborated with him both at Long Beach Opera and at Chicago Opera Theater as Executive Director and General Manger.

Under the leadership of Board Presidents Henry Fogel and Susan Irion, the company continued to explore and grow according to its mission. Fogel, a long respected iconic leader in the Chicago arts world, had served as President of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Dean of Chicago College of Performing Arts, and as consultant, educator, and musicologist, was pivotal in leading the company through these transitions.

Ashley Magnus, director of development under Clayton, was appointed General Director in 2019. She joined Lidiya Yankovskaya, recently appointed and highly acclaimed as the Orli and Bill Staley Music Director. Russian American, dynamic Yankovskaya brought her experience and passion for Slavic repertoire to COT. Founder of the Refugee Orchestra Project and recipient of Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Awards, she spearheaded the commission of 11 new operas. Her leadership efforts also advanced the work of seven female composers and seven composers of color.

With the appointments of this team, the COT Board of Directors under the leadership of President Susan Irion, created for the first time one of the few multi-million-dollar opera companies led by women at both the artistic and executive level.

During the leadership of the Magnus/Yakovskaya years, COT mounted the Chicago premieres of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s Moby Dick (2019), Joby Talbot and Gene Scheer’s Everest (2020), Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta (2018), Rachmaninoff’s Aleko (2019), and Szymanowski’s King Roger (2022).

In 2018, COT established the Vanguard Initiative, an immersive two-year residency for emerging opera composers culminating in the development of a full-length chamber opera, enriching the repertory with new voices and experiences that resonate with today’s audiences. Alumni continue to garner commissions and premieres from the top opera companies and symphony orchestras around the country, and the works developed as part of the program definitively confirm the impact and importance of creating new operas to tell contemporary stories.

Confronted in 2020 with the global pandemic mandate on the art of singing as physical danger to others and confining artists and audiences to their homes, this dynamic duo immediately reshaped the mechanics of the company, closing the office, and embracing every technology available to continue to reach out to all audiences with a fervor never imagined. Rethinking everything from programming to quickly shrinking revenue, Magnus and Yankovskaya designed the most original performances of Daniel Catán and Juan Tovar’s La Hija de Rappaccini (2020), recorded and broadcast live from the Field Museum of Natural History.

During the COVID crisis, COT’s highly dedicated staff managed to continue the Opera for All program online, offered free to Chicago Public Schools. Also available to the public was the newly created “Inner Workings,” a two-season series of over 20 lectures and interviews hosted by Yankovskaya including conversations with leading artists and opera producers. These episodes were a welcomed online diversion for COT fans and the confined public around the world. When Yankovskaya was named Chicagoan of the Year and praised in the Chicago Tribune, as “the very model of how to survive adversity, and also how to thrive in it,” COT rejoiced in the team work and ingenuity recognized by the press.

Magnus and Yankovskaya brought unique, exciting programming to COT, from the brilliant Chicago premieres of Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell’s Elizabeth Cree (2018), Stefan Weisman and David Cote’s The Scarlet Ibis (2018/19), to the world premiere of Dan Shore’s Freedom Ride (2019/20). Yankovskaya also initiated the company’s first collaboration with American Lyric Theater, led by Lawrence Edelson. In 2019, the two companies combined resources to produce the orchestral workshop of Justine F. Chen and David Simpatico’s The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing, which had been commissioned and developed by ALT with Yankovskaya as conductor. The partnership on the final workshop of this opera in Chicago led to the critically acclaimed world premiere production at COT in 2023, starring Jonathan Michie in the title role, which was hailed by the Chicago Tribune as “spectacular!” and named the best opera of 2023.

In 2023 Magnus resigned to pursue a career in Music Festival management. Soon after, Yankovskaya, also decided to move on with international orchestral and operatic engagements. She, however, remains committed to overseeing the Vanguard Program through the end of the 2024/25 Season. Both women, after seven years of committed excellence and teamwork, most deservedly embrace new horizons in their careers.

After an intense national search, Lawrence Edelson was appointed as COT’s Edlis Neeson General Director. Edelson’s successful leadership roles at American Lyric Theater and Opera Saratoga, along with his track record of balancing artistically vibrant programming with prudent fiscal management, positions him ideally to lead COT into the future.

As COT approached its 50th Anniversary, Edelson joined the company in July of 2023, while Yankovskaya celebrated her tenure in her final season as Elizabeth Morse & Genius Music Director leading critically acclaimed productions of David T. Little’s Soldier Songs and Shostakovich’s The Nose, both Chicago premieres.

The 2024/25 Season is the first to be curated by Edelson and reflects his commitment to building upon COT’s robust history of producing important works never seen in Chicago before, alongside contemporary American operas by some of the country’s most exciting living composers and librettists. Through the continuation of the Vanguard Initiative and plans to expand the company’s programs for emerging artists, Edelson is also looking forward to ensure that COT continues to invest in the artists whose diverse and unique perspectives will bring today’s stories to the opera stage.