First Seasons and Achievements
OTSL was founded in 1976 by Richard Gaddes, who at the time was working at the Santa Fe Opera, along with a group of opera enthusiasts who wished to see festival-quality opera in the St. Louis area. The model for OTSL was the Santa Fe Opera, as Gaddes noted:
"That was not a coincidence. I always say that John Crosby sired the Opera Theater of St. Louis. The whole concept was modeled on Santa Fe, and part of the idea was that the apprentices here would feed into St. Louis. Which they did."
The first season in 1976 presented eleven performances of Britten's Albert Herring, Mozart's The Impresario, Menotti's The Medium, and Donizetti's Don Pasquale, a mixture of some standard works and some new and unconventional operas which was to continue in future seasons and characterize the company's approach. This was achieved on a budget of $135,000. The young singers included Sheri Greenawald and Vinson Cole.
During the early seasons, the company made a major impact with such achievements as first joint BBC/WNET telecast of Albert Herring and the first appearance by any U.S. opera company at the 1983 Edinburgh International Festival. The first production of a Japanese opera in Japan by any American company was followed by a return to Tokyo in September 2001 to present the Japanese premiere of the classic Genji Monagatari adapted into an opera by Minoru Miki's as The Tale of Genji.
Well-known directors Graham Vick, Jonathan Miller, and Mark Lamos have made U.S. operatic debuts with OTSL, as did conductors Leonard Slatkin and Christopher Hogwood. Colin Graham served as OTSL's Director of Productions from 1978-1985. John Nelson was OTSL's Music Director from 1985 to 1988, and Principal Conductor from 1988 to 1991.
Other outstanding U.S. singers including Christine Brewer, Susan Graham, Dwayne Croft, Thomas Hampson, Jerry Hadley, Patricia Racette, and Sylvia McNair have made appearances in St Louis productions. All told, there have been 12 world premieres, including Stephen Paulus' The Postman Always Rings Twice in 1982, The Loss of Eden by Cary John Franklin in 2002; and, most recently, David Carlson's Anna Karenina, with a libretto by Colin Graham. In addition, there have been 14 American premieres, including Michael Berkeley's Jane Eyre; Benjamin Britten's Paul Bunyan; Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims (The Journey to Reims); and Judith Weir's The Vanishing Bridegroom.
The company also trains young artists in the Gerdine Young Artists program, named for Opera Theatre's founding board chairman, Leigh Gerdine.
Read more about this topic: Opera Theatre Of Saint Louis
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