The Chicago Opera Company was a grand opera company in Chicago, organized from the remaining assets of the bankrupt Chicago City Opera Company, that produced six seasons of opera at the Civic Opera House from 1940 to 1946 (excluding 1943). Fausto Cleva was artistic director 1944-1946, and until 1945 Fortune Gallo was general manager. After the war, when consumer goods became more abundant and people spent less money on entertainment, interest in opera collapsed and the company went bankrupt. Rather than try to re-organize, the remaining assets were given to the largest creditor, the landlord of the Civic Opera House, Household finance, who then paid off the other remaining creditors. After the final collapse of an opera company that had been re-organized five times, there was no resident Chicago opera company until the founding of the Lyric Opera in 1954. One of the original group of organizers was Max Rabinoff.
Famous quotes containing the words chicago, opera and/or company:
“You want to get Capone? Here’s how you get him: he pulls a knife, you pull a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. It’s the Chicago way and that’s how you get Capone.”
—David Mamet, U.S. screenwriter, and Brian DePalma. Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery)
“To survive there, you need the ambition of a Latin-American revolutionary, the ego of a grand opera tenor, and the physical stamina of a cow pony.”
—Billie Burke (1885–1970)
“The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)