The Company's Artistic Successes
The company made its mark in American opera long before the upsurge of regional opera in the US.Maria Callas opened the Civic Opera's first season with an inaugural recital conducted by Rescigno. She returned the following year to perform in La traviata in a production by Franco Zeffirelli and in Medea, directed by the Greek director, Alexis Minotis, two of her infrequent performances in the United States. According to John Ardoin, the long-time music critic for The Dallas Morning News, she sang in Lucia di Lammermoor in the 1958 season. Callas' rehearsal, with Resigno conducting the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, on 20 November 1957 was recorded, as was her performance in Medea on 6 November 1958.
Of the company's successes, one writer notes that "the Dallas Opera may have been just beginning, but what they accomplished was of the highest standard", while, in an interview, John Ardoin outlines the role of Laurence Kelly:
- “Everything must ride or fall on the taste of one man…. As it did with Kelly and his company. He went through all kinds of crap for 10 months out of the year -- mean fund-raising and playing social games and all -- to do what he loved the most for two months out of the year. And Kelly didn't care if you did Aida, or Rigoletto, or Carmen -- it just had to be the best Aida, and Rigoletto, and Carmen. He would agonize over it, and think it out. Nothing was ever casual with him, in the casting or the productions. That's not to say he didn't make mistake. But, ultimately, it was his taste, and his vision, and his commitment that did the trick".
Many singers have made their American debut in Dallas, such as Montserrat Caballé, Plácido Domingo, Gwyneth Jones, Waltraud Meier, Magda Olivero, Joan Sutherland, and Jon Vickers. Designer/director Franco Zeffirelli also made his US debut there. Dallas also has helped launch the careers of such American singers as Renée Fleming, Diana Soviero, and Ruth Ann Swenson.
The Dallas Opera commissioned Dominick Argento’s The Aspern Papers and gave its world premiere, which was nationally broadcast to four million viewers on PBS's “Great Performances” series in 1988. The company's first commission was for Robert Xavier Rodriguez's one-act children's opera Monkey See, Monkey Do in 1985. Additional commissions were for Tobias Picker's Thérèse Raquin in 2001 and Jake Heggie's Moby-Dick in 2010.
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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