History
Vancouver Opera was founded in 1958 and presented its first production in 1960. From its inception until 1974, and for two seasons from 1982 to 1984, the company was headed by Artistic Director Irving Guttman. Conductor Richard Bonynge served as Artistic Director from 1974 to 1982, and he was the founding Music Director of the Vancouver Opera Orchestra in the moment of its creation in 1977 (till that moment Vancouver Symphony Orchestra played also in the pit in opera productions). In 1984, Brian McMaster began a five-year tenure. He was followed by Guus Mostart for three seasons (1989-90, 1990-91 and 1991-92), and by Robert Hallam, who in 1991 was appointed to the new position of General Director.
The company's current General Director, James W. Wright, assumed the position in 1999. Formerly the head of Opera Carolina, Wright's career includes senior positions with Anchorage Opera, Tulsa Opera, and Lyric Opera of Kansas City. Its Music Director is Jonathan Darlington.
Read more about this topic: Vancouver Opera
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...”
—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)