History
The Festival was founded in 1974 by Melvin Kaplan, oboist and teacher at Juilliard, in collaboration with conductor William Metcalfe and the University of Vermont. The first season featured all-Mozart performances at the UVM Show Barn, Shelburne Farms, Royall Tyler Theatre, Robert Hull Fleming Museum, St. Paul's Cathedral, and aboard the S.S. Champlain. Notably, the Shelburne Farms concert marked the first time that the site was opened for a public event. In all, ten concerts were held over two weeks; every concert sold out. The following season, the Festival's format was expanded to include 15 concerts and three workshops. This format remained mostly unchanged for rest of the Festivals 37 years, though in 2006 the Festival presented 19 concerts. The Festival performed more than 3,000 pieces in over 50 locations, including at least 278 of Mozart's 626 works—possibly more than any other festival or concert series in the United States.
The Festival was incorporated as a non-profit organization in late 1976; the first full board of directors was assembled in early 1977. Following a successful fundraising campaign, the Festival achieved national recognition when CBS Sunday Morning filmed a week of concerts on location. A series of winter concerts began in 1978, and by 1979 the Festival was firmly established, drawing praise from the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Montreal Star. In 1983, the complete Winter Series was recorded by National Public Radio and aired on Performance Today. In 1984, the Festival presented its first concert on the meadow of the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont, which quickly became, along with Shelburne Farms, one of the Festival's two largest and most popular concert sites. In the 2000s, all concerts on the Trapp meadow were followed by fireworks displays.
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