Florida Grand Opera
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Florida Grand Opera (FGO), is the seventh oldest opera company in the United States, currently in its 68th season. The company was founded as the Opera Guild of Greater Miami in 1941 by Dr. Arturo di Filippi and has grown under the successive leadership of the general directors Robert Herman and Robert M. Heuer.
Florida Grand Opera was created in 1994 through a merger between the Greater Miami Opera and the Opera Guild, Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, bringing together two important South Florida communities in support of one of the region’s most important cultural institutions. In Miami, its administration and operations are housed at Florida Grand Opera Doral Center while the Josephine S. Leiser Opera Center is the location for the Opera’s activities in Fort Lauderdale.
At present, the company's General Director is Robert Heuer; its Music Director and Principal Conductor is Stewart Robertson. The chorus is under the direction of John Keene.
[edit] Company facilities, history, and activities
With a $15-million operating budget, the Opera employs 42 full-time and 250 part-time and seasonal personnel. Each of the past two seasons was attended by over 100,000 people at its new home, the Sanford and Dolores Ziff Ballet Opera House located in the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, previously known as the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, Miami's new premier performing arts center.
From 1951 until 2006,the company's performing home was the Miami-Dade County Auditorium in Miami. The Arienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County in Miami and the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale are now its two principal venues, with mainstage performances of each production given in both communities. Its education and outreach programs serve 40,000 people annually, and each year talented young singers come to Miami from throughout the country for training in its highly regarded Young Artist Studio.
The company has a long history of presenting internationally-renowned singers, set designers, directors and conductors. Its extensive repertoire embraces 400 years of opera, and includes standard works; lesser known works; modern works; and works by living composers.
In the past, the Company has played host to many of the world's leading opera singers, such as Luciano Pavarotti, who made his American debut with the then-Opera Guild of Greater Miami in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor alongside Dame Joan Sutherland in February 1965, as well as Placido Domingo, Birgit Nilsson, Sherrill Milnes, Deborah Voigt, and James Morris.
The 2008-09 mainstage season will feature productions of Verdi's La traviata, Rossini's La Cenerentola, Delibes' Lakmé, Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, and Puccini's Madama Butterfly.
