Opera companies around the world depend on the Bohemes and the Toscas to pay the bills, but Opera Boston boldly chose from the outset to leave the warhorses to others. And in a few short years, it earned the appreciation of opera buffs, the respect of singers, and the trust of a loyal audience that came seeking precisely what Opera Boston was best at offering: a sense of musical adventure, a glimpse of an exciting work that you could not hear anywhere else.
From the outset, the company faced fierce headwinds, not least of which was the fact that Boston has no dedicated opera house - an astonishing fact given its history and self-image as a city of cultural sophistication.
Opera Boston eventually made its home at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, but the size of the orchestra pit there meant the company could never present works requiring more than 42 players, ruling out a vast number of options.
Gil Rose, the omnivorous conductor and musical force behind the company, was not part of the old Boston musical establishment and often brought fresh thinking to his choice of repertoire. The company presented the New England premiere of Thomas Ades’s “Powder Her Face’’; John Adams’s “Nixon in China’’; the US premiere of Peter Eotvos’s “Angels in America’’; Kurt Weill’s “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny’’; Shostakovich’s “The Nose’’; and Hindemith’s “Cardillac,’’ to mention just a few of its most notable productions.
The company’s production model, too, was different, bucking the trend of regional companies renting sets and costumes from each other. Under the watchful eye of its founding general director Carole Charnow (succeeded this year by Lesley Koenig), Opera Boston built its own new production for each work.
