American Opera Projects

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American Opera Projects (AOP) is a professional opera company located in New York City, NY and is a member of OPERA America, the Fort Greene Association, and the Alliance of Resident Theatres/ New York (A.R.T./NY). The company's mission is "to champion innovative works of music theater, to expand the art form, and to identify, develop and present new works by emerging and established talent." The company aims to further the interest of the American public in new opera and musical theater productions and hopes to inspire the creation of new works that will survive the test of time. AOP has commissioned new works from some of this country’s most talented composers and librettists, and steers projects through from initial conception to final production.

The company was founded in 1988 by Grethe Barrett Holby who served as Artistic Director of AOP from 1988 until 2001, at which point Charles Jarden became the company's Executive Director and Steven Osgood the company's Artistic Director. Under there leadership, AOP has become highly instrumental in the revitalization of contemporary opera and musical theater in the United States through its exclusive devotion to creating, developing, and presenting new American opera and music theatre projects.

AOP productions have appeared at the Lincoln Center Festival, Skirball Center at NYU, the Guggenheim Museum, Symphony Space, the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia, the Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts, The Goethe Institute, Berlin’s Stükke Theater and Max Kade Auditorium, Aleksander Fredro Teatr in Poland, the Ensemble Theater am Petersplatz in Vienna, TADA! Children’s theater, The Center for Jewish History, 1794 Meeting House, the Daryl Roth 2 Theatre, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and at many out-of-doors performances sponsored by the City of New York Department of Parks and Recreation. AOP won a 2005 Encore award from the Arts & Business Council of NY for its innovative work.^[1]