Opera North (U.S.A.)

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Opera North is a professional opera company based in Lebanon, NH and is a member of OPERA America. The company presents an annual summer festival of two fully staged operas. Opera North productions are staged at the Lebanon Opera House but while the company enjoys a cooperative and cordial relationship with the theater, the two organizations are artistically and financially independent.

Opera North was founded in 1981 as an offshoot of the Parish Players, a community theater in Thetford, Vermont by the late David Strohmier. At this time the company was merely a non-profit community theater organization. Under Strohmier's leadership the company focused mostly on light opera and operettas with a particular focus on the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Strohmier worked closelt with Louis Burkot, the then director of the Dartmouth Glee Club. After Strohmier’s departure in 1987, Burkot became artistic director of the company, and began moving the Opera North towards more serious operatic repetoire.

The 1988 Opera North hired producer Flo Klausner and opera director Ron Luchsinger for the company's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe. Since then Klausner has served as executive producer for many of Opera North's productions, and Luchsinger has become Director of Productions for the company. Klausner and Luchsinger became instrumental in changing Opera North into a professional regional opera company. In 1996, Opera North hired executive director Patricia Compton and officially became a professional opera company. Compton stayed with the company until 2006 when Risa Bridges-Hall joined Opera North as the first full-time executive director of the company.^[1]

AS the company has grown from a community organization to a professional one so has the artistic development of the organization. Today, Opera North’s principal singers are frequently on the roster of the New York City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera and other major regional houses. Orchestra members, most returning year after year, hold prominent positions in important symphony orchestras.

In recent years, Opera North has become noted for their artistic excellence, winning praise from critics in Opera News magazine, the New York Times, and other important music critics. In 1997, Money Magazine named Opera North one of the best summer opera festivals in the world. In 2003 Opera News named the company as the “best on the summer circuit.” That same year the company was selected as a model company for a major research program sponsored by Opera America, the service organization of American opera companies. In 2004, Opera North received seven awards in various categories from OperaOnline, for being tops in summer season opera productions. In 2005 the company's production of Tosca was awarded “best summer opera of the season” by OperaOnline.