Tacoma Opera

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Tacoma Opera is a professional opera company located in Tacoma, WA and is a member of OPERA America.^[1] The company presents two fully staged operas at the Pantages Theatre each year performing repertoire from the Baroque period to the present. This year the company presented Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld and Rossini's The Barber of Seville. Next season the company will present Rossini's Le Comte Ory and Gounod's Faust.^[2]

[edit] History

Tacoma Opera was founded in 1968. While the company initially enjoyed several years of sucsess, the company folded in the late 1970s. In 1981, Hans Wolf, then director of community outreach for Seattle Opera, successfully rebounded the company with the help of Pacific Lutheran University's then dean Richard Moe and the PLU fine arts staff. Wolf became the new director of the company and a production of Die Fledermaus was successfully staged that year. Under Wolf's leadership, the company produced many operettas and grand operas. The company also produced several premieres including the West Coast premiere of Offenbach's Christopher Columbus and the world premiere of a brand-new opera by Seattle composer Carol Sams' The Pied Piper of Hamelin among others. In the late 1990s, Wolf retired from his position and Rod Gideons became the new executive director of the company and David Bartholomew the artistic director.^[3] The current general director is Kathryn Smith, who first came to the company in 2003.