BOULDER OPERA Competitors

From the unlikeliest of beginnings—an opera company located hundreds of miles from any major city, featuring American singers in a wide-ranging and challenging repertory, and treating theatrical and musical values as equally important in its productions—The Santa Fe Opera has grown to become recognized as one of the world's leading cultural festivals.

Founded in 1963, Seattle Opera is a leading American opera company. The company presents the classics of the European repertoire as well as new works of American opera. Seattle Opera performs five operas per year. Seattle Opera strives to produce musically extraordinary, theatrically compelling operas, employing uniformly high quality casts, dramatically aware conductors, and innovative yet textually concerned directors and designers. By continuing our emphasis on the work of Richard Wagner and by achieving national and international recognition for the quality of all our programming, Seattle Opera commits itself to advancing the cultural life of the Pacific Northwest through education and performance.

Founded in 1920 and the second oldest opera company in the U.S., Cincinnati Opera presents a thrilling roster of world-class artists and conductors, important company debuts, stunning sets and costumes, and the spectacular Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Today the company is hailed as Cincinnati's "prime summer arts festival" attracting a passionate regional audience as well as opera tourists from throughout the U.S. and Canada.