FLORIDA GRAND OPERA

'Florida Grand Opera (FGO)', is the seventh oldest opera company in the United States, currently in its 66th season. The company was founded as the ''Opera Guild of Greater Miami'' in 1941 by Dr. Arturo di Filippi and has grown under the successive leadership of the general directors Robert Herman and Robert M. Heuer.
Florida Grand Opera was created in 1994 through a merger between the Greater Miami Opera and the Opera Guild, Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, bringing together two important South Florida communities in support of one of the region’s most important cultural institutions. In Miami, its administration and operations have been housed at the Arturo di Filippi Educational Center while the Josephine S. Leiser Opera Center is the location for the Opera’s activities in Fort Lauderdale.
At present, the company's General Director is Robert Heuer; its Artistic Director and Principal Conductor is Stewart Robertson. The chorus was, until August 2007, under the direction of Douglas Kinney-Frost; a replacement has not yet been announced.

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Company facilities, history, and activities

External links

Company facilities, history, and activities

With an $18-million operating budget, the Opera employs 42 full-time and 250 part-time and seasonal personnel to produce the 2006/2007 season of 52-plus main stage performances, attended by over 100,000 people at its new home, the brand-new ''Sanford and Dolores Ziff Ballet Opera House'' located in the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, Miami's new premier arts theatre.
Until recently, the company's performing home was the Dade County Auditorium in Miami, with performances also at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Ft. Lauderdale, but the Carnival Center in Miami and the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale are now its two principal venues. Its education and outreach programs serve 40,000 people annually, and each year talented young singers come to Miami from throughout the country for training in its highly regarded Ensemble Program.
The company has a long history of presenting internationally-renowned singers, set designers, directors and conductors. Its extensive repertoire embraces 400 years of opera, and includes standard works; lesser known works; modern works; and works by living composers.
In the past, the Company has played host to many of the world's leading opera singers, such as Luciano Pavarotti, who made his American debut with the then-Greater Miami Opera in Donizetti's ''Lucia di Lammermoor'' alongside Dame Joan Sutherland in February 1965, as well as Placido Domingo, Birgit Nilsson, Sherill Milnes, and James Morris.
The 2006/2007 season will see productions of Verdi's ''Aïda'', with renowned dramatic soprano Angela Brown, as well as the Opera's largest chorus ever assembled on stage; Mozart's ''The Abduction from the Seraglio''; Puccini's ''Manon Lescaut'' with French soprano Sylvie Valayre; Bellini's ''La sonnambula''; Saint-Saëns' ''Samson et Dalila'' starring Denyce Graves and Jon Villars; and the world premiere of David Carlson's ''Anna Karenina''.

External links

★ Florida Grand Opera

★ Pulse Culture

★ Carnival Center for the Performing Arts