American Opera Theater is a leading presenter of innovative opera in the United States. This company continues to garner acclaim for its innovative, challenging, and mesmerizing productions. AOT explores repertoire often left untouched. Combining its informed and honed musical aesthetic with its creative approach to visual affect, AOT produces performances that enliven, delight, and move audiences around the country.
AOT frequently mounts the American premier of forgotten works (most recently Charpentier’s David et Jonathas and Cavalli’s La Didone), while also redefining traditional favorites (notably its groundbreaking 2004 version of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas or its recent circus production of Händel’s Acis and Galatea). AOT also enters new artistic territory with contemporary multimedia productions like its acclaimed work Ground, Philip Glass’ Hydrogen Jukebox, or its staging of song-cycles by George Crumb and the Lecons de Tenebres of Francois Couperin. Based in Baltimore, MD, AOT performs around the world with a busy touring agenda.
AOT is also a committed educator on several fronts. The company is built on recruiting and training talented young professional singers and actors. Through their continued relationship with AOT they grow as a unified company of performers. AOT is the resident company of Georgetown University, and each collaborates on productions the join students with the AOT artistic team in concepts focusing on contemporary American issues. AOT also runs the biannual summer program Les Enfants Terribles, a program that invites a select group of talented young vocalists from around the world to participate in coachings, master classes, lectures, and ultimately the staging of a complete opera. AOT regularly programs productions and events particularly designed for students and young audiences.
Young people are just one of the many diverse audience groups to which AOT reaches out. Founded as an itinerant company, AOT considers space an organic part of its performances and searches out unconventional spaces for taking opera to new audiences. AOT productions are perhaps most noted for their immediacy and accessibility. AOT believes in a direct approach that unifies music, drama, and design in performance, and this approach has made it unique among American opera companies. AOT has been awarded grants from the Geoffrey C. Hughes Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Virginia Commission on the Arts, and the New Frontiers Foundation.
On the forefront of opera production, and continually growing and expanding its horizons, the American Opera Theater is a powerful voice in the American artistic wilderness of the new millennium.
photos by: Greg McLeskey, Jesse Helman & Kel Millionie
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