collection 00910 - Opera Hamilton fonds

Opera Hamilton was founded in 1980. Prior to its creation in 1976, Italian opera companies were invited to perform for Hamilton's Festitalia, a celebration of Italian culture. Due to the problems and costs associated with importing entire productions from Italy, Festitalia decided to produce its own operas starting in 1979. The following year Opera Hamilton was created with plans to perform two productions annually at Hamilton Place. At the end of their first season, Steven Thomas was appointed artistic director, Boris Brott was musical director, and the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra was the resident orchestra. Opera Hamilton also had agreements with CHCH TV to broadcast a television production of one opera each year.

Conductor Daniel Lipton was appointed to the role of artistic director for the 1986-7 season. Under his leadership, the company improved many aspects of its productions and continued to build a strong audience on the foundations of Italian 19th-century opera. In addition to standard repertoire, Lipton introduced the successful 'Popera' concerts in 1987 to showcase leading operatic soloists, including many Canadians, in concert performances of popular operatic excerpts. In 1989, Lipton expanded the Opera Hamilton season to three productions.

In 1995, plans to expand and share resources with the nearby city of Kitchener led to the creation of the operatic partnership known as Opera Ontario. As Opera Ontario, the company began to mount its productions in Hamilton and repeat them in Kitchener. The company announced their claim for bankruptcy in January of 2014 and ceased operations following years of financial struggles.