Baltimore needs an opera company it can believe in now that the venerable Baltimore Opera Company has closed up shop. For 58 seasons, the company's singers and musicians performed what has been called "the most extravagant art" - a lavish collage of symphonic music, theater and dance - with great panache and brio, to the delight of enthusiastic and intensely loyal local audiences.
The roster of stars who have performed under its auspices reads like a Who's Who of 20th-century musical theater: sopranos Birgit Nilsson, Renata Scotto and Beverly Sills; tenors Placido Domingo and Carlo Bergonzi; baritone Thomas Hampson and bass-baritone James Morris.
But with the company bankrupt and in liquidation, opera lovers now must look to the future. A city that long prided itself on having a company capable of pulling off such masterpieces of the repertory as Verdi's Aida, Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Wagner's Die Valkyrie must not now allow pride to get in the way of doing everything possible to keep interest in the art form alive and well.
There are already a number of smaller local ensembles looking to expand into the vacuum left by the company's demise. They include the recently formed Baltimore Concert Opera, which aspires to graduate from unstaged productions with piano accompaniment at the Engineer's Club to full orchestral performances at the Lyric Opera House; and the Baltimore Opera Theater, another newcomer that hopes to offer a season-long opera schedule at the Hippodrome Theatre with predominantly European singers and instrumentalists.
The Baltimore Sun's music critic, Tim Smith, reports that some former Baltimore Opera Company board members and others also have registered names of potential new opera-producing companies.
All these efforts are to be applauded as healthy signs of a community's continued desire to enjoy and support opera on a grand scale. But a new company won't rise from ashes of the old one overnight. Time will be needed to develop the talented production teams and support from major donors necessary to establish a new company on a sound artistic and economic footing.
That's why, in the meantime, Baltimore should seriously explore getting Washington's National Opera Company to perform at least part of its season at the Lyric in Baltimore in addition to its regular appearances at the Kennedy Center.
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has become a regular performer at Strathmore Hall in the Washington suburbs; there's no shame in our hosting Washington's renowned opera company here - at least until a permanent local ensemble can be established. One possible caveat might be the Lyric's smaller stage area, which has long been scheduled for expansion. But even that needn't be an insurmountable obstacle. Sets can always be cut down or modified. What's important is having a first-class company that performs here regularly to remind longtime devotees how great opera can be and to capture the imagination of a new generation of fans. That's what's needed to ensure the survival of any future homegrown company for years to come.
