Madama Butterfly (IOA 1985)

By the year 1948 I had been at Cornell University for five years and had, naturally, met many people both inside and outside the University. Among them I discovered many who were interested in opera. The idea occurred to me that it might be possible to create an organization which would not be based in a single school but, rather, would draw together the population of the entire town. I had in mind funding a group, a civic organization, in which the possibilities afforded by both of the city's academic institutions (the little music conservatory had since become Ithaca College), together with support from the city itself, would combine to support a small opera troupe.

(Memorien des Ken C. (frueher Kurt) Baumann [The Memoirs of Ken C. (earlier Kurt) Baumann], translated by Edward Swenson.)

At that time in this country, people had no idea what opera was. The idea was that opera was for those foreign people in New York City who got dressed up for an evening and went to the theater to hear people singing in another language.

(Leary, Pat. "Ken Baumann and Ithaca Opera Association Celebrate Thirty Years". The Ithaca Times. October 4-10, 1979. 3.)

Founded in 1949 as the Ithaca Civic Opera Group by Kenneth C. Baumann, a former stage director at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin who immigrated to the United States to escape the Nazis, the Ithaca Opera Association (IOA) is recognized by Opera America as the longest running small opera company in the country. It was a founding member of both the Central Opera Service and the New York State Opera League, now principal organizations in the national and state opera scenes. It remains what it set out to be: a non-profit, community service organization dedicated to the promotion of opera in the Ithaca area. The IOA's main activities include providing the public with opportunities to see live opera productions locally, providing artists with opportunities to get a professional start in opera, and educating the public about opera.

Its first production was Domenico Cimarosa's The Secret Marriage, and since educating the people was at the heart of the IOA's mission, they decided to present this opera---and later others, whenever possible---in English. To make this possible, a four-person team including Mr. Baumann did their own translation. They completed an English libretto for The Secret Marriage that was then published and is still used today by opera companies across the country.

Mr. Baumann served the association as Artistic Director until 1973, whereafter he continued to serve as Artistic Director Emeritus. Barbara Troxell succeeded him for ten years and then Gary Race succeeded her for six. Mr. Race expanded the impact of the IOA by establishing several new programs: Opera Outreach toured schools and community organizations throughout the Finger Lakes region, Opera Workshop offered singers an excellent training program, and Project CoOPERAtion united middle school students with professional artists to compose and perform their own original opera. Individuals from the IOA have sung at Summer-Ithaca concerts and on local radio, and the opera company has collaborated with other local arts organizations such as the Cornell Chamber Orchestra and the Ithaca Ballet.

The IOA's more than 100 productions during its 50-year history have included such classics as Der Fledermaus, La Traviata, The Magic Flute, and Tosca. It has also presented its share of newer works, beginning in 1966 with its most daring and costly production to date, Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. The 1970s brought more twentieth-century operas to the Ithaca community stage, with Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring in 1972, and in 1973, the world premiere of Cornell professor Charles F. Hockett's Dońa Rosita, based on Los Títeres di Cachiporra by the Spanish playwright Féderico Garcia-Lorca.

The company's first twenty-five years were celebrated with a 1975 production of Rossini's The Barber of Seville, based on the first play in the comic trilogy by Beaumarchais. Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, based on the second play in the same Beaumarchais series, will this year mark the Ithaca Opera's second quarter-century.

Melissa Kastler

Last modified: 2000 March 21

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