Michigan Opera Theatre (MOT) is Michigan's principal opera company. The company is based in Detroit, where it performs in the Detroit Opera House. Each year it presents a season of five operas in their original language with English supertitles. The company also has an extensive arts education and outreach program, and in 2005 won a National Endowment for the Arts, Access to Artistic Excellence grant to support its staging of the world premiere of Margaret Garner.[1]
The Michigan Opera Theatre was originally established as an education and outreach arm of the Detroit Grand Opera Association by its current General Director, David DiChiera in 1963. It became a professional opera company in 1971 with productions that often featured young American opera singers from a diversity of backgrounds, a tradition that continues to this day. Among the notable artists who have sung at the MOT early in their careers are: Leona Mitchell, who sang Bess in the company's 1975 production of Porgy and Bess; Kathleen Battle, whose 1975 performance as Rosina in The Barber of Seville marked her operatic debut; Catherine Malfitano, who created the role of Catherine Sloper in MOT's world premiere staging of Washington Square in 1976; and Nicole Cabell who sang Musetta in La bohème in 2005, a few months after winning the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition.
World premieres
Michigan Opera Theatre has staged the world premieres of the following operas:
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