Vilnius City Opera[1] is an opera company that started in 2006 when a team of independent artists joined forces in staging Giacomo Puccini's La bohème. The artists included director Dalia Ibelhauptaitė,[2] conductor Gintaras Rinkevičius and scene artist Juozas Statkevičius.
The artists have called themselves bohemiečiai (the Bohemians) since this time. After 8 years of activity, the troupe acquired the status of a professional theatre and became known as the Vilnius City Opera.
Vilnius City Opera has no theatre of their own and stage their operas in the Vilnius Congress Concert Hall.[3] One of the main aims of VCO is to make the opera genre more widely available and to free it from elitist stereotypes and snobbishness.[4]
Operas staged by Vilnius City Opera (selected list):
- Giacomo Puccini La bohème, 2006
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Die Zauberflöte 2007
- Ruggero Leoncavallo Pagliacci, 2008
- Jules Massenet Werther, 2008
- Electronic opera XYZ, 2010
- Giacomo Puccini Manon Lescaut, 2012
- Marijus Adomaitis, Electronic opera e-Carmen, 2016[5]
- Charles Gounod Faust, 2017
