Chicago Opera Theater

The Chicago Opera Theater (COT) is an opera company that was founded as the Chicago Opera Studio in 1974 by Alan Stone to give vocal students performance experience, although it has grown into a professional opera company. The stated mission of the COT is to provide first class productions of operatic repertoire that include the greatest works of the 17th through 20th centuries, and in the past it has had an emphasis on American composers and performers who sing in English. Currently, the COT extends the Chicago opera season by scheduling its performances after the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s season ends in spring.

The company's home is the 1,525-seat Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Chicago's Millennium Park, built in 2003 as a mostly underground-located state-of-the-art downtown performance facility. Prior to the 2004 season, the COT was most recently at the Athenaeum Theatre on the city’s north side.

Brian Dickie is the current General Director of the COT, a position he has held since September 1999. Alexander Platt is the COT's resident conductor and music advisor. His work with COT has included leading the Chicago premiere of Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice, and directing the Maurice Sendak/Tony Kushner version of Hans Krása's Brundibar and an adaptation of Tchaikovsky's Iolanta. Additionally, in 2006, he led the Chicago premiere of John Adams' Nixon in China, and in May 2007 conducted the dual Chicago premieres of Béla Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung (in English, Expectation).