History of Harvard College Opera

For 30 years, we have made it our mission to introduce Harvard College to the art of opera and to provide opera performance opportunities to undergraduates.

Harvard College Opera's history stretches back to the early 1990s, when a group of students in Dunster House of Harvard University, led by Ethan Sperry '93, began an annual tradition of staging operas in the Dunster House dining hall. 

The Dunster House Opera was thus formed in 1992 as a house organization, in conjunction with the production of its first opera, Bizet's Carmen (1993). Since the beginning, we have oriented ourselves toward the future: our inaugural production was introduced by Sperry as “the first annual production of the Dunster House Opera Society." Years later, the company was officially recognized as an organization and “society” in 1997. For 20 years, the tradition of annual operas staged in the Dunster House dining hall continued,  beginning with Carmen in 1993 and lasting until Massenet's Cendrillon in 2013.

Since 2014, we have produced annual operas in the historic Agassiz Theatre. After the end of our twenty-year residency in Dunster House, we assumed the name Harvard College Opera to reflect our mission of bringing opera to the entire Harvard community. Two years after this change, we also began holding the annual Opera Gala on the final Saturday of performances in the spectacular Horner Room across the hall from our stage in Agassiz. After a year away from the Agassiz Stage due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Presidents Alexander Chen ’22 and Natalie Choo ’22 oversaw the first live stream of the annual opera to a digital audience. Our 2022 production of Le Nozze di Figaro marked our ninth year in the Agassiz Theatre, coinciding with the fifth annual gala.

Throughout our near thirty-year history, our productions have been praised by critics for their quality and inventiveness. Our 2007 production of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro reimagined the Count and Countess Almaviva as 35th President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jackie Kennedy, while our 2013 production of Massenet's Cendrillon depicted Cinderella's stepsisters as a pair of Mean Girls-esque sisters dressed head to toe in Juicy Couture. In 2018, our production of Strauss's Die Fledermaus introduced Orlofsky's masked ball to the twenty-first century as a wild office party, set against a visually striking backdrop of scintillating gold, garnering warm reviews from critics.

Of our dramatically modern Fledermaus, a critic from The Boston Musical Intelligencer declared, “despite my prejudices in favor of the more traditional approaches to staging, which in general remain firm, I make an enthusiastic exception for this boisterous Fledermaus." Likewise, our “modern without being mod” production of Die Zauberflöte in 2020 imbued the classic story of love conquering all with refreshingly new perspective in a timelessly magical setting that allowed the journeys of Pamina and Tamino proceed in perfect parallel — beginning with Pamina falling in love with a vision of Tamino at the very same time that he falls for her image. The effect, per The Boston Musical Intelligencer, “retains Mozart’s inevitable mix of serious and delightful,” and could be summarized with the judgment, “This well-ordered, respectful and respectable, musically and dramatically enriching traversal—nonprofessional but in no way amateurish—is well worth seeing and hearing.”

Most recently, our productions have ranged from time-honored classics, such as Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro (2022), to modern masterworks such as Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress (2016). We approach all of our operas — old and new — with a sense of vision and of the deep potential for newness presented by even centuries-old masterpieces. We look forward to welcoming you to our 2023 production.

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In 2019, the Board greatly expanded the scope of its activities off of the main stage under the leadership of Vice President of Arts Benjamin P. Wenzelberg ’21, producing its first year-long season of programmed events, a tradition that survived even the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 by dint of a full virtual season produced under the direction of President Jessica Shand ’21. In that same period, under its first two Belonging Chairs, James Rose’22/’23 and Rebecca Araten ’23, HCO adopted and implemented an amendment to its Constitution stipulating that 20% of net profits from the opera and 3% of the company budget each year, beginning in 2020, be donated to organizations actively working toward greater inclusion, access, equity, and justice in classical music, with a specific emphasis on confronting racism in opera. In 2022, this project expanded into our Opera, Equity, and Access project. Likewise, since 2022, under the leadership of Artistic Director Arhan Kumar ’23 and Co-Lead Recital Coordinator Dacha Thurber ’25, the artistic season has been expanded to include regularly occurring, informal, open-programmed recitals to further broaden access to performance opportunities for musicians at all levels of experience and confidence.

In 2022, marking thirty years from its original founding, the company began an ambitious program of transformation under Presidents James Rose ’22/’23 and Alina Dong ’23 and Artistic Director Arhan Kumar ’23. Driven by James Rose ’22/’23, the 2022–2023 Board erected the HCO ✕ YOU platform, organized the HCO ✕ Alumni initiatives, established a series of long-term open-involvement HCO Projects, originated a cross-organization collaboration within its Opera, Equity, & Access project to fund private classical vocal study for low-income students, reformed the governance and recruitment processes of the mainstage opera, designed an intensive training internship for first-time operatic stage directors, grew its social media presence and digital engagement channels, and massively expanded the opportunities available for engaging with its annual opera and season of events.

A long way from its early years in Dunster, in addition to the annual mainstage production, today’s Harvard College Opera serves as the central node in a network bringing together two vast communities of extraordinarily talented artists — creatives on Harvard campus, and our very own alumni in the arts — to enable, empower, and equip all manners of decentralized, collaborative art-making across disciplines and outside institutional boundaries, all while maintaining excellency in its own season of events, both programmed and informal.

We hope you will join us in further carrying out our vision for art, opera, and performance in the Harvard community. We look forward to seeing you during our 2023 season.