Gambist Craig Trompeter conceived of a niche opera company around 2006 that would provide what he saw as a much-needed baroque complement to Chicago’s two long-established organizations in the field that rarely ventured into that era. The result was the Haymarket Opera Company, which launched operations in 2011 and defied typical marketing practices by putting an emphasis on contemporary premieres of 17th- and 18th- century operas of which most audiences had never heard. Fifteen years on, it has grown considerably and, from September 24 to 27, is taking on one of the monuments of the repertoire: Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo”. 
By Kyle MacMillan
Conceived by gambist (with an appropriately musical surname) Craig Trompeter and launched with minimal resources and an almost entirely volunteer team, Haymarket Opera Company has gradually established itself well beyond Chicago without abandoning what makes it distinctive: reviving forgotten works while devoting as much care to historically informed performance as to their staging. Today, the company is taking another major step with Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, one of the most ambitious projects in its fifteen-year history, which it will present from September 24 to 27, 2026, at the Sasha and Eugene Jarvis Opera Hall at DePaul University in Chicago. A perfect opportunity to look back at the remarkable journey of an independent production company quite unlike anything in Europe.
Haymarket began operating in 2011 amid considerable uncertainty. “I didn’t know what was going to happen, and I still kind of don’t,” said Trompeter, a respected viola da gamba player and opera devotee. “I feel like the possibilities for us are wide open.” Although the company started with a miniscule budget and an almost entirely volunteer staff, it put an emphasis on high-quality music and singing right from the start, and audiences responded immediately: In February 2012, Haymarket got its first major review outside of the Chicago press, with New York Times music critic Zachary Woolfe describing the company’s presentation of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers as “finely played, carefully sung, lovingly detailed.” Haymarket made its European debut in 2017 with an appearance at the then four-year-old Valletta International Baroque Festival in the capital of the island country of Malta. It performed Alessandro Stradella’s 1675 oratorio, San Giovanni Battista (St. John the Baptist). In May 2023, BBC Music Magazine chose the company’s world-premiere recording of Joseph Bologne’s L’Amant Anonyme as its opera of the month and gave it five stars. The album was the first of two works so far that the Haymarket has released on the Chicago-based label, Cedille Records. Moreover, Haymarket made its Ravinia Festival debut in August 2025 with a concert performance of George Frideric Handel’s Alcina, starring Nicole Cabell, an acclaimed soprano who has appeared at the Paris Opera and London’s Royal Opera.
The latest step in Haymarket’s steady evolution is its already sold-out presentation Sept. 24-27 of Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, one of the best-known and largest-scale operas the company has presented in its 15-year history. “It is certainly wonderful to do what is the earliest work in the [standard] repertoire,” Trompeter said. “It’s been a dream of ours for a long time.” The 1607 opera is the latest in a series of milestones for this once-fringe company that has since gained national and even international attention: “With a fraction of the budget of any company around us, we are achieving a place in the cultural scene here in Chicago,” said General Director Chase Hopkins in what is arguably a considerable understatement.
Starting out
That a viola da gamba player would want to found a baroque opera company did not seem like a stretch to Trompeter who has long been enamored of the field. He was confident that Chicago—a strong opera town with a burgeoning early-music scene—would be receptive to the idea. “I’ve always just loved vocal music since I was very young,” he said, “and the great moments in my pre-Haymarket life as far as my musical experiences were all really operatic and with singers. So, I just decided that I wanted to have more of that kind of work for myself.”
Right from the beginning, Trompeter was determined to have a company that would offer both historically informed music and staging—a rare approach that just two other organizations in North America follow: the Boston Early Music Festival and Opera Atelier, which is based in Toronto, Ontario. He believes that seeing on stage what one is hearing in the music just makes sense, and that means period costumes and sets and elegant gestures that support the musical line. “It just brings more to the performance than seeing people in modern dress that is not particularly special and who are just moving like we move every day,” he said. “To me, it’s poetry. We’re trying always to heighten the poetry and the meaning of what we’re doing.”
Taking Flight
The Haymarket Opera Company – a name derived from Chicago’s 1886 Haymarket riot and London’s Haymarket, a street on which Handel premiered more than 25 of his operas at the King’s Theatre – launched operations in 2011. The festival has since expanded its seasonal offerings and artistic scope, adding to its already fine casts notable names in the early-music realm like Nicole Cabell and countertenors Kangmin Justin Kim and Bejun Mehta. “It seems like everything we’re doing these days is a milestone. It’s been very exciting, the last years especially.” Trompeter said.
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