Haymarket Opera Company: A Baroque Gamble That Paid Off in Chicago

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”.