The San Carlo Opera Company was a touring grand opera company founded by the Italian-American impresario Fortune Gallo. Taking over management of a touring opera company stranded in South America in 1911, Gallo brought them back to New York City, untangled their finances, and reorganized them as the San Carlo Opera Company, opening in December 1913 with a premier performance featuring “Carmen”. Until its disbandment in the early 1950s, the company - 100 strong, including 30 instrumentalists - toured annually in the USA and Canada, visiting cities and towns poorly served by other companies, and often ventured as far afield as Europe, and South America. Part of Gallo's success was his innovation of using local talent and heavily advertising their use to spur ticket sales. The company fared well, and in 1927 Gallo built the Gallo Opera House on West 54th Street in New York City. It would later become Studio 54. The San Carlo company holds the distinction of having performed in the very first sound film of a complete opera, "Pagliacci," in 1929. Gallo did not try to turn the opera into a "moving picture," rather this was a filmed stage production, with stage sets, framed by the proscenium arch. During the war years of 1943 and 1944, Gallo produced a full season of opera in Chicago, which had lacked a resident opera company for some years, under the name Chicago Opera Company, using both his San Carlo company and visiting artists.
Sources
- Encyclopedia of Music in Canada last retrieved September 1, 2007
- Gallo, Fortune, 1878-1970, Papers last retrieved September 1, 2007
- Durbeck Archive last retrieved September 1, 2007
- Gallo, Fortune, "Lucky Rooster," Exposition Press, New York, 1967.
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