The Pocket Opera Players Background 

The Pocket Opera Players is the realization of internationally acclaimed composer John Eaton's dream for a new kind of opera company. 

In 1992, Eaton, a Professor in Music at the University of Chicago, formed the troupe with the idea of creating a highly mobile and versatile opera company that could tour easily and perform in non-traditional venues to present diverse audiences with new forms of musical expression. 

To achieve his goals, Eaton has organized The Pocket Opera Players such that a small group of instrumentalists not only plays for but also takes part in the expressive action of the opera. The group features an excellent vocal quartet, trained not only in traditional operatic singing, but also in contemporary and vernacular vocalism from throughout the world. For more expansive accompaniment, the company utilizes a wide range of electronic music, performed in real time. To avoid any reliance on sets or elaborate stage mechanisms, actions are staged through the use of projections and kinetic lighting techniques or simple and light movable "bits." Costumes and props are designed to consist of suggestive elements only. 

Current participants in the Pocket Opera Players are among the finest and most adventurous performers of new music ever heard in Chicago or New York. The New York performances have often featured the world-renowned New York New Music Ensemble. 

Eaton sees his innovations as potentially effecting a democratization of the form. With no cumbersome sets or an orchestra to move, after its premiere in a traditional theater, the Pocket Opera has the lightness and flexibility to hop into a van and appear at any museum space, theater, cultural center, college or high school auditorium that will have it. 

The Music Department of the University of Chicago enthusiastically and unanimously endorsed Eaton's venture in the fall of 1992. In December of 1993, the Contemporary Chamber Players-the critically acclaimed new music ensemble of the University of Chicago-invited the fledgling company to present its premiere performances at Court Theatre as the first event of its 30th anniversary season. The four performances of Peer Gynt and An Alternative View of Genesis: Let's Get This Show on the Road were highly successful. In 1996, the company appeared under the aegis of Performing Arts Chicago, presenting two new operas by Eaton, Don Quixote and Golk, at the auditorium of the Harold Washington Library. Again the company drew an enthusiastic response from audience members and critics at all four of the performances. In 1999, now organized as its own not-for-profit corporation, the company performed Antigone and Travelling with Gulliver at the Harold Washington Library with enthusiastic receptions.  In 2000, the Pocket Opera Players performed Peer Gynt, Youth and Golk at the Chernin Theater with fine reviews from the press and audience. 

In 2001 the Pocket Opera Players relocated its main offices to the Manhattan Area, while maintaining a lively presence in Chicago.  On May 21^st and 22^nd of 2002 at Symphony Space in New York, it performed Peer Gynt, Eaton’s first Romp for Instrumentalists, and the world premiere of “…inasmuch” – see the fine review by Anne Midgette in the New York Times available on the home page.  In Chicago, on September 14^th, 21^st and 22^nd, it repeated Don Quixote by popular demand and presented the Midwestern premiere of “…inasmuch” to a fine reaction by both the Chicago press and audience.  Finally, on June 25^th and 26^th of 2003, to an enthusiastic public, the Pocket Opera Players performed three operas, the world premiere of Salome’s Flea Circus, and the New York premieres of Travelling with Gulliver and Golk. The Garden of Eaton Festival in 2004 was a major event at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center's large theater. It featured the world premiere of Pinocchio, the New York premiere of Antigone, and many other events celebrating Eaton's contributions to Pocket Opera as well as electronic music. The following years, although less ambitious, saw the immensely provocative Sor Juana Fest in 2005, which led Newsday critic Marion Lignana Rosenberg to head her review "Singular Music to Honor a Singular 17th Century Nun", and the New York premiere of "Youth" in 2006.

The Pocket Opera Players Mission 

Recently reorganized as a not-for-profit corporation with tax-exempt [501(C)3] status, The Pocket Opera Players has achieved a new level of autonomy and the financial stability required to begin executing a more ambitious series of engagements. Beginning in the winter of 2000 and for each subsequent year, the company intends to premiere a commissioned work by a different composer along with either a new opera by Eaton or a work previously written for the company. The Pocket also has plans to extend its outreach activities each year. Among its more specific objectives are: 

1) to give excellent performances of whatever pieces it undertakes; 
2) to introduce audiences to new musical possibilities -- to unfamiliar sounds and vocal/instrumental/electronic combinations and techniques -- in a most engaging fashion and with the added stimulus to appreciation by the public of being connected with dramatic performances; 
3) to contribute to the development of non-traditional audiences for contemporary music, especially youth with limited access to cultural programming, through outreach to schools and communal organizations; 
4) to involve the instrumentalists in the action in such a way that what they do in addition to performing their instruments in traditional and non-traditional ways-- eg., singing, dancing, acting -- seems to be a natural extension of what they are playing; 
5) to replace the large traditional operatic orchestral accompanying forces with new electronic music controllers, sensitive to human nuance, such as the Eaton-Moog Multiple-Touch-Sensitive Keyboards; 
6) to work with new possibilities of lighting and sound reinforcement whenever these enhance the action; 
7) to eventually commission new works by composers which are especially written within the scope of the company; 
8) to design productions so that they can be toured and easily performed in non-traditional spaces. 

The Pocket Opera Players will be performing with an exceptionally versatile group of instrumentalists and singers cum actors. Such performance, fresh, vital, and accessible, has the potential to win audiences unfamiliar with or uncertain about opera. This combination of the newest music, the finest performance values, and the most diverse audiences addresses the mission of the new company.