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An Act II street scene in La Boheme. www.helpkosairchildrenshospital.com 32 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.13 audience applauds, and, "Tey're of!" Kentucky Opera's move six years ago from the big-theater space of Whitney Hall at the Kentucky Center for the Arts to the smaller venue of the Brown changed everything. It required a huge renovation, and the space is still something of an old barn, with limited space backstage, nothing in the way of modern electronics and a teeny lobby. But the working parts of theater are much improved. Tere's new carpeting. Te bathrooms used to be in the basement, but now new ones are on each foor. Te Brown is not artistically sophisticated like Whitney Hall, but when a singer sings a note, everyone in the house hears it with clarity. "I think the Brown is the perfect venue for us, sizewise, and the acoustics are great," says Dave Mateja, a Louisvillian who, with his wife Susan, became subscribers a few seasons back. "We've been seated on the foor, been several places around the theater, but we fell in love with the front-row balcony. You can look right down into the opera onstage, and it's all right before you. It's wonderful." In 2009, Kentucky Opera's second season at the Brown, Metropolitan Opera star Elizabeth Futral came to Louisville to sing Violetta, the tragic heroine of Verdi's La Traviata, one of the most beloved operas of all. And brought down the house. Te performance seemed a turning point for Kentucky Opera, frmly connecting the company and its audience with the Brown. "We (in the opera business) have the bad habit of producing opera in large 2,500-seat venues," Roth says. "Te music is great, but we weren't connecting with the emotional story, not connecting with the artist onstage. "You talk about Elizabeth Futral. Elizabeth is a powerful performer, able to project in the largest American theaters. But that experience becomes something even more exceptional when that powerful performer is placed in a very intimate space. As if she is performing for you . . . and no one else." K entucky Opera is now in its 62nd year, founded and led for 30 years by Moritz Bomhard, a fellow who landed here almost by accident. "I think it was just one of these wonderful serendipitous things," Smillie says. "Bomhard left Germany in the late '20s or '30s. He wasn't persecuted or anything. He came to New York to study music at Juilliard and sort of Americanized himself. He fought in World War II in the Pacifc. "In 1952, in his very entrepreneurial and creative way, he put together a small group of singers, packed them into a car, touring America, the colleges, doing sort of ad hoc performances of Te Marriage of Figaro. According to legend, the car broke down in Louisville. "Now, that sounds like something I would make up, but it's not my story," says Smillie, with a chuckle — probably wishing he had made it up. "But the car broke down and Dwight Anderson, the dean of the University of Louisville School of Music, invited Moritz to join the faculty of the university and start an opera company. "So he did. And for the next 30 years he was the conductor — and the rehearsal pianist, his own chorus master. He designed and built the sets. Painted them. Occasionally stole them, I believe, with help from some friends, like Ming Dick, who was one of his sidekicks. At least initially it was very much a mom-and-pop operation, and people would tell stories about famous events, such as the night they did Te Flying Dutchman: Te overture was played.