A seminal moment in Atlanta’s cultural history occurred almost by accident over 100 years ago.
In 1895, the city of Atlanta held the Cotton States and International Exposition, a major public event showcasing economic opportunities in the emerging capital of the South. In an attempt to replicate the success of that venture, business leaders raised more than $350,000 in 1909 to produce another exposition.
Ultimately they decided to spend the money on the city’s cultural enrichment. These forward-thinking boosters concluded the city needed a world-class concert hall.
The city built the Auditorium and Armory on the corner of Courtland Avenue and Gilmer Street as a result. To bring world-class concerts befitting the 6,000-seat hall, the Atlanta Music Festival Association was formally incorporated. In May of 1909, it brought the Dresden (Germany) Philharmonic to Atlanta to open the building.
The Atlanta Music Festival Association scored a coup the following year when it lured the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York to Atlanta for four performances in May, bringing grand opera to the capital of the South for the first time.
The performance of “Aida” drew an over-capacity crowd of more than 7,000 patrons.
The following year, the Met added shows, and opera became a significant cultural and annual social event for Atlanta.
The supporters from those early years found in tattered programs are the founding families of our city.
In the words taken from the program dated 1910: “[The music festival of 1909] marked the beginning of a new era in the musical development of the South and never before in the South has such a large audience gathered at the shrine of music.”
The Atlanta Music Festival Association continued to raise funds to bring the Metropolitan Opera to Atlanta, hitting its peak in the 1960s and 1970s. The productions moved from the Auditorium and Armory, incorporated into the Georgia State University campus, to the Fox Theatre and eventually the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center.
“The Met visits were one of the things that helped define Atlanta as the unquestioned cultural capital of the South,” said Alston & Bird attorney Robert Edge, who has been the chairman of the Atlanta Music Festival Association since 1971.
But the fat lady eventually sang. In the mid-1980s, it became too expensive for the Met to tour.
Around that time, two community opera groups, the Georgia Opera Company and Atlanta Civic Opera Company, joined forces. Through the support of many of the people who supported the Met, the newly created Atlanta Opera began its successful run as a regional opera company.
The Atlanta Music Festival Association supports opera in Atlanta and New York. The legacy of those early leaders and the supporters of the Atlanta Music Festival Association and the Atlanta Opera has had the cultural impact of helping a city fall in love with classical music and opera.
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