Administration

Craig Trompeter, Founder & Artistic Director

Craig Trompeter is the founder and Artistic Director of Chicago’s acclaimed Haymarket Opera Company. As cellist and violist da gamba he has performed with Second City Musick, the Chicago Symphony, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chicago Opera Theater, Music of the Baroque, the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society, and the Oberlin Consort of Viols. He has performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Glimmerglass Festival, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Valletta International Baroque Festival in Malta and has appeared as soloist at the Ravinia Festival, the annual conference of the American Bach Society, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and with Music of the Baroque. Trompeter has recorded works of Mozart, Bologne, Biber, Boismortier, Marais, Vivaldi, Handel, Greene, Henry Eccles, and a potpourri of Elizabethan composers on the Harmonia Mundi, Cedille, and Centaur labels. As a modern cellist, he was a founding member of the Fry Street String Quartet and premiered several chamber operas by MacArthur Fellow John Eaton, performing as actor, singer and cellist. He has taught master classes at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Oberlin, Grinnell College, and the Chicago Musical College. In 2003 he founded the Feldenkrais® Center of Chicago where he teaches Awareness Through Movement® and Functional Integration®. He has given Feldenkrais workshops throughout the nation in universities, music conservatories, opera companies, and dance studios. Trompeter conducts the Early Music Ensemble at the University of Chicago and teaches Baroque Performance Practices at Northwestern University.

Chase Hopkins, General Director

Chase Hopkins currently serves as General Director of Chicago’s acclaimed Haymarket Opera Company, whose “verve in historically informed performance is second to none” (Opera News). At Haymarket, Hopkins leads major artistic and institutional initiatives, including the company’s debut with the Ravinia Festival, three film productions during the COVID-19 pandemic, two commercial recordings with Chicago’s Grammy Award-winning classical label Cedille Records, and a partnership with Classical WFMT to broadcast Haymarket performances to a global audience reaching more than one million listeners. In 2024, Hopkins launched The Haymarket Review, a digital publication designed to build community around Haymarket and historically informed performance.

Under Hopkins’s leadership, Haymarket successfully navigated the COVID-19 pandemic and emerged with significant artistic and institutional momentum. In 2025, the company surpassed one million dollars in annual revenue, representing fourfold budget growth during his tenure as General Director. Hopkins has strengthened the company’s infrastructure by expanding staff, launching a successful production sponsorship program, broadening foundation support to include grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, establishing Haymarket’s first cash reserve, and revitalizing the company’s Artistic Advisory Board with early opera scholar Louise K. Stein and Grammy-nominated harpsichordist and conductor Jory Vinikour.

Hopkins made his “skillful” (Chicago Classical Review) stage-directing debut with Haymarket in 2023, leading a critically acclaimed production of Hasse’s Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra featuring countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim as Cleopatra. In 2024, he semi-staged a concert of Handel's La Resurrezione conducted by Christian Curnyn and directed Haymarket’s fully staged production of Handel’s Tamerlano with tenor David Portillo, praised as “another impressive achievement” (Opera Magazine). In 2025, he semi-staged Stradella’s Ester and Handel’s Alcina for Haymarket’s Ravinia Festival debut, starring soprano Nicole Cabell and mezzo Elizabeth DeShong. In 2026, Hopkins led semi-staged concerts of Hasse’s La Semele, o sia La richiesta fatale and Charpentier’s David et Jonathas, and will direct a fully staged production of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo with tenor Zachary Wilder in the title role.

Prior to his work as an arts leader, creative producer, and stage director, Hopkins’s singing career included a strong focus on Baroque opera, with performances at festivals and opera houses across Europe and the United States under distinguished conductors including René Jacobs, Jonathan Cohen, and Christian Curnyn. Hopkins serves as Artistic Director of Opera Edwardsville, a community-centered nonprofit arts organization dedicated to arts education and cultural enrichment in Southern Illinois, which he founded in 2018. He has also served as a judge for the Handel Aria Competition (2022, 2023, 2024, and 2026), Chicago LuminArts Foundation Competition (2025), and Laffont Competition (2026).

Hopkins graduated cum laude from Northwestern University with a Bachelor’s degree in music and minors in musicology and business. He received his Master’s degree in music from the Royal Northern College of Music in the United Kingdom, graduating with distinction. In 2024, Hopkins completed executive training through the Program for Leadership Development at Harvard Business School.

Jianghai Ho, Development Coordinator

Jianghai Ho is currently serving as the development coordinator at Haymarket Opera Company. As a performer he has performed with Haymarket Opera Company, Chicago Symphony, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chicago Opera Theater, Music of the Baroque and Fargo Moorhead Opera.