General Director Chase Hopkins on Haymarket’s 15th Anniversary and the Vision Ahead

When I pause to take in the scene of a Haymarket rehearsal or performance, I am moved by the extraordinary collective effort it takes to bring the treasures of the 17th and 18th centuries to our 21st-century stage in the heart of Chicago. Our scholars pore over manuscripts to build modern, playable editions—piecing together stanza fragments, filling in missing measures, deciphering centuries-old ink, and reconstructing what time has almost erased. Our gifted singers immerse themselves in treatises on ornamentation, gesture, and declamation, studying etchings and engravings that reveal how artists of earlier eras communicated emotion. Our specialist instrumentalists devote themselves to the techniques required to master historical instruments. Our imaginative designers visualize stages illuminated by candlelight and rigged by ropes, with reversible shutters, sliding panels, painted drops, mechanical wave machines, and flying chariots. And our skilled costumers shape garments inspired by the paintings and renderings that reveal the fashions and silhouettes of the past.

All of this converges on the Haymarket stage.

Anniversaries invite reflection, certainly—and also imagination. Over the past five years, Haymarket has gathered remarkable momentum. You can feel it in the rehearsal room, in the energy both onstage and in the audience, in our quick-selling performances, in our critical acclaim, and in the insights shared through The Haymarket Review, our digital publication launched just this year. This moment invites us to look forward with clarity and ambition.

At the heart of everything we do is the music. Our repertoire spans two centuries of works crafted at the height of Western European music in the 17th and 18th centuries. The inherent beauty and dramatic power of these works justify the painstaking restoration efforts of scholars and performers who are dedicated to reviving early music for modern listeners. Haymarket lives at a rare intersection, firmly rooted in the early-music community, with its commitment to historical performance and scholarly rigor, while also serving the broader operatic world, eager for fresh discoveries and deeper engagement.

Two foundational pillars support our programming. The first focuses on presenting rarely performed works—often U.S. or Chicago premieres—allowing Haymarket to serve simultaneously as an artistic and scholarly laboratory. The second celebrates the great masterpieces of the baroque and classical eras, offering familiar points of connection for newcomers and connoisseurs alike. Together, these principles give us a wide expressive range across two centuries of luminous repertoire.

Our 2026 season beautifully embodies this duality. We begin the year with the release of our Artaserse recording on Cedille Records—a major artistic milestone that brings this monumental opera to global listeners. Onstage, we open with the U.S. premiere of Johann Adolf Hasse’s La Semele, celebrating the tricentennial of its 1726 debut with a newly prepared edition developed in collaboration with the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. We then return to French baroque repertoire with Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s David et Jonathas, led by longtime Haymarket collaborator Jory Vinikour. And finally, we embark on a fully staged co-production of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo with The Newberry Consort, offering one of the great masterpieces of early 17th-century opera and a perfect expression of our commitment to presenting the works that define our art form.

As we look toward our twentieth anniversary and beyond, Haymarket is poised for thoughtful, strategic growth. We are developing an Artistic Advisory Board to bring a broader range of expertise and vision to our work, even as we grow our administrative staff to support the increasing artistic activity that defines our seasons. We hope to build upon pandemic creativity to pursue developing new digital programming designed to reach audiences everywhere, opening doors for deeper engagement with our scholarship and performances. Wouldn’t it be exciting to see Haymarket on tour? The chance to share our work beyond our Chicago homebase would widen our geographic reach and further our mission. Without question, we hope to continue building our recording catalog to continue to garner momentum. We are also exploring major co-productions that will deepen our artistic collaborations and strengthen our longstanding relationships with Chicago institutions and the broader early-music community.

Our annual budget remains well below one million dollars, yet our artistic reach and cultural impact continue to grow exponentially. With meaningful investment in our future, we can ensure that Haymarket remains a home for discovery, imagination, and historically informed artistry for decades to come. 

As we celebrate fifteen years of artistry, passion, community, and growth, I invite you to consider the role you might play in shaping the years to come. Whether by attending performances, supporting us financially, joining our legacy-giving initiative, or sharing our mission with friends and colleagues, your involvement fuels our progress.

Fifteen years ago, Haymarket Opera Company was born from a deep love of early music, history, and Chicago. That love continues to guide us, inspire us, and connect us to you. Here’s to the next chapter of discovery, collaboration, and unforgettable artistry.

Only at Haymarket.

About the author

Chase Hopkins currently serves as the general director of Chicago’s acclaimed Haymarket Opera Company, whose “verve in historically informed performance is second to none” (Opera News). Hopkins has led innovative initiatives at Haymarket, including a partnership with the Ravinia Festival, three films during the COVID-19 pandemic, two commercial recordings with Chicago’s Grammy Award-winning classical label, Cedille Records, and fostering a partnership to broadcast globally on Classical WFMT, reaching over a million listeners. In 2024, Hopkins launched The Haymarket Review, a digital publication building community around Haymarket and historical performance. Hopkins offered a "skillful" (Chicago Classical Review) debut as a stage director in 2023, leading a critically acclaimed production of Hasse's Marc'Antonio e Cleopatra. In 2024, Hopkins directed Haymarket's production of Handel's Tamerlano, praised as an "impressive achievement" (Opera Magazine), and Handel's Alcina for Haymarket's Ravinia Festival debut in 2025. Prior to his work as an arts leader, creative producer, and stage director, Hopkins's singing career included a strong focus on baroque opera, having performed at festivals across Europe and the United States with distinguished conductors including Rene Jacobs, Jonathan Cohen, and Christian Curnyn. Hopkins serves as the artistic director of Opera Edwardsville, a community-centered nonprofit arts organization dedicated to supporting arts education and cultural enrichment in southern Illinois, which he founded in 2018; and serves as a judge for the prestigious Handel Aria Competition (2022, 2023, and 2024). Graduating cum laude, Hopkins received his bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University with a major in music and minors in musicology and business. Hopkins 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 the Harvard Business School.  

About The Haymarket Review: This new digital publication including thoughts about  the work produced by Haymarket is designed to deepen our connection to audiences, nurture and feed audience curiosity about historical performance, offer critical opinions and thoughtful reflections on our performances, and provide a forum for Haymarket and its audience to connect through sharing insights, opinions, learning, and expertise.