The Chautauqua Opera Company runs a summer season of fully staged productions alongside the main Institution program, drawing young professional singers from around the country for a residential summer program. The productions are staged in the Amphitheater and in the more intimate Norton Memorial Hall, with a program that typically includes three or four operas across the nine-week season — a mix of standard repertoire and occasionally more adventurous choices.
Tickets are separately purchased from the general gate admission. The standard of singing is generally high — the company scouts aggressively from conservatories and competition circuits — and the productions make use of the unusual setting in ways that larger, more conventional houses cannot. The opera is as much a part of the Chautauqua experience as the morning lectures, and the combination in a single day is genuinely unlike anything available elsewhere.