The Glimmerglass Festival (formerly known as Glimmerglass Opera) is an American opera company. Founded in 1975 by Peter Macris, the Glimmerglass Festival presents an annual season of operas at the Alice Busch Opera Theater on Otsego Lake eight miles (13 km) north of Cooperstown, New York, United States. The summer-only season usually consists of four productions performed in rotating repertory. Glimmerglass is well known for producing new, lesser-known, and rare works, many of which in years past have been co-produced with the New York City Opera. It is the second-largest summer opera festival in the United States, currently led by artistic and general director Robert Ainsley, who succeeded Francesca Zambello in 2022. History Until 2011, the company operated under the name Glimmerglass Opera. The company presented its first season in the summer of 1975, when four performances of La bohème were staged in the auditorium of the Cooperstown High School. In the years since, it has grown considerably and now offers more than 40 performances of four operas, nearly always in new productions, each summer. Operas have been performed in repertory since 1990. For the first seventeen seasons, all operas were sung in English. Since 1992, the operas have, with some exceptions, been performed in their original language with projected titles in English. Several works have had their American or world premieres at Glimmerglass. The 1999 season featured the world premiere of Central Park, three one-act operas performed as a single work, a joint commission by Glimmerglass Opera, New York City Opera, and Thirteen/WNET's Great Performances, which telecast it on PBS in January 2000. The telecast was nominated for an Emmy Award. Paul Kellogg was the general director of Glimmerglass Opera from 1979 to 1996 and the artistic director from 1996 to 2006. Esther Nelson took on the role of general director from 1996 to 2003. Stewart Robertson was music director of Glimmerglass Opera from 1988 to 2006. In October 2008, Glimmerglass Opera announced the appointment of David Angus as the company's next music director, starting in the summer of 2010. Francesca Zambello became artistic and general director of the newly renamed Glimmerglass Festival in 2011 and Joseph Colaneri was appointed music director in 2013. Zambello stood down at the close of the 2022 season; she was succeeded by Robert Ainsley. The Young American Artists program, established in 1988, brings singers in the first stages of their professional careers to