Naughty Marietta by Victor Herbert was the first work performed by the company in 1993, along with Puccini's La bohème and a double bill of Trial By Jury and The Impresario.
By 1955 he was performing with the George Mitchell Singers in Blackpool, with the impresario Lew Grade as his agent.
Although he was known to international music aficionados who had heard the occasional recording on the Russian Melodiya record label, as well as those who visited the Soviet Union, he was not generally well known outside Russia before his 1975 American tour, organised by the impresario Jacques Leiser.
He has also been the impresario of Liza Minnelli, Plácido Domingo and Mario del Monaco, and he is widely known as the long-time (since 1964) impresario and friend of Charles Aznavour.
It was founded in 2002 by the government of North Rhine-Westphalia with Gerard Mortier, the impresario and former artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, as its founding director.
Indeed, productions of Italian opera in Prague ceased again already in 1789, not to re-appear again until 1791, due to the departure of the impresario Domenico Guardasoni and the death of the impresario Pasquale Bondini.