There are hundreds of choruses in the Los Angeles area, but the Verdi Chorus is unique.

Founded 26 years ago at the Verdi Restaurant in Santa Monica, the Verdi Chorus is the only choral ensemble that focuses solely on performing works written specifically for opera choruses. Of its most recent performance featuring Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, Verdi’s Joan of Arc and Puccini’s La Bohème, the Beverly Hills Outlook wrote, “Music Director and Founding Artistic Director Anne Marie Ketchum is a masterful programmer, presenting a banquet of operatic offerings
…a delightful program.”

For the Ring Festival LA in 2010 the Chorus presented Wagner and Verdi: Opposing Roads to Greatness. “Verdi and Wagner lived at the same time but never met,” explains Music Director Anne Marie Ketchum. “Audiences were often militant about which composer they liked more. You were either a Wagner lover or a Verdi lover But we’re not taking sides. Both composers wrote glorious music we are thrilled to share with our audiences.”

“The high standards of their sound and artistry have made the Verdi Chorus a Los Angeles musical institution,” says tenor Robert MacNeil, who appeared as soloist with the ensemble in 2009. Adds mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzman, “This is one amazing group powered by passion… Lifting your voice up to be a part of something bigger than yourself is magic, and the Verdi Chorus celebrates that kind of magic.”

When the restaurant closed in 1991, the chorus reorganized as a non-profit corporation, hired Anne Marie Ketchum as permanent Artistic and Music Director, and performed its semi annual concerts in hotel ballrooms, a night club and church naves. In the fall of 2001, it moved it its permanent venue, the acoustically magnificent First United Methodist Church of Santa Monica.

Beginning with just 16 participants, the Chorus today numbers 52 voices. Its repertoire includes over 120 operatic choruses, as well as many additional pieces from light opera and Broadway productions. Of the more than 60 guest artists and musicians who have performed with the Chorus, many have gone on to enjoy national and international recognition. The Chorus supports the Metropolitan Opera National Council by offering performance opportunities to the Metropolitan Western Region audition finalists.