Timeline
1861: The Academy of Music on Montague Street is inaugurated on January 15, with a program including Mozart and Verdi. Mercadante’s Il Giuramento, the first opera performance, appears one week later with First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln in attendance
1864: The Brooklyn and Long Island Sanitary Fair is held to raise money for the US Sanitary Commission aiding sick and wounded Union Civil War soldiers
1884: Mark Twain & George W. Cable entertain with readings and storytelling
1891: Booker T. Washington delivers a speech on full emancipation
1903: The first Brooklyn Academy of Music burns to the ground
1908: Brooklyn Academy of Music opens new home on Lafayette Ave (Fort Greene); gala features Met Opera (Geraldine Farrar/Enrico Caruso in Gounod’s Faust)
1908: Isadora Duncan dances with Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony Orchestra
1917: Sarah Bernhardt gives six performances in three days at the age of 73, despite an amputated leg
1931: Paul Robeson gives a song recital
1936: Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences merges with Brooklyn Academy of Music
1940: President Franklin D. Roosevelt appears to packed crowds with 2,200 in the Opera House, 700 onstage, and 6,000 outside in the street
1948: Pearl Primus and Company dance her experiences of Africa
1952: Physical deterioration necessitates the removal of the cornice at 30 Lafayette Avenue. A rescue plan includes paying New York City a rent of $1 / year for 100 years
1962: Rudolf Nureyev makes his American debut with the Chicago Opera Ballet shortly after defecting from the Soviet Union
1967: Harvey Lichtenstein is appointed president of the Academy
1968: Merce Cunningham Dance Company performs its first extended New York season
1969: Robert Wilson makes his BAM debut with The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud
1971: The Royal Shakespeare Company makes its BAM debut with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Peter Brook
1973: BAM’s newly renovated ballroom is formally dedicated as the Lepercq Space, named after Paul Lepercq, chairman of the board
1977: A month before the fall season, a 30-inch city water main under Ashland Place bursts, causing severe flooding
1977: BAM presents the inaugural DanceAfrica, created by Chuck Davis, the country’s largest celebration of African-American dance
1981: Next Wave series debuts with the Trisha Brown, Laura Dean, and Lucinda Childs dance companies and Philip Glass’ opera Satyagraha
1983: Laurie Anderson makes her BAM debut with United States: Parts I—IV in the second season of the Next Wave series
1983: Next Wave Festival is launched with The Photographer/Far from the Truth, by Philip Glass & JoAnne Akalaitis
1984: Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal makes its BAM debut with The Rite of Spring, 1980, Café Müller, and Bluebeard’s Castle
1987: BAM produces its first Martin Luther King Jr. tribute with the Brooklyn borough president’s office
1987: BAM Majestic Theater is inaugurated with Peter Brook’s nine-hour-long The Mahabharata
1989: American premiere of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Atys with Théâtre National de l’Opéra de Paris features BAM debut of William Christie & Les Arts Florissants
1992: American debut of Mark Morris Dance Group’s The Hard Nut
1995: Royal Dramatic Theatre of Sweden returns as part of a city-wide Bergman Festival with 350+ events; BAM’s Karen Brooks Hopkins is executive producer
1997: BAMcafé opens in BAM Lepercq Space
1998: The Carey Playhouse is converted to four-screen BAM Rose Cinemas, home to BAMcinématek, featuring repertory, independent, and foreign films
1998: Ballett Frankfurt first appears at BAM In EIDOS : TELOS choreographed by William Forsythe
1999: Harvey Lichtenstein retires and is succeeded by Karen Brooks Hopkins (president) & Joseph V. Melillo (executive producer)
1999: Majestic Theater renamed BAM Harvey Theater in honor of Harvey Lichtenstein in conjunction with endowment gift from Doris Duke Charitable Trust
1999: BAMcafé Live begins programming free weekend music in the Lepercq Space
2002: Fiona Shaw plays title role of Euripides’ Medea, directed by Deborah Warner; following its BAM run the Abbey Theatre production moves to Broadway
2003: Royal National Theatre / Market Theatre of Johannesburg production of The Island, originally directed by Athol Fugard, with John Kani & Winston Ntshona
2005: Eat, Drink & Be Literary begins first season in partnership with the National Book Awards in BAMcafé
2006: Robert Redford inaugurates Sundance Institute at BAM, a three-year partnership
2006: BAM celebrates Steve Reich @ 70, including choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Akram Khan
2007: Visual artist William Kentridge directs his interpretation of Mozart’s The Magic Flute
2007: Sufjan Stevens performs The BQE, a Next Wave Festival commission exploring New York’s infamous Brooklyn-Queens Expressway
2008: Paul Simon performs in three BAM-produced concert engagements in a month-long residency, Love in Hard Times: The Music of Paul Simon
2009: BAM launches the Bridge Project, a transatlantic partnership with London’s Old Vic and Neal Street Productions; productions of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, directed by Sam Mendes, open at BAM before touring the globe
2009: BAMcinemafest is inaugurated, featuring independent films and repertory cinema from around the world
2009: Cate Blanchett plays Blanche Dubois in the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Liv Ullmann
2010: Ground is broken on the BAM Richard B. Fisher Building, named in his honor by his widow, Jeannie Donovan Fisher, with substantial support from NYC
2010: Alexei Ratmansky creates a new version of The Nutcracker for American Ballet Theatre’s five-year seasonal residency at BAM
2010: DanceMotion USA, a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State produced by BAM, showcases contemporary American dance abroad; the first tours features Evidence, ODC/Dance, and Urban Bush Women
2011: BAM celebrates ¡Sí Cuba!, a citywide festival of Cuban culture, with BAM presentations of Creole Choir and Ballet Nacional de Cuba
2011: BAM’s 150th anniversary celebration begins with the restaging of the landmark production of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Atys, conducted by William Christie with Les Arts Florissants
2012: Jimmy Kimmel Live! will broadcast a week of shows here from October 29th to November 2nd.
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