Do North 2019

MUCH MORE THAN MEETS THE STAGE First opened on August 15, 1904, Ravinia remains the oldest and most pro- grammatically diverse music festival in North America, and brings about 600,000 guests to over 140 events each year. It was conceived as a high-end amusement park—complete with music pavilion, dance hall, baseball stadium, theater, and electric swing—by the A.C. Frost Company as a lure to get Chicagoans to ride its fledgling Chicago and Milwaukee Electric Railroad to a respite in the woods, far from the heat and smells of a city known as the “hog butcher to the world.” Trains still stop at Ravinia’s historic entrance today, ser- viced by the Metra Union Pacific North line, making it the only private train stop left in Illinois. As Ravinia grew in popularity, summer cottages popped up nearby, and when the train company went bust, Ravinia continued to thrive under the leadership of a group of North Shore philanthropists who created the Ravinia Company, headed by Louis Eckstein. Today Ravinia operates as a self-owned not-for- profit, still run by a volunteer board of business and communi- ty leaders, but now overseeing a professional staff, with support from its active and insightful Women’s Board (established in 1964) and its Associates Board of young movers and shakers (established in 1988). From 1919 through 1931, Ravinia was known as the “summer opera capital of the world,” welcoming to its stage the most-celebrated singers from Europe who sailed to America to perform at the Met and were in no hurry to make that arduous return voyage. Even during this period, the railway proved crucial the festival’s suc- cess, and many great operas were trun- cated so audiences would not miss the last train of the evening. Ravinia shuttered for four years during the Great Depression, reopening in 1936 with a greater empha- sis on symphonic music, hosting the first formal summer residency of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, an enviable relation- ship that exists to this day. In 1938, 16 | DO NORTH RAVINIA