Ross invited the managements of twenty-five opera companies to come to his premiere [Of Mice and Men] in January 1970 and talk over what they might do to help each other.  A month after that Seattle meeting, a steering committee chaired by Ross met in New York with others, including representatives of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Metropolitan Opera-sponsored Central Opera Service.  (COS gathered and published information about scores, and stagings, plans and productions, individuals in professional and semiprofessional companies and at universities and conservatories.)

Ross sent a telegram to [Rudolf] Bing:  “Remember,” it read, “for three thousand years nobody has named a son Goliath.”  Bing did not respond to the telegram either, but this time Met assistant manager Herman Krawitz was sent to the meeting.  The question on the table, Ross rememberes, was whether the country needed yet another arts organization, or whether the opera companies should make common cause with the American Symphony Orchestra League and the national association of university-level music schools.  Opting for the former, OPERA America was born.

From Opera America newsletter, 1995