Though we had to postpone our 2020 festival due to the Coronavirus pandemic, we are pleased to announce that the Love for Truth festival will be rescheduled for summer 2021.  It will feature the East Coast premiere of Juana, a new opera by Carla Lucero and Alicia Gaspar de Alba, in repertory with performances of Anna Bolena by Donizetti, and additional programming will be announced in the coming months.  We are grateful to Baruch Performing Arts Center (BPAC) for generously agreeing to reschedule the festival, and we hope to expand to a full month of opera in the same venue next summer.

dell’Arte Opera Ensemble’s singer development programming will continue and expand over the coming months with libretto study, language/acting study, and vocal coaching. The work will not only build context for the season to come but also support their process for building a career ahead. We are in the process of creating an engaging slate of pre-season events that we can’t wait to share with you!

Because of the uncertainty leading up to this decision, ticket sales were not yet open for the season – we appreciate the donors who have already contributed to our ongoing singer-development efforts and to the success of next season’s program. We need your help now, but we promise, we’re coming back strong!  We ask for your support for ongoing training of our singers, who are more engaged than ever in their development as artists.

We thank you for your support through our recent Silent Auction, which raised funds for our Alumni Artists Relief Fund (making mini-grants to those who have lost income due to the crisis, to help with necessary expenses like rent, food, and insurance), as well as our ongoing artistic planning.  If you’d like to help, please click HERE to donate (and feel free to make a designation for your gift, such as “Alumni Artist Relief Fund” or “artist training” by typing your wishes in the message line.

As a company of singers, instrumentalists, coaches, conductors, scenic/costume/lighting designers and other production staff, we send sincere hopes for your peace and health.  Please be safe, and take care of each other with all appropriate measures of social distancing.

Our 2019 Festival celebrated the powerful presence, contributions, and leadership of women in opera from its very origins.  To booken this story, we offered Francesca Caccini’s 1625 opera La liberazione di Ruggiero, the first opera by a woman, and the premiere of the newest: Princess Maleine, by composer Whitney George and librettist Bea (Brittany) Goodwin.  Rounding out the repertory season were “Scenes from the Tower” (featuring Cendrillon by Pauline Viardot, and extended excerpts from Mary, Queen of Scots by Thea Musgrave, and Mrs. President, by Victoria Bond), and a song recital entitled “Les Boulangers” (with repertoire by Lili and Nadia Boulanger, Alma Mahler, Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, as well as premieres by Martha Sullivan, Ellen Mandel, and Barrett Cobb.  The festival comprised a total of 14 repertoire performances as part of “Summer Shares at LaMama.”

Opera’s greatest rivals, or Opera’s greatest co-workers?  Mozart and Salieri simultaneously served as important musicians in the Viennese Court Theater for years in the late 18th century, alongside their colleague, librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte.  During the festival, we told the story of two of opera’s most famous rivals (or most productive colleagues!).  Don Giovanni, Mozart’s iconic operatic #metoo tale was paired with Salieri’s playful La Cifra (The Code)… a hidden gem of an opera about a hidden gem of a young woman.  The repertory season encompassing 13 total performances also included “Vignettes from Vienna,” a scenes program featuring not only works by the two Vienna court composers, but also Rimsky-Korsakov’s one-act opera Mozart & Salieri (based on a short Pushkin play), bringing the two composers to life (and one “to death”) on stage.  On the penultimate day of the festival, Sacred & Profane: Songs and Ephemera gathered religious and sacrilegious works of both composers in an afternoon recital including “Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia” – a cantata written jointly by Mozart, Salieri, and “Cornetti” with a libretto by Da Ponte, plus magnificent songs of Mozart, a canon of Salieri, and other rarities both sublime and ridiculous.

Opera’s “Untamed!” characters populated our exciting 2017 Festival, including Cavalli’s La Calisto Janáček’s Příhody lišky Bystroušky (The Cunning Little Vixen), a scenes program including Anna Bolena, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Carmen, Rusalka and more. Finally, an art song recital called “Wild Things” included repertoire by Heggie, Barber, Liszt, Saalbach, and premieres of works by Barrett Cobb and Ellen Mandell.