SEVEN RESPONSES & More Set for Week Four of Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival 2016

The fourth and penultimate week of the 50th anniversary season of Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival presents nine performances featuring the best of Mozart's operatic and choral repertoire as well as a highly-anticipated New York premiere.

A major feature of the 50th Mostly Mozart Festival is a focus on Mozart's operas. To celebrate Mozart's operatic genius, the festival presents two staged concerts of the composer's operas, which will be accompanied by the acclaimed period-instrument ensemble, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. The first program, on August 15, is the comic opera Così fan tutte, one of the famed trio of operas created by Mozart with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. One of Mozart's best known works, Così fan tutte is about two men who decide to test the faithfulness of their lovers by dressing in disguise and attempting to woo each other's women. This staged concert version will be conducted by Mostly Mozart's Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director Louis Langrée and features a superb cast of festival debuts and returning singers, as well as the Arnold Schoenberg Choir. The concert is based on an original production presented in collaboration with the Festival of Aix-en-Provence 2016 in co-production with the Opera de Lille and Edinburgh International Festival.

Later in the week, on August 18, the festival presents a staged concert of Mozart's Idomeneo, an epic opera that charts the path of Idomeneo, King of Crete, as he navigates literal and figurative stormy seas on his return from the Trojan War. The performance will be led by conductor René Jacobs in a rare New York appearance, with a cast featuring Jeremy Ovenden in the title role and soprano Sophie Karthäuser as Ilia. Nearly the entire cast will be making their festival debuts. Both Cosi fan tutte andIdomeneo will be performed at Alice Tully Hall, and each will offer a pre-concert lecture at 6:15 pm at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse.

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra presents four concerts, beginning with a performance featuring violinist Joshua Bell, a festival favorite, on August 16 and 17. Bell, who made his Mostly Mozart debut in 1987, will perform Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major, K.218. He will be joined by conductorMatthew Halls, who makes his New York debut as he conducts the Festival Orchestra. Also on the program is Mendelssohn's Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, Op. 21, Beethoven's Overture toCoriolan, Op. 62, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93. A pre-concert recital will be performed by violinist Alexi Kenney at 6:30 pm both evenings.

On August 19 and 20, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra concludes its David Geffen Hall dates with two of Mozart's choral masterpieces, his Mass in C minor, K.427 and Requiem, K.626. The all-Mozart program will be led by named by Louis Langrée, alongside an all-American cast of singers with sopranoJoélle Harvey, mezzo-soprano Cecelia Hall, tenor Alek Shrader, bass Christian Van Horn, and theConcert Chorale of New York (James Bagwell, director). All four vocal soloists are making their Mostly Mozart debuts with these performances. Prior to the concerts, Andrew Shenton will lead a lecture titled "Mostly Masterly: Mozart and the Collaborators" at 6:30 pm.

Closing the week is the New York premiere of Seven Responses, a series of new works by seven disparate and exciting composers inspired by and paired with Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri, an iconic German Baroque-era work consisting of seven sacred-text cantatas. The original Buxtehude cantatas are performed alongside the new works by composers Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, David T. Little,Santa Ratniece, Caroline Shaw, Lewis Spratlan, Hans Thomalla, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir, who were invited to collaborate with an author of their choice or to craft an original text. Seven Responseswas commissioned and organized by the acclaimed Philadelphia-based vocal ensemble The Crossing, and is performed across two concerts on August 21, at 3:00 pm and 7:00 pm at Merkin Concert Hall. Joining The Crossing for these concerts are the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), andQuicksilver (Mostly Mozart debut), with conductor Donald Nally. A post-concert discussion with Donald Nally and Claire Chase, moderated by John Schaefer will follow the 7:00 pm performance.

In honor of its 50th anniversary, the festival holds its first Mostly Mozart trivia contest and concert onAugust 17 at 9:00 pm. Curators and archivists of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and musicians from Mostly Mozart come together for an imaginative, arts-focused trivia night. Hosted by ICE, the festival's artists-in-residence, in the David Rubenstein Atrium, the free concert and trivia competition features live music, prizes, and the library's unparalleled archive of composers' manuscripts, choreographic notes, and costume designs. The event, presented jointly by Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival and The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, promises a fun-filled, competitive evening to test the audience's knowledge of all things music and Mozart.

Celebrating its 50th anniversary, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival-America's first indoor summer music festival-was launched as an experiment in 1966. Called "Midsummer Serenades: A Mozart Festival" its first two seasons were devoted exclusively to the music of Mozart. The official title of Mostly Mozart was coined in 1970, and the festival has evolved over time to become a New York institution and a highlight of the city's summer classical music season. Under the leadership of Ehrenkranz Artistic Director Jane Moss and Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director Louis Langrée, Mostly Mozart has broadened its focus beyond the music of Mozart to include works by his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. In addition to concerts by the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Mostly Mozart now includes performances by the world's outstanding period-instrument ensembles, chamber orchestras, and acclaimed soloists, as well as opera productions, dance, film, and late-night concerts. Contemporary music has become an essential part of the festival, embodied in annual artist and composer residencies that have included Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, Kaija Saariaho, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, George Benjamin, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Among the many artists and ensembles who have had long associations with the festival are Joshua Bell, Christian Tetzlaff, Itzhak Perlman, Emanuel Ax, Garrick Ohlsson, Stephen Hough, Osmo Vänskä, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Emerson String Quartet, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and the Mark Morris Dance Group. The festival's popularity has been reflected in several cultural touchstones, including an Al Hirschfeld illustration, a Peanuts cartoon strip, beer cans, and a cover of The New Yorker magazine.

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the Mostly Mozart Festival, and is the only chamber orchestra in the U.S. dedicated to the music of the Classical period. Since 2002 Louis Langrée has been the Orchestra's music director, and since 2005 the Orchestra's David Geffen Hall home has been transformed each summer into an appropriately intimate venue for its performances. Over the years, the Orchestra has been the festival's ambassador, touring to such notable festivals and venues as Ravinia, Great Woods, Tanglewood, Bunkamura in Tokyo, the Kennedy Center, and The White House. Conductors who made their New York debuts leading the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra include Michael Tilson Thomas, David Zinman, Jérémie Rhorer, Edward Gardner, Lionel Bringuier, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Charles Dutoit, Leonard Slatkin, Susanna Mälkki, and Edo de Waart. Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, flutist James Galway, soprano Elly Ameling, and pianist Mitsuko Uchida all made their U.S. debuts with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra.