Opera Philadelphia Announces 'Provocative' 2016-2017 Season

Opera Philadelphia's 2016-2017 Season serves notice that the company is, as the Washington Post reports, "the very model of a modern opera company." As General Director & President David B. Devan and Jack Mulroney Music Director Corrado Rovaris announced today, the 2016-2017 Season takes a bold first step towards the company's new "binge-watching" format, packing three productions into an 11-day period in fall 2016 while offering two additional operas in spring 2017. Devan describes the slate as an "exciting warm up" to fall 2017, when the company will begin launching each annual season with a 12-day festival featuring seven operatic happenings across multiple venues.

Highlighting the fall season is the World Premiere of the chamber opera Breaking the Waves by composer Missy Mazzoli, a graduate of Opera Philadelphia's Composer in Residence program, and librettist Royce Vavrek, who based it on the Oscar-nominated 1996 film by Lars von Trier. Presented in the Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts from September 22-October 1, 2016, the opera stars soprano Kiera Duffy as the troubled Bess McNeill and baritone John Moore as her lover and eventual husband, Jan Nyman. During that same period, audiences can also enjoy Christine Goerke in the title role of a lavish production of Puccini's Turandot at the Academy of Music, complete with an Opening Night Gala and a free Opera on the Mall HD broadcast, alongside the American Premiere Tour of an African-set Macbethfrom South Africa's most provocative director, Brett Bailey,and his innovative theater company, Third World Bunfight, co-presented with FringeArts at the Prince Theater as part of the Curated 2016 Fringe Festival.