Teatro Nuovo Announces Its Inaugural BEL CANTO FESTIVAL at Purchase College This Summer

Teatro Nuovo, the new organization led by Will Crutchfield, is proud to announce its inaugural Bel Canto Festival at Purchase College, The Dawn of Romantic Opera, July 28-August 5 2018, in collaboration with The Performing Arts Center at Purchase College. The Festival will present semi-staged productions of Rossini's Tancredi, Mayr's Medea in Corinto, two operas premiered in 1813; one by a mature master and the other by a budding genius, both pointing the way for opera's Romantic century. The Festival will also include a second version of the Rossini score, Tancredi rifatto, incorporating extensive music that the composer wrote for later revivals. Teatro Nuovo will also introduce a radical new adventure with early 19th-century performing style and period orchestral instruments.

Tancredi will be headlined by mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford (featured in The Metropolitan Opera's production of Saariaho's L'amour de loin), Sydney Mancasola (who recently triumphed in Rigoletto at English National Opera and stars in the upcoming La traviata at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis), and Santiago Ballerini (who had a universally-praised breakout performance last summer in Il pirata at Caramoor).

Medea in Corinto showcases soprano Jennifer Rowley (recently heard in The Metropolitan Opera's Il trovatore) supported by two fast-rising tenors, Mingjie Lei (a winner at the prestigious Neue Stimmen competition, fresh from his Salzburger Festspiele debut) and Derrek Stark (currently at Palm Beach Opera and bound for his debut at the Opernhaus Zürich).

Tancredi rifatto ("Tancredi re-made") presents three standout participants in recent Bel Canto revivals elsewhere, mezzo-soprano Aleks Romano(L'assedio di Calais at The Glimmerglass Festival), soprano Christine Lyons (I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Saltworks Opera), and tenor David Margulis(Il barbiere di Siviglia with Arizona Opera).

Teatro Nuovo's orchestra of period instruments is led by the brilliant young Berlin-based violinist, Jakob Lehmann, well-known as concertmaster of some of Europe's most exciting period ensembles. Musical leadership will be shared, as it was in the early 19th century, between the Primo violino (concertmaster) and a Maestro al cembalo (leader at the keyboard), who will be Crutchfield for Tancredi and the Florentine conductor Jonathan Brandani, music director of recent productions at Minnesota Opera and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein and currently leading a Haydn title at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia, for Medea in Corinto.

Supplementing the main productions, the Festival will include a concert of instrumental music tied to vocal style and operatic traditions, as well as a series of vocal recitals; chamber music performances; and a range of master-classes, afternoon lectures, and panel discussions.

Teatro Nuovo will build on the acclaimed work of Bel Canto at Caramoor, which ran for two decades under Crutchfield's direction. The highly-selective training program immerses young singers in the Bel Canto style, including the roster of Resident Artists performing in the mainstage productions. The greatly-expanded teaching faculty will include both Rachelle Jonck and Lucy Tucker Yates from Crutchfield's longtime Caramoor team and new members including the great Bel Canto singers Jennifer Larmore and Juliana Gondek. Brandani will also take a teaching role. An additional initiative will be integrating the orchestra into rehearsals from the very beginning of the process with singers, and seminars for the instrumentalists to study Italian, learn the librettos, and explore how singing and vocal styles relate to their instruments and music.

Further information about Teatro Nuovo, the training program, and the organization's personnel and other plans can be found at www.teatronuovo.org.

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