Teatro Nuovo Announces its Inaugural Bel Canto Festival

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.

"The time is ripe for the next phase of the worldwide Bel Canto revival," said Crutchfield in announcing the season. "We want to join the best insights of the Early Music movement to the full-throated passion of Bel Canto singing, and our team is perfectly positioned to do that."

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.

Says Crutchfield of the new approach: "Our goal is an ensemble of players and singers who listen and react to each other every exciting second. What I'm looking for is more 'leading' and less 'directing.' Leading is something you do from within a team, with your hands on the music like everybody else. We will be able to build a fire in every performance."

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.

Says Crutchfield of the Rossini piece: "Tancredi was the young Rossini's first 'hit,' and it has some of the freshest, most appealing, and most touching music he ever composed." And of the lesser-known Medea opera: "Mayr is not a figure on the margins; he is a master awaiting rediscovery. He was the teacher and lifelong friend of Donizetti, and the most important link between Mozart and Rossini." Medea in Corinto originally starred Rossini's future wife, Isabella Colbran, and then became a favorite role of Giuditta Pasta, the first Norma and Anna Bolena.

The Festival closes with a performance of Tancredi rifatto, which Crutchfield explains: "In Rossini's time, when you re-mounted an opera in a new city, you wrote some new music for it. Over time, Rossini wrote alternate pieces for practically half the score. Every time I have conducted Tancredi, I've looked at the gorgeous music printed in the Appendix, and thought 'this belongs on stage.' Now's the chance! So our final performance is not a repeat, but a different score with a different cast - with some of Rossini's best music, most of it unknown even to Rossini fans."

Seth Soloway, Interim Director of The Performing Arts Center at Purchase College, welcomed the new festival and put it in the context of The PAC's history, reaching back to the legendary Handel revivals of 1985 and the production of Peter Sellars' Mozart trilogy there: "We have spent the 2017/18 season celebrating our 40th Anniversary, and the occasion has me thinking about both our past and our future. I am often regaled with stories of "the good old days" of world-class summer programming here at Purchase, and returning to it in our 41st season became a top priority -- provided I could find the right partner. I cannot think of a better partner than Will Crutchfield's Teatro Nuovo, whose reputation is unrivaled. I am honored to welcome the festival to Purchase, and welcome our community back for the finest in summer programming."

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

To post a comment, you must register and login.