Opera Philadelphia's 2023-2024 Season Begins With Festival O23

Opera fans across the globe will want to mark their calendars for September 2023 in Philadelphia, as the fifth iteration of Opera Philadelphia's annual, season-opening Festival O brings a star-studded lineup of live performances to multiple venues in the city from Sept. 21 through Oct. 1.

The annual fall festival has been a hit with audiences and critics, proving to be "a hotbed of operatic innovation" (New York Times) and "one of the most enjoyable additions to the fall calendar in years" (Washington Post).

With six world premieres in its first four years, Festival O continues to exercise an "outsized influence" (New Yorker) on the future of opera in 2023 with the world premiere of 10 Days in a Madhouse, an experimental, psychological opera from composer Rene Orth and librettist Hannah Moscovitch. The opera is inspired by the real-life story of Nellie Bly, a trailblazing reporter who in 1887 faked madness to be admitted to Blackwell's Asylum for the Insane and to report on conditions from the inside, where Bly encountered women whose poverty, race, and grief over past traumas had been mistaken for madness. She became a star journalist by exposing the asylum's terrible conditions in the New York World and her hands-on approach to reporting developed into a practice now called investigative journalism.

Grammy-winning soprano Ana María Martínez and Beverly Sills Artist Award-winning baritone Quinn Kelsey were scheduled to make their Opera Philadelphia debuts on the stage of the Academy of Music in a spring 2021 production of Puccini's Tosca, but the pandemic shifted those plans, with the singers performing in concert for an outdoor audience. The star duo reunites in September's Simon Boccanegra, as Jack Mulroney Music Director Corrado Rovaris brings Verdi's tragedy back to the Academy of Music stage for the first time in 30 years. This Festival O23 presentation also stars bass Christian Van Horn as Fiesco and tenor Richard Trey Smagur, in his company debut, as Gabriele.

Faith and representation are at the center of Karim Sulayman's Unholy Wars, which stitches together operatic selections from the Italian Baroque period about the Crusades. Using Claudio Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda as a keystone, Sulayman refocuses these narratives, addressing issues of Orientalism in the Baroque works to reveal a new story from his Arab American perspective. This Philadelphia premiere from Up Until Now Collective is directed by Kevin Newbury, and includes animation by Syrian artist Kevork Mourad, new interstitial compositions by Mary Kouyoumdjian, and choreography by Ebony Williams. Early music specialist and violinist Julie Andrijeski provides musical direction.

Winter brings the company premiere of The Anonymous Lover, a 1780 opera by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799), who is widely regarded as the first Black classical composer known to history and is the subject of the spring 2023 film Chevalier. Soprano Symone Harcum makes her company debut as Léontine, with tenor Matthew White in his company and role debuts as Valcour. The season closes at the Academy of Music with a new production of Puccini's Madame Butterfly in which director Aria Umezawa constructs, and deconstructs, Puccini's fantasy of Japan, infusing the typical Westernized portrayal with Japanese history, culture, and artistry, while giving the young geisha Cio- Cio-San (soprano Karen Chia-ling Ho) a new sense of agency over her own story.

Subscriptions and season ticket packages are now on sale at operaphila.org, or by calling 215.732.8400 (Monday through Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.). Single tickets will go on sale on Tuesday, July 18.

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