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This year’s edition of the opera and music-theater program features Sarah Kirkland Snider’s ‘Hildegard,’ about the 12th-century abbess; Susan Zeeman Rogers’s ‘Precipice,’ a story of nature and feminism; and a celebration of Beth Morrison Projects, which has been producing adventurous new opera for 20 years.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Jan. 12, 2026 at 4:35 pm ET

A scene from ‘Hildegard.’ ANGEL ORIGGI

New York

The first two premieres of the 13th Prototype Festival (running through Jan. 18) were by and about women. That’s appropriate, given that this is the 20th anniversary of Beth Morrison Projects, whose principal is the pioneering co-founder and now sole producer of Prototype, and an indefatigable champion of new, unconventional operas.

Sarah Kirkland Snider’s fascinating “Hildegard,” which had its New York debut at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater on Friday, explores the life and mind of the 12th-century Benedictine abbess, visionary and composer Hildegard von Bingen. Ms. Snider’s libretto fictionalizes and extrapolates from the historical record. It is set at a biographical turning point: 1147, when Hildegard’s transcribed visions were submitted to the pope, who would declare her either a prophet or a heretic.

Ms. Snider depicts a compelling character. Hildegard repeatedly and courageously stands up to the dominant male power of the Church but is disturbed by the nature of her feelings for a troubled young novice, Richardis von Stade, who illustrates the transcriptions. A lot happens—the piece runs two hours and 40 minutes including intermission—yet the many underlying themes, including feminism, illness (Hildegard was also a healer and was thought to have migraines), shame, the importance of art, the nature of love and the nature of God, permeate the story. It’s a bit too long, with a lot of text to follow, but Hildegard’s visions, exploding out of the plot scenes, are mesmerizing.

Ms. Snider’s distinctive compositional voice finds the otherworldly in the day-to-day. The principal women get highly dramatic arias—Hildegard’s are stunningly sung by Nola Richardson in a pure, clear soprano; Richardis (Mikaela Bennett) has a darker, more tormented musical language. In the lines of Abbot Cuno, Hildegard’s antagonist, David Adam Moore exudes weight and a sense of superiority; Tenor Roy Hage, as her friend Volmar, radiates concern. Traditional Latin prayers sung by men have a heavy, chant-like ominousness; the two female angels who appear in the visions convey an urgent, slightly dissonant ecstasy.

The richness and variety of orchestral timbres belie the ensemble’s small size—a string quartet and a woodwind trio of bassoon, clarinet and flute go from glassy to earthy; a forcefully plucked bass suggests trouble, while a harp is everywhere, suggesting Hildegard’s visceral connection to the divine. Drew Sensue-Weinstein’ssound design, which included adroit use of reverb on voices and instruments, dovetailed with Gabriel Crouch’s skillful conducting, which brought out the score’s transparent, early music-style radiance.

The production invoked the historical paintings of Hildegard’s visions as well as modern interpretations of them, using videos in which swirling specks of colored light coalesced into figures. (Deborah Johnson designed the artwork and projections.) Marsha Ginsberg’s set featured an open-sided gold box that rotated and moved on and off stage—it became the scriptorium and the abbot’s domain. In keeping with the medieval look, some of the individuals pushing it had animal headdresses, reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts. Molly Irelan designed attractive monastic garb; a luxurious brocade gown for Richardis’s mother, the imperious Margravine (Blythe Gaissert); and fantastical robes and headdresses for the angels. Elkhanah Pulitzer’s direction segued smoothly from the real to the visionary. Ms. Snider is an astute dramatist: Her heroine tragically loses the woman she loves, but finds her strength and, with the papal seal of approval on her visions, is able to move her nuns out from under the thumb of the abbot to form a women-only community. Feminism triumphs.

A scene from ‘Precipice.’ MARIA BARANOVA

“Precipice,” given its world premiere on Thursday at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, is billed as an object-theater/chamber opera. The concept is by the visual artist Susan Zeeman Rogers and the 75-minute show works primarily as a narrative for her videos and miniature dioramas. This time, the feminist story is a little thin and predictable: Karen Fisher’s libretto is about how men silence women and seek to dominate the natural world. As a child, the imaginative Ana (Alice Tolan-Mee) longs to be a tree, but is suppressed by her parents (Daisy Press and Kyle Pfortmiller); as an adult, she escapes when her fiancé (Gabriel Hernández) also tries to control her. Rima Fand’s pleasant, folk-tinged score is illustrative rather than striking; the accompanying ensemble of mandolin, string quartet and bass, led from the piano by Mila Henry, plays a lot of ostinatos. Mallory Catlett directed.

Ms. Rogers’s set and object designs are eye-catching. The miniature family-house diorama at the front of the stage gets explored in the background video, its rooms opened like a dollhouse; Ana lies in a tiny, snow-covered forest, trying to become a part of it. The video also whirls through black-and-white landscapes of created objects—paper trees, a cardboard strip mine, a mirror lake. This use of video—along with a murmuring choral background—makes Ana’s dream sequences, in which she tries to become part of the landscape, the most effective parts of the show. In the final coup de théâtre, a black-and-white environment slowly transforms into a brilliantly green, leafy tree as Ana’s choked syllables become the “I” that her father forbade her to use.

Beth Morrison Projects is celebrating its 20th anniversary with the release of the two-volume “BMP: Songbook,” a recording and sheet-music anthology of selections from the company’s more than 65 commissioned and produced operas and music-theater works. One striking feature of the anthology is the prominence of female composers—11 out of 19—including such current luminaries as Missy Mazzoli, Du Yun and Ellen Reid, all of whom were championed early on by BMP. Ms. Morrison wanted to infuse opera with new people, new voices, new forms, and stories that didn’t necessarily end with dead heroines. These two Prototype operas represent just one aspect of the significant impact she has had on the field.

The company’s overstuffed new staging of Bellini’s final work, set during the English Civil War, proves a marvelous vocal showcase for stars Lisette Oropesa and Lawrence Brownlee.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Jan. 2, 2026 at 2:40 pm ET

Lisette Oropesa and Lawrence Brownlee KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

It was fitting that the Metropolitan Opera celebrated New Year’s Eve with a new production of “I Puritani” (1835), as Vincenzo Bellini’s final opera is replete with vocal fireworks and splendid tunes. Like the two other bel canto works presented by the company so far this season—the new production of Bellini’s “La Sonnambula” and a revival of Donizetti’s “La Fille du Régiment”—it was luxuriously cast and conducted. Headlined by conductor Marco Armiliato, soprano Lisette Oropesa as the heroine Elvira and tenor Lawrence Brownlee as her beloved Arturo, this was a musically idiomatic and expressive traversal.

The challenges of those two roles are one reason that the piece is less commonly performed than other bel canto operas. Another is that its saggy plot (the libretto is by Carlo Pepoli, based on a French play) doesn’t make a lot of sense. Charles Edwards, who directed and designed this nominally traditional production, tried to solve that problem by keeping to the story’s original 17th-century period and magnifying its political background. The lovers are on opposing sides of the English Civil War. Elvira is one of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans and Arturo a Cavalier, a supporter of the Stuart royal family. Remarkably, her family agrees to their marriage, but when Arturo discovers that the mysterious prisoner held by Puritans is Enrichetta, the widow of the executed King Charles I, he helps her escape. Elvira, believing herself betrayed in love, goes mad. Act 2 is about her madness; Act 3 about Arturo’s return and her recovery.

Mr. Edwards’s unit set is a wooden Puritan meeting house with banked pews and a towering pulpit in one corner; Gabrielle Dalton’s sumptuous costumes contrast the classic dour Puritan look—including big white collars and black hats—with the colorful satins of the Cavaliers (Arturo in baby blue, Enrichetta in yellow). So far, so straightforward. Mr. Edwards, however, has made some additions. First, there’s a pantomimed back story: During the overture, actors depicting the lovers as young teens flirt and are discouraged by adults. Then, in the first scene—a soldier’s chorus, a prayer and another chorus anticipating the wedding—he shows Elvira (still played by the actor) refusing to marry the Puritan her father has chosen. Scene 2, a scrim projection informs us, takes place eight years later, moving us back into the time frame of the original libretto.

Eve Gigliotti and Mr. Brownlee KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

Directorial interpolations keep coming. Elvira is friendly with the prisoner Enrichetta (Eve Gigliotti) and draws the captive’s portrait as her uncle, Giorgio (Christian Van Horn), explains how he persuaded her father to let her marry Arturo; the two women do a happy dance during the cabaletta. When Riccardo (Artur Ruciński), the rejected Puritan suitor, shows up to thwart Arturo’s rescue of Enrichetta (who he thinks is Elvira), he gropes her drunkenly instead of dueling with his rival. In the final moments of Act 1, the now-demented Elvira jumps on the supine Riccardo. 

Scrim projections between the acts inform us of the progress of the war. The meeting house grows progressively more dilapidated, and the costumes get shabbier, indicating that things aren’t going well for the Puritans. The opening chorus of Act 2, in which the Puritans grieve over Elvira’s madness, features a woman giving birth to a stillborn baby in full view of the community. Tim Mitchell’s lighting creates dramatic changes in tone, especially during Elvira’s hallucinations.

Some of the additions work. By Act 3, Elvira’s elegant white wedding dress has deteriorated into a filthy shift, her long mane of hair is cropped short, and she has painted numerous pictures of Enrichetta that are slashed with red, an outward manifestation of her grief-driven obsession. This helps give texture to her reunion with Arturo, in which she slips in and out of madness. But many of Mr. Edwards’s ideas feel imposed rather than organic—out of a need to illustrate lengthy vocal sequences or provide context that doesn’t really exist in the opera—and thus end up being distracting rather than illuminating. He also eschews the traditional happy ending. Rolando Villazón, the director of this season’s “La Sonnambula,” did the same, but in that case, the choice was theatrically consistent. 

Christian Van Horn and Artur Ruciński KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

The music, however, was top-notch. Ms. Oropesa’s limpid, flexible soprano brought a heart-tugging vulnerability to Elvira, and her pealing coloratura was both accurate and expressive. She was especially mesmerizing in her extended Act 2 mad scene—“Qui la voce” and “Vien diletto.” Mr. Brownlee’s tenor proved rock-solid in Arturo’s demanding music, from his exquisitely relaxed, almost languid opening aria, “A te, o cara,” to some punishing high Fs. Mr. Van Horn’s handsome bass-baritone made for a sympathetic Giorgio; Mr. Ruciński’s gravelly baritone brought out Riccardo’s macho arrogance. Their militant duet, “Suoni la tromba,” was a musical high point, only slightly marred by some “Braveheart”-style red and white body-painting for them and a phalanx of extra men. Ms. Gigliotti was an eloquent Enrichetta.

All the ensembles were stylishly handled, and the excellent Met chorus was skillfully woven into the texture throughout. The score has a military subtext—trumpets and drums are always interrupting happy scenes, and an ominous horn theme plays a major role. Fortunately, the orchestra, under Mr. Armiliato’s astute leadership, did better than the overstuffed staging in making that point clear.

At Opera Philadelphia, Vivaldi’s music meets a contemporary libretto by Sarah Ruhl; in New York, Lincoln Center Theater presents Gian Carlo Menotti’s written-for-television opera in a production starring Joyce DiDonato.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Dec. 22, 2025 at 5:19 pm ET

Abigail Raiford and Megan Moore STEVEN PISANO

Philadelphia

“The Seasons,” an ambitious project performed last weekend by Opera Philadelphia in the Perelman Theater, shakes up Vivaldi’s famous orchestral score “The Four Seasons” to sound a warning about climate change. In the libretto by playwright Sarah Ruhl (who conceived the project with Anthony Roth Costanzo, countertenor and general director of the company), five artists have retreated to a farm in the country where their artmaking and lovemaking are upended by the strangeness and violence of the weather. The frantic warnings of a Cosmic Weatherman go unheard as winter, confoundingly, follows spring, and summer arrives as a double cataclysm of fire and floods.

Musically, the piece is hugely enjoyable, with the orchestra stylishly led by Corrado Rovaris. Additional Vivaldi arias and ensembles are deftly interpolated among the scrambled “Seasons” movements, their words a combination of Ms. Ruhl’s new English texts and the original Italian and Latin. Outer and inner personal weather start to match: In a stunningly sung “Gelido in ogni vena” from “Farnace”—now “Frozen inside my body”—the Poet (Mr. Costanzo) is sad after a fight with his crush, the Painter (Kangmin Justin Kim), but also lost and freezing to death in a blizzard.

Kangmin Justin Kim and Anthony Roth Costanzo STEVEN PISANO

Theatrically, however, “The Seasons” is sometimes obscure. The setup of the scenario and characters feels rushed and thin when placed against the surging emotion of the arias and the impending menace of the weather. Also, the inventive, nonliteral staging by director Zack Winokur, choreographer Pam Tanowitz, co-set designers Mimi Lienand Jack Forman and lighting designer John Torres is astonishing to look at but not always intelligible.

Six dancers persuasively interpret the seasons and sometimes accompany the arias; Ms. Tanowitz’s angular, evocative choreography is enhanced by costumes in shiny textiles and chiffons by Victoria Bek and Carlos Soto. There is no built scenery. Instead, there is smoke and vivid use of light—in the most dramatic sequences, such as the fire, a wall-size blaze of color angles forward from a bank of instruments on the floor upstage. Dozens of individual silvery metal tears descend on wires; ranks of horizontal pipes (usually employed for hanging drop curtains or other scenery) bob up and down, threatening to crush the performers. Most ingenious of all are the soap bubbles, devised by Mr. Forman, an MIT doctoral student, that drift around the stage as whirling snow.

John Mburu STEVEN PISANO

With his sensitive interpretations, Mr. Costanzo was the standout among the singers, but they all gamely tackled the challenges of their full da capo arias. As the Choreographer, Megan Moore’s plangent mezzo was especially effective in her mourning aria; soprano Whitney Morrison was dramatic as the Performance Artist, the only member of the creative quintet who sees what is coming. With her bright soprano, Abigail Raiford brought a pealing earnestness and flexible coloratura to the Farmer (a former actress): In an aria accompanied by two piccolos, she happily prepared vegetables from her organic farm and fed them to the Poet. In his desperate bid to awaken the Poet from his frozen trance (“Sol da te,” or ”Oh my soul” in Ms. Ruhl’s text), Mr. Kim’s resonant countertenor combined elegantly with the flute obligato of Emi Ferguson, the onstage soloist. As the Cosmic Weatherman, John Mburu ably demonstrated how smoothly baroque arias for bass—regardless of their original subjects—can be repurposed as howls of despair about a modern apocalypse.

The piece ends with the Performance Artist realizing that the boat she built out of garbage is too small to save everyone; a children’s chorus arrives and sings “Et in terra pax” from a Vivaldi “Gloria.” The sun rises, perhaps a hopeful sign, but the staging does not suggest a happy ending.

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A scene from ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors.’ JULIETA CERVANTES

New York

Gian Carlo Menotti’s evergreen chamber opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors” is the epitome of family-friendly holiday fare, and Lincoln Center Theater, in association with the Metropolitan Opera, is presenting a luxuriously cast production of it through Jan. 4, 2026. One might worry that the 300-seat Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater would be too small for the operatic mezzo-soprano of its star, Joyce DiDonato, but director Kenny Leon has shrewdly calibrated the space and the voices and stayed true to the spirit of Menotti’s work. 

Intimate and accessible—it was written for television, first broadcast in 1951 and for many years thereafter—“Amahl” balances sweet, comic and serious elements without slipping into sentimentality. Its tunes are indelible. Over a tightly plotted 45 minutes, the opera explores poverty, love, generosity and a Christmas miracle as the disabled Amahl (Albert Rhodes Jr., a forthright young performer with Broadway presence) and his destitute mother (the intense Ms. DiDonato) are visited by the Three Magi (Bernard Holcomb, Todd Thomas, Phillip Boykin) on their way to Bethlehem.

The thrust stage, representing Amahl’s humble house, is a simple wooden platform, open to a radiantly starry sky; a lively shepherds’ chorus swirls around it, and the Kings enter down the aisles through the audience. (Derek McLane designed the set; Adam Honoré the effective lighting.) The Kings wear colorful Eastern robes; the rest of Emilio Sosa’s costumes are subtle and more or less contemporary. Steven Osgoodably conducted the two-piano accompaniment; Jesse Barrett played the haunting oboe solos. All the singers brought clear diction (there are no supertitles) and expressive characterizations. Mr. Leon’s staging and Ms. DiDonato’s performance built a compelling arc: The real Christmas miracle is not Amahl’s sudden cure, but the transformation of the Mother’s abject despair into hope. Seen in proximity to “The Seasons,” its optimism felt nostalgically redolent of a very different age.

Philip Venables and Ted Huffman adapt Larry Mitchell’s classic of 1970s gay literature in a joyous, boundary-blurring event at Park Avenue Armory; also in New York, singer Kate Lindsey performed a program that tracked the career of Kurt Weill.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Dec. 5, 2025 at 5:06 pm ET

Themba Mvula (center) and ensemble in the event of music and movement at Park Avenue Armory. STEPHANIE BERGER

New York

Composer Philip Venables and writer-director Ted Huffman are a potent creative team, imagining their way into contemporary stories in unconventional but always arresting ways. “The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions,” now in its North American premiere engagement at the Park Avenue Armory, is their wildest project yet. Based on Larry Mitchell’s 1977 self-published book of the same title—a queer-liberation fantasy that circulated for decades as a kind of samizdat in the gay world—their version of it is a kind of joyous communal theater, with its members recounting their history for one another through speech, song and dance. All of the 15 performers are highly skilled in their own artistic disciplines, but the boundaries are blurred—instrumentalists sing, singers play violins and percussion, and everyone commits vigorously to movement.

Mr. Huffman’s text captures the anarchic, utopian, very 1970s-counterculture spirit of the book, even as his additions and reorganizations streamline the narrative and reflect changes in the world since it was written. The “friends”—originally listed by Mitchell as straight women, lesbians, queens, fairies and queers—now include more categories of people “othered” by the paranoid and repressive capitalist patriarchy, aka “the men” in the country of Ramrod. Fierce, comic and sweet by turns, this depiction of struggle and survival in the battle of love against greed is both satirical and deeply serious.

Scenes are skillfully built out of fragments. Musical instruments, a rack of costumes, and chairs surround an empty stage. A singer intones a haunting melody—“It’s been a long time and still we are not free.” When actor Kit Green recounts an origin story of how the characters found one another, the music searches as well: The instruments, one at a time, offer brief riffs until the entire company is involved, energetically demonstrating “ecstatic communion.” Company members pull odd, often cobbled-together garments off the rack for different scenes (the costumes are by Theo Clinkard); during a tuning break, dancer Yandass writhes on the floor, trying to escape from an enveloping costume that seems almost alive. There are few props. The performers trundle the keyboard instruments out for use and then off again. Everything else is done with lighting (designed by Bertrand Couderc) and bodies.

Mr. Venables’s music, built on baroque and folk styles and instruments, enriches and illuminates the text. A comic song about “the men’s” obsession with papers is a pretty waltz aria accompanied by harp and flute; a saxophone picks up the tune and it turns into a raucous bossa nova, then into an Irish folk song with fiddle and accordion. Harpsichord and viola da gamba act as soloists as well as continuo; a modern lute song is a lullaby. Two sopranos and a countertenor depict a paradisiacal dream world of “fairies in the forest,” accompanied by an improvising violin. Nonverbal sung chorales often shimmer or glower beneath spoken text. The full company claps out one number—“The men never talk about how they feel . . . they pretend to be machines”; in another, everyone drums on plastic buckets. An earsplitting techno-accompanied dance party turns into a raid and a wild rebellion by the “queens”—likely a reference to the Stonewall uprising. While music director Yshani Perinpanayagam occasionally conducts and plays piano and organ, she is an equal part of the acting ensemble in their games, rituals, dances and embraces.

The final “revolution” ends in victory, yet the darkness of the ending—a new ritual, in which these once-marginalized people brutalize one another in order to remember their painful past—suggests, unsurprisingly, that the war is not over.

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Mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey and jazz pianist Baptiste Trotignon revisited the repertory of their 2017 recording “Thousands of Miles” on Dec. 2 at Weill Recital Hall. Built around the songs of Kurt Weill, their program tracks his musical life from the caustic Bertolt Brecht shows of 1920s Berlin through his Nazi-forced emigration to France and then to America. Ms. Lindsey finds a compelling interpretive middle ground between raspy, Lotte Lenya-esque cabaret stylings and the smoothed-out renditions typical of opera singers. Aided by Mr. Trotignon’s jazzy accompaniments and improvised segues between songs, she leans on extremes of expression—a whisper for the bitter practicalities of a teenage prostitute’s life in “Nannas Lied”; the refrain of “Denn wie man sich bettet, so liegt man” from “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” slowed to an incantation; a build to an outcry of anguish in the chanson “Je ne t’aime pas.” The whiplash between bitter and sweet is arresting, but Ms. Lindsey’s velvety mezzo is never less than beautiful, and her enunciation of German, English and French texts is impeccably crisp. 

The program ably demonstrates how Weill adapted his music to his environment. Yet even in his more conventionally melodic scores for Broadway, the acerbity of his early style peeks through, as in the turbulent “Trouble Man” from “Lost in the Stars” (1949), his heartbreaking musical based on “Cry, the Beloved Country.” There are also early songs by Alexander Zemlinsky, Alma Mahler and Erich Korngold, members of the Viennese musical elite circa 1900 and, like Weill, ultimately emigrés to America. As Ms. Lindsey gives full rein to their lush, chromatic melodies—especially Mahler’s surprising, orgasmic “Hymne”—she conjures up a world and age far from the astringency of Weill, and one they all left behind.

Les Arts Florissants performed a concert in dialogue with an exhibition devoted to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; Sonnambula, the museum’s ensemble-in-residence, collaborated with singer Davóne Tines to reconstruct a 1605 court entertainment.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Nov. 4, 2025 at 5:09 pm ET

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Singers of Les Arts Florissants. CHRIS SUNWOO/THE FRICK COLLECTION

New York

The Oct. 26 “Music at the Frick” concert by Les Arts Florissants, designed to be in dialogue with the collection’s current special exhibition, “To the Holy Sepulcher: Treasures From the Terra Sancta Museum,” did just that. The church, in Jerusalem, was originally built in the fourth century on what is purported to be the site of Christ’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection. The exhibition encompasses more than 40 religious objects sent to it as gifts by Catholic monarchs in Europe and the Holy Roman Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries. The objects, which include richly embroidered vestments and lavishly sculpted monstrances, Eucharist thrones and sanctuary lamps made of jewel-studded precious metals, are eye-catchingly high Baroque. The music, most of it from the early 17th century, is more austere, demanding concentration and contemplation.

Paul Agnew, who directed and sang tenor in the six-voice ensemble, constructed the hour-long program as a meditation on the origin of the Holy Sepulcher. Each section—crucifixion, burial and resurrection—began with plainchant and continued with more elaborate settings of those and other sacred texts on the subjects. At the heart of the Good Friday and Holy Saturday sections were four responsories from Carlo Gesualdo’s 1611 collection for Holy Week. The word-painting in these arresting madrigal-style pieces, heightened by Gesualdo’s characteristic dissonances, is starkly immediate. Words like “cilicio” (sackcloth) jumped out of the texture; the rushing turbulence of “Vos fugam capietis” (Ye shall take flight), following the first mournful words of Jesus in Gethsemane in “Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem,” graphically depicted the cowardice of his followers. Dynamics were also crucial: When Jesus cried out on the cross in the “Tenebrae” responsory, “exclamavit” was startlingly loud; his death, “emisit spiritum,” was barely audible.

The excellent singers embraced the storytelling structure and different composers added new qualities to the same texts. Antonio Lotti’s highly dramatic “Crucifixus à 6” contrasted with Claudio Monteverdi’s much earlier version—a dark, four-part setting sung by low voices, with deep bass notes on the concluding “sepultus est” (was buried). The Resurrection section of the program was more cheerful—a “Victimae paschali laudes” motet by the Spanish composer Fernando de las Infantas was jolly, and Jacques Mauduit’s French setting of Psalm 150 (the only non-Latin number) was a positively raucous celebration, its catchy rhythms depicting all the instruments praising God. The program ended on a note of jubilation with William Byrd’s bright-toned “Resurrexi.” It was a sly addition: The nationalities of most of the program’s composers reflected the origins of the exhibition’s objects, and although Byrd was a Catholic, England’s monarchs during nearly all of the period covered by the exhibition were most definitely not.

The Nov. 2 Frick concert, “A Black Masque,” was also an intriguing musical-historical exercise. Devised by Sonnambula—the Frick’s new ensemble-in-residence, directed by viol player and scholar Elizabeth Weinfield—and bass-baritone Davóne Tines, it was a creative reconstruction of the 1605 court entertainment “The Masque of Blackness” by poet Ben Jonson, designer Inigo Jones, and composer Alfonso Ferrabosco II. The original music, apart from one song, is lost, so the performers supplemented an abridged version of the text and stage directions with pieces by other composers of the period, even ingeniously setting some of Jonson’s song lyrics to them.

The masque’s subject is problematic: Some beautiful African water nymphs—portrayed by the queen and her ladies-in-waiting in blackface—wish to travel to Britain to be made white. The text is an elaborate explanation of the nymphs’ quest, told in the voices of Oceanus (Ocean), Niger (River), and Æthiopia (Moon); there are songs and dances before the nymphs plunge into the ocean to swim to Britannia, which, they have been told, is “Ruled by a sun, that to this height doth grace it: Whose beams shine day and night, and are of force / To blanch an Æthiop, and revive a corse.” The actual transformation occurs in Jonson’s subsequent masque.

The instrumental consort—three viols, two violins, harpsichord and lute/theorbo—offered an invigorating collection of Elizabethan and Jacobean hits by such contemporaneous composers as William Brade, William Lawes, John Dowland and Anthony Holborne. Elegantly played laments and dances were woven between the text sections, and sometimes skillfully repurposed as their background accompaniments. Ferrabosco’s surviving number, “Come Away, Come Away,” was a pleasantly simple tune, less sophisticated than John Coprario’s mourning song, “So Parted You,” in which the violins plaintively echoed the singer. Mr. Tines gave the texts suitably dramatic readings, but his singing voice proved heavy and overly emphatic for this Renaissance style.

It would be difficult to re-create the actual experience of the masque, given its elaborate stage setting, which called for blue-haired tritons (part human, part fish), sea monsters, and a giant shell to contain the performers, for starters. The program made the point about the racist subject without being excessively didactic; the one projection was a period drawing of a costumed lady in blackface. During the final song—Jonson’s text “Now, Dian,” deftly set to Dowland’s famous tune “Flow My Tears”—it slowly transformed into its negative image, so her face became white. It was a thought-provoking hour, offering new contextual insight into period music and art that we think we know.

The company opened its 50th season with a gleefully silly, powerfully sung production that set the 1825 comedy in an art gallery; in New York, Samoan tenor Pene Pati brought warmth and expressiveness to a recital at Park Avenue Armory.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Oct. 1, 2025 at 5:01 pm ET

A scene from the opera. PHOTO: STEVEN PISANO

Philadelphia

Opera Philadelphia’s 50th-season opener, Rossini’s “Il Viaggio a Reims,” performed over the past two weekends at the Academy of Music, was appropriately tongue-in-cheek. Anthony Roth Costanzo, who took over as OP’s general director and president last year, is busy upending the prevailing opera-company model, starting with a “Pick Your Price” offer of every available ticket at $11 (or whatever amount above that you want to pay), and a season lineup studded with new, highly unconventional pieces. “Viaggio” itself teases tradition. Written in 1825 to celebrate the coronation of the French king Charles X, it is a comic pageant with the wispiest of plots: An international group of aristocrats is stuck in a spa hotel en route to the coronation without onward transportation. There are tantrums, squabbles and romantic jealousies, but it is mostly an opportunity for bravura singing.

Damiano Michieletto’s well-traveled production, first mounted at the Dutch National Opera in 2015, leans into the silliness. Staged in Philadelphia by Eleonora Gravagnola, it is set in a modern-day art gallery, where a traveling exhibit is being crated up for transfer to its next location. Some of the opera’s characters become figures from the art; others are gallery employees or visitors. The conceit cleverly integrates both worlds and is entertaining without making much more sense than the original. Paintings and sculptures come to life in various amusing ways, and the characters finally coalesce into François Gérard’s 1827 painting of Charles X’s coronation.

The score calls for a large cast with serious bel canto skills, and Opera Philadelphia’s lineup delivered. As Madama Cortese, here the gallery’s proprietor, soprano Brenda Rae looked splendidly Anna Wintour-ish in Carla Teti’s chic outfit, complete with elbow-length black gloves and dark glasses. As she scrabbled for a laser pointer in her large handbag, her coloratura was comically on point, though she was inaudible in her middle range during the cabaletta. Soprano Lindsey Reynolds emerged from a packing crate in 19th-century dishabille and threw a convincing diva fit as La Contessa di Folleville. Her clothes have been lost en route, and she furiously rejected all proffered substitutes. Il Conte di Libenskof (the excellent high tenor Alasdair Kent) and Don Alvaro (the witty baritone Alex DeSocio) drew their swords over La Marchesa Melibea (mezzo Katherine Beck).

Brenda Rae PHOTO: STEVEN PISANO

Everyone was soon corralled into a large picture frame for a typically ebullient Rossini ensemble as Don Profondo (bass-baritone Ben Brady), an antiquarian, hung price tags on them. Then, for a complete change of musical and dramatic pace, Alessandro Carletti’s lighting took on a mysterious dimness; offstage an exquisite lyric soprano (Emilie Kealani), accompanied by solo harp, offered a serene aria; and the figures from Canova’s sculpture “The Three Graces” came to life and struck balletic poses.

Other arias were staged using even more elaborate art-related gags. After the arrival of a new assortment of relatively modern paintings (by Frida Kahlo, Fernando Boteroand Keith Haring, among others) and actor avatars of their subjects, Lord Sidney (Scott Conner)—here an art restorer—sang his aria of unrequited love, full of surprising bass coloratura, to John Singer Sargent’s “Madame X,” who came to life and covered him with paint. Mr. Brady pulled off Don Profondo’s patter song “Medaglie incomparabili,” a tongue-twisting list of precious objects, as an auctioneer’s spiel. 

Some of the best singing of the night came from tenor Minghao Liu (as Il Cavaliere Belfiore) with his boasting yet playful wooing of the poet Corinna (Ms. Kealani), here a modern-day art student; to get past her indifference, he forces an unsuspecting gallery visitor, at sword point, to surrender his clothes and puts them on. The final parade of “national” songs was also cleverly handled: The characters, now appropriately costumed, stepped into a large frame, in front of a throne-room background, to perform. And during Ms. Kealani’s closing paean to Charles X, once again sensitively accompanied by the solo harp, the Gérard picture slowly assembled, with the painting itself finally projected onto the singers and Paulo Fantin’s set.

The chorus, usually engaged in packing or cleanup activities for the gallery, was also lively. Conductor Corrado Rovaris led a sprightly, transparent performance, full of Rossinian sparkle and verve, and the solo musicians, particularly the flutist, were as vivid and idiomatic as the singers.

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New York

The Park Avenue Armory’s recital series is a good place to catch interesting vocalists. Last week, the Samoan tenor Pene Pati made his North American solo recital debut with pianist Ronny Michael Greenberg. Mr. Pati, who has sung in many European houses, got a quick Metropolitan Opera debut this January with a few performances as the Duke in “Rigoletto”; given the warmth and expressiveness of the instrument on display at the Armory, I hope he’ll be back there soon.

The program included French, English and German repertoire. A pair of Henri Duparc chansons sounded too loud in the small Board of Officers room, but for Lili Boulanger’s “Clairières dans le ciel” Mr. Pati found a conversational intimacy rare in big lyric-tenor voices. The English selections were superbly communicative. Mr. Pati’s idiomatic eloquence in pieces by Benjamin Britten, evoking the darkness of the final verse of “The Last Rose of Summer” and the poignant storytelling of “The Choirmaster’s Burial,” made me want to hear him sing Captain Vere in the composer’s “Billy Budd.” His just-released recording of Neapolitan songs with the ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro is similarly surprising. Instead of the full-throated, Pavarotti-style belt that’s common in this repertoire, Mr. Pati makes a familiar song like “O sole mio” as gentle as a caress.