2023 FESTIVAL CHAMBER OPERA

Paul O’Dette & Stephen Stubbs, Musical Directors

Gilbert Blin, Stage Director

Robert Mealy, Orchestra Director

Melinda Sullivan, Choreographer

Anna Watkins, Costume Designer

Kelly Martin, Lighting Designer

Kathleen Fay, Executive Producer

A contemporary of Monteverdi, Francesca Caccini came of age in Florence during the earliest years of opera as an art form. Both a composer and a performer, she was one of the most important musical figures at the Medici Court, for whom she created the first opera by a woman composer, La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina.

Alcina is a brilliant entertainment, full of wit and drama, with a demanding title role first sung by the composer herself. At the center of a struggle between illusion and destiny, the sorceress Alcina stands in the way of the valiant Melissa and her quest to rescue the warrior Ruggiero and liberate the captives whom Alcina has transformed into plants and trees to ornament her island.

SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 2023

8PM | NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA

JUNE 23 & 24, 2023

Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA (See page 16 for more details)

Mireille Lebel, Alcina

Colin Balzer, Ruggiero

Virginia Warnken Kelsey, Melissa

BEMF VOCAL ENSEMBLE

Teresa Wakim, Hannah De Priest, Nola Richardson, Megan Stapleton, Mindy Ella Chu, Cecilia Duarte, Brian Giebler, Kyle Stegall, David Evans, Douglas Williams, Daniel Fridley & Michael Galvin

BEMF CHAMBER ENSEMBLE

Robert Mealy, concertmaster

Julie Andrijeski, violin

Sarah Darling, violin & viola

David Morris, lirone & viola da gamba

Christel Thielmann, viola da gamba & recorder

Laura Jeppesen, viola da gamba

Kathryn Montoya, recorder

Héloïse Degrugillier, recorder

Maxine Eilander, Baroque harp

Michael Sponseller, harpsichord, organ & regal

Paul O’Dette, chitarrone

Stephen Stubbs, lute & Baroque guitar n THURSDAY, JUNE

8 | First Lutheran Church, Boston ORGAN & KEYBOARD

MINI-FESTIVAL

Join us at the First Lutheran Church, home to the magnificent Richards, Fowkes & Co. Opus 10 organ, and enjoy four recitals on four different keyboard instruments from leading virtuosos.

n 10AM | CAROLE CERASI, clavichord

Private Passions n 11:30AM | FRANCESCO CORTI, harpsichord

Known for her expressive and virtuosic interpretations, fluidity of phrasing and refined touch, Carole Cerasi has given recitals throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas and has won numerous accolades for her exemplary recordings. She makes her BEMF début in a program of music from the golden period of the most intimate of instruments, the clavichord. Discover a quiet world of passionate emotions in music by Müthel, C. P. E. Bach, and Haydn.

Around Anna Magdalena Bach n 1:30PM | STEFANIA NEONATO, fortepiano

A shared love of music made for a happy marriage between Johann Sebastian Bach and his second wife, Anna Magdalena, herself a professional singer from a family of musicians. Conductor and celebrated harpsichordist Francesco Corti offers some of his favorite selections from the notebooks that Johann Sebastian gave to her, and from other manuscripts from the Bach family circle. Explore the domestic life of this extraordinarily musical family in a program featuring works by Bach, Telemann, Böhm, and Kuhnau.

Becoming Composers: Women on the Make n 3PM | CHRISTA RAKICH, organ

Prize-winning performer and internationally recognized pedagogue Stefania Neonato makes her BEMF début in a fortepiano recital exploring a diverse selection of women composers. Enjoy masterpieces from established figures of Romanticism, Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn; Maria Szymanowska, who extensively toured Europe as a virtuoso pianist in the early 19th century; and Marianna von Auenbrugger, a Viennese composer and performer who was well acquainted with the Mozart family and a student of Haydn and Salieri, whose promising life and career was cut short by illness when she was 23.

Sisters, Daughters, Wives, and Nuns

Music from around the world and through the centuries is celebrated on the elegant Richards, Fowkes organ! Internationally recognized performer and teacher Christa Rakich returns to BEMF to present repertoire by Sister Gracia Baptista of Spain, Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia, Isabella Leonarda of Italy, Mélanie Hélène Bonis of France, Maria Theresia von Paradis of Austria, Clara Wieck Schumann of Germany, and Florence Smith Price of the U.S.