Heralding a fresh new direction for opera, Opera Philadelphia’s festival takes the excitement and cachet of an opening night to an exponentially richer experience. The festival has been named to capture, with simple elegance, the visceral wonder of new and compelling ideas in music, voice, and performance that will open our city to opera, foster unexpected collaborations, and bring opera to new audiences and stages year after year. The inaugural festival O17 will occupy the city of Philadelphia across seven performance happenings in unique venues, creating innumerable complementary food, wine, and cultural experiences.

“For much of the past decade, Opera Philadelphia has worked tirelessly to weave the art form into the civic fabric of Philadelphia’s public spaces,” said Board Chairman Daniel K. Meyer, M.D. “From pop-up performances to the annual HD broadcast in front of Independence Hall to chamber operas and site-specific works, our artistic programming has evolved to complement the grand opera we continue to produce in our home base, the historic Academy of Music. In 2017, with the launch of festival O, we will bring all of those programs together in an invigorating 12-day package that will attract both opera buffs and new audiences to Philadelphia as a vital destination for experiencing opera in an exciting urban setting.”

“By opening our season each year with a festival, we have the opportunity to transform the city of Philadelphia into a giant stage for all that opera is and all that it can be,” said General Director & President David B. Devan. “The density and breadth of programming possible within the festival format has allowed us to attract some of the most sought after composers, librettists, directors, designers, and performing artists with projects that provide them the most creative possibilities. Over the next two years, as we continue to produce opera on many stages, we are fortunate to have the support of a number of venture philanthropists who have invested in the future of the company and the creation of the festival. On behalf of Opera Philadelphia, I want to personally thank our keystone supporters, William Penn Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, Sandra K. Baldino, Judy and Peter Leone, and Barbara Augusta Teichert, for their early leadership and contributions as we develop the festival. Special thanks also go to The Wallace Foundation for being a key supporter of our efforts to engage new audiences.”

Managing Director Annie Burridge added, “The festival gives us the opportunity to build on our successful track record in attracting new audiences both locally and throughout the Northeast. Approximately 20% of the audience for our recent world premiere productions is coming from more than 70 miles away – and we’re confident that festival O will help us reach even more of these fans while simultaneously offering more operatic experiences for our loyal local supporters. By creating such a rich and varied lineup across multiple Philadelphia venues, we anticipate issuing over 25,000 tickets in our first year of the festival.”

“Opera lovers always tell me how much they enjoy coming to our city for an Opera Philadelphia production,” said Corrado Rovaris, the Jack Mulroney Music Director. “Beginning in 2017, I invite audiences to join us for twelve days of opera in all of its glory, from the grand stage of the Academy of Music to chamber opera at the Perelman Theater and site-specific works all over our great city. It will truly be a showcase to experience this wonderful art form. I only wish I could be at the podium to conduct every opera in the festival!”

Joining Meyer, Devan, and Burridge for the announcement were Marc A. Scorca, president/CEO of OPERA America; Meryl Levitz, President & CEO of Visit Philadelphia; and a number of the partners and artists who will bring O17 to the city in two years.

“Opera Philadelphia is breaking new ground by opening its season with a 12-day festival that responds to findings from the deepest audience research ever conducted in the field,” stated Marc A. Scorca, president/CEO of OPERA America. “While building its reputation as a leading producer of new and traditional repertoire, the company has distinguished itself as an expert in strategic planning. 017 is the result of a bold artistic vision fused with a careful plan to extend its service to a regional audience.” 

Opera Philadelphia’s new programming schedule was developed with TDC after the company completed a four-part, 14-month contextual segmentation study of its current and potential audience conducted by MoStrategy and the Cicero Group. Major support for this research was provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from The Barra Foundation and OPERA America’s Getty Audience Building Program. The research project moved beyond the study of demographics and purchasing behavior to evaluate how the company’s offerings are perceived. The findings informed a new business plan and programming model designed to accommodate the significant shift in the consumer market in recent years while maintaining its Academy of Music schedule for current subscribers.

O17 Production Details

THE MAGIC FLUTE | Academy of Music
Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; Text by Emanuel Schikaneder
Exclusive East Coast appearance of production from Komische Oper Berlin

“Barrie Kosky has transformed The Magic Flute into a stunning live-action cartoon, so bewitching as to silence every criticism.” So marveled the LA Times in 2013 when the celebrated Australian director’s new production of Mozart’s masterful comedy about love, truth and the pursuit of enlightenment made its North American premiere. The innovative production from Komische Oper Berlin presents The Magic Flute in a style that evokes a meeting between 1920s silent movies and David Lynch, with the singers performing amidst fanciful animated projections. The result is “a deliciously absurd blend of silent film and animation” (Berliner Morgenpost). “It is a tour de force. The audience oohed and aahed, clapped, gasped and guffawed. There was no let-up” (The Guardian).

The 2012 production at Komische Oper Berlin, created by the British theatre group 1927, “points the way toward a freer, more experimental style of producing opera” (The New York Times).

The historic Academy of Music is the venue for the East Coast premiere of this imaginative production, with a free community screening planned on multiple HD screens at Independence National Historic Park in Opera Philadelphia’s celebrated Opera on the Mall series.

ELIZABETH CREE | Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts
Music by Kevin Puts; Text by Mark Campbell
Based on the novel The Trial of Elizabeth Cree by Peter Ackroyd
Conducted by Corrado Rovaris
Directed by David Schweizer
World Premiere

Composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell, the team who created the Pulitzer Prize-winning Silent Night, return to Opera Philadelphia for the world premiere of a chamber opera based on Peter Ackroyd’s “downright exhilarating” (LA Times) novel, The Trial of Elizabeth Cree. Set in London in the 1880s, this highly suspenseful and theatrical opera interweaves several narratives: the trial of the titular heroine for the poisoning of her husband; a series of brutal murders committed by a Jack the Ripper-style killer; the spirited world of the English music hall; and, finally, some “guest appearances” by luminaries from the Victorian Age. Shockingly entertaining, Elizabeth Cree is a work that combines the factual with the fictive and the historical with the imaginary.

Kevin Puts is “a brilliant composer with a strong musical voice” (The New York Times). His works have been commissioned, performed, and recorded by leading orchestras, ensembles and soloists throughout North America, Europe and the Far East. Mark Campbell is one of the most in-demand librettists working in opera today, profiled in Opera News as someone who will be “a major force in opera in the coming decade.”

The opera makes its world premiere in the intimate Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.

WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED | The Wilma Theater
Music by Daniel Bernard Roumain; Text by Marc Bamuthi Joseph
Directed by Bill T. Jones
World Premiere
Co-commission with Art Sanctuary

What’s at stake here is America itself and its future. Who’s invited to participate?

Combining spoken word, operatic singing, and an eclectic score filled with place, purpose, and possibility, We Shall Not Be Moved is a timely exploration of past and present struggles which suggests an alternate future through the eyes of its young protagonists. Set in Philadelphia, the opera is the story of a group of orphans who decide they want to live apart as a family who recognizes their marginalization and claims it as a source of power.

This world premiere chamber opera by Daniel Bernard Roumain, an acclaimed composer and performer whose work defies genre, and librettist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, an arts activist known for spoken‐word performance, is “ambitiously interdisciplinary,” according to director and dramaturg Bill T. Jones. “We are plotting the course through treacherous terrain where musical forms, literary forms, and movement styles collide and, hopefully, fly,” says the celebrated choreographer, theater director, and dancer whose accolades include a MacArthur Fellowship, two Tony Awards, a Kennedy Center Honor, and a 2013 National Medal of Arts.

“I'm excited and elated to be in collaboration with artists who share a long history of storytelling, deep inquiry, and innovation within the theater,” said composer Daniel Bernard Roumain. “When Opera Philadelphia approached me about creating a new work for them, I immediately wanted to develop a new chamber opera with Bill and Marc supporting an eclectic score—full of place, purpose, and possibility—within an immersive, theatrical experience. We have all been collaborating with one another for years, and this work, in some ways, is a culmination of dreams, desires and talents.”

“My hope for the libretto is that it sensitively examines a historical moment, and legibly suggests an alternate future through the eyes of its young protagonists,” said librettist Marc Bamuthi Joseph. “Structurally, the piece embellishes the traditional staples of the opera form with post-hip hop flourishes. This elasticity, this future-classic take on history in the present tense, is demanding a lot from the creative team, but I think we're uniquely prepared for the task.”

The opera will receive its world premiere at the Wilma Theater as part of Opera Philadelphia’s inaugural festival, O17, and will then immediately have its New York premiere at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

WAR STORIES | Philadelphia Museum of Art
Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda
Music by Claudio Monteverdi
I Have No Stories To Tell You (Philadelphia Premiere)
Music by Lembit Beecher; Text by Hannah Moscovitch
Co-produced by Opera Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Museum of Art

This “ingenious” (Wall Street Journal) site-specific double-bill features Monteverdi’s eerily relevant story of two warriors—one Christian, one Muslim—clashing in battle, staged in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s medieval cloister, followed by composer Lembit Beecher and librettist Hannah Moscovitch’s response to Monteverdi’s work, performed in the museum’s Great Stair Hall.

Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda was published in 1638 in the composer’s Eight Book of Madrigals. This operatic scena tells the story of the Christian soldier Tancredi who battles with a Muslim soldier, unknown to Tancredi as his lover Clorinda because she is disguised in armor. When Clorinda is mortally wounded, Tancredi discovers her identity. As she lies dying, she asks to be baptized. The instrumentation for the scena is string quartet and continuo.

Beecher, a graduate of Opera Philadelphia’s Composer in Residence program, and Moscovitch respond to Monteverdi’s work by focusing on the aftereffects of war. Their “cleverly devised, alluring one-act opera” (The New York Times) turns from the battlefield to domestic life to tell the story of a soldier’s return home after extended assignment in the Middle East. Haunted by her experiences and reluctant to discuss them with a husband who no longer seems to understand her, she struggles to readjust to home. Scored for a period instrument ensemble and inspired by interviews with soldiers and army psychologists, I Have No Stories to Tell You explores the effects of war on one’s identity and sense of home. The instrumentation for the opera is string quartet, theorbo, harpsichord, Baroque oboe, and electronics.

SONDRA RADVANOVSKY IN RECITAL | Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky is a globally celebrated artist, praised for her “alluringly dark-hued voice, with its distinctive timbre, expressive vibrato and gleaming top notes” (The New York Times). The sincerity and intensity that she brings to the stage as one of the most prominent Verdian sopranos of her generation have won her accolades from critics and loyalty from passionate fans.

As O’s inaugural Festival Artist, Ms. Radvanovsky will perform a recital at the intimate Perelman Theater and conduct a Master Class with Opera Philadelphia Emerging Artists.

TO BE ANNOUNCED | The Barnes Foundation
World Premiere

Opera Philadelphia will commission a composer to craft an original work for voice, designed to interact with the Barnes Foundation’s world-class collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and early Modern paintings, which includes extensive works by artists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. The performance will take place at the Barnes after visiting hours. Full details to be announced at a later date.