2023 Festival | Chamber Opera
Francesca Caccini’s Alcina
SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 2023 at 8PM | PURCHASE TICKETS
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston
FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 2023 at 8PM | PURCHASE TICKETS
SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 2023 at 3PM | PURCHASE TICKETS
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
SUNDAY, JUNE 25, 2023 at 4PM | LEARN MORE
Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, Katonah, NY
The health of our audience remains our highest priority. To best protect the most vulnerable members of our community, some safety policies—including requiring face masks—will remain in place for the Festival. Please visit BEMF.org/safety to review our current policies. We thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
A contemporary of Monteverdi and a colleague of Galileo, 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 during the regency of Christina of Lorraine and her daughter-in-law Maria Maddalena. In 1625, amid this time of female leadership, 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, magic, and drama, with a demanding title role first sung by the composer herself. At the center of a struggle of illusion and destiny, the sorceress Alcina stands between the valiant magician Melissa and her quest to save the warrior Ruggiero and liberate the captives who Alcina has transformed into plants and trees to ornament her island.
GRAMMY Award-winning Musical Directors Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs and Stage Director Gilbert Blin lead a gorgeous production–originally performed in 2018 in Boston and New York City. They are joined by Concertmaster Robert Mealy, Choreographer Melinda Sullivan, Costume Designer Anna Watkins, and the all-star singers and instrumentalists of the BEMF Vocal & Chamber Ensembles.
“Spellbinding.”
BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEO
ARTISTS
Paul O’Dette & Stephen Stubbs, Musical Directors
Gilbert Blin, Stage Director
Robert Mealy, Concertmaster
Melinda Sullivan, Dance Director
Anna Watkins, Costume Designer
Kelly Martin, Lighting Designer
Kathleen Fay, Executive Producer
Boston Early Music Festival Vocal Ensemble
Mireille Lebel, Alcina
Colin Balzer, Ruggiero
Virgina Warnken Kelsey, Melissa
Mindy Ella Chu, Hannah De Priest, Cecilia Duarte, David Evans, Daniel Fridley, Michael Galvin, Brian Giebler, Nola Richardson, Danielle Reutter-Harrah, Kyle Stegall, Douglas Williams, & Teresa Wakim
Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble
Paul O’Dette, chitarrone; Stephen Stubbs, lute & Baroque guitar Robert Mealy & Julie AndrijeskiI, violin
Sarah Darling, violin & viola
David Morris, lirone & viola da gamba
Christel Thielmann viola da gamba & recorder
Laura Jeppesen, viola da gamba
Kathryn Montoya & Héloïse Degrugillier, recorder
Maxine Eilander, Baroque harp
Michael Sponseller, organ, regal, & harpsichord