The fourth and penultimate week of the 50th anniversary season of Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival presents nine performances featuring the best of Mozart's operatic and choral repertoire as well as a highly-anticipated New York premiere.
A major feature of the 50th Mostly Mozart Festival is a focus on Mozart's operas. To celebrate Mozart's operatic genius, the festival presents two staged concerts of the composer's operas, which will be accompanied by the acclaimed period-instrument ensemble, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. The first program, on August 15, is the comic opera Così fan tutte, one of the famed trio of operas created by Mozart with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. One of Mozart's best known works, Così fan tutte is about two men who decide to test the faithfulness of their lovers by dressing in disguise and attempting to woo each other's women. This staged concert version will be conducted by Mostly Mozart's Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director Louis Langrée and features a superb cast of festival debuts and returning singers, as well as the Arnold Schoenberg Choir. The concert is based on an original production presented in collaboration with the Festival of Aix-en-Provence 2016 in co-production with the Opera de Lille and Edinburgh International Festival.Celebrating its 50th anniversary, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival-America's first indoor summer music festival-was launched as an experiment in 1966. Called "Midsummer Serenades: A Mozart Festival" its first two seasons were devoted exclusively to the music of Mozart. The official title of Mostly Mozart was coined in 1970, and the festival has evolved over time to become a New York institution and a highlight of the city's summer classical music season. Under the leadership of Ehrenkranz Artistic Director Jane Moss and Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director Louis Langrée, Mostly Mozart has broadened its focus beyond the music of Mozart to include works by his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. In addition to concerts by the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Mostly Mozart now includes performances by the world's outstanding period-instrument ensembles, chamber orchestras, and acclaimed soloists, as well as opera productions, dance, film, and late-night concerts. Contemporary music has become an essential part of the festival, embodied in annual artist and composer residencies that have included Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, Kaija Saariaho, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, George Benjamin, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Among the many artists and ensembles who have had long associations with the festival are Joshua Bell, Christian Tetzlaff, Itzhak Perlman, Emanuel Ax, Garrick Ohlsson, Stephen Hough, Osmo Vänskä, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Emerson String Quartet, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and the Mark Morris Dance Group. The festival's popularity has been reflected in several cultural touchstones, including an Al Hirschfeld illustration, a Peanuts cartoon strip, beer cans, and a cover of The New Yorker magazine.
The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the Mostly Mozart Festival, and is the only chamber orchestra in the U.S. dedicated to the music of the Classical period. Since 2002 Louis Langrée has been the Orchestra's music director, and since 2005 the Orchestra's David Geffen Hall home has been transformed each summer into an appropriately intimate venue for its performances. Over the years, the Orchestra has been the festival's ambassador, touring to such notable festivals and venues as Ravinia, Great Woods, Tanglewood, Bunkamura in Tokyo, the Kennedy Center, and The White House. Conductors who made their New York debuts leading the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra include Michael Tilson Thomas, David Zinman, Jérémie Rhorer, Edward Gardner, Lionel Bringuier, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Charles Dutoit, Leonard Slatkin, Susanna Mälkki, and Edo de Waart. Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, flutist James Galway, soprano Elly Ameling, and pianist Mitsuko Uchida all made their U.S. debuts with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra.
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