World Premiere of Composer Martin Brody's THE CARP to be Presented by Ecce Arts

Ecce Arts will present the world premiere of The Carp, a new chamber operetta by composer and long-time Ecce collaborator Martin Brody, on Saturday, October 10, 2026 at 7:00 PM at New England Conservatory's Plimpton Shattuck Black Box Theatre in Boston. The production travels to Florence, Italy for its Italian premiere on Friday, October 16, 2026 at 7:00 PM at Villa I Tatti, Harvard University's Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, where Brody wrote the work during his residency as Fellow in Residence in 2025. Both performances feature the same cast and ensemble, conducted by Stratis Minakakis.

The Carp is a 45-minute work for four singers and five instrumentalists, with a libretto by art historian Dario Gamboni. It takes as its subject a 2003 news story, reported in The New York Times, of a carp said to have spoken before its slaughter at a fish market. Brody and Gamboni build the account of an articulate fish delivering an apocalyptic message into a hybrid comic form that moves between opera and cantata, with The Four Singers shifting between named characters and chorus and a clarinet standing in for the voice of the fish itself. The piece extends Brody's long-standing engagement with musical modernism, narrative ambiguity, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

The cast brings together soprano Stephanie Lamprea as Zalman's Wife, baritone Nathan Halbur as Zalman, tenor Samuel Rosner as Zev, and baritone Corey Gaudreau as Luis, with an ensemble of clarinetist Aleksis Martin, violinists Emma Burge and Anna Pavlou, violist Philip Rawlinson, and cellist Robbie Bui.

The Boston performance takes place in the Plimpton Shattuck Black Box Theatre, an intimate, flexible space in New England Conservatory's Student Life and Performance Center. In Florence, the work returns to the setting in which it was written: Villa I Tatti, a center for advanced humanities research with significant art and library collections, situated on an estate of olive groves, vineyards, and Renaissance-style gardens on the border of Florence, Fiesole, and Settignano.

Saturday, October 10, 2026 at 7:00 PM

Ecce Arts | Martin Brody: The Carp (World Premiere)
Plimpton Shattuck Black Box Theatre | New England Conservatory | Boston, MA

Friday, October 16, 2026 at 7:00 PM