ODYSSEY OPERA to Present Second New England School Masterpieces

Gil Rose, General Director and Conductor of Odyssey Opera, has announced the company's 2026-27 season-opening performance on Saturday, October 10, 2026, at 7:30 p.m., at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall (30 Gainsborough St, Boston, MA). True to Odyssey Opera's tradition of resurrecting forgotten or under-performed masterpieces, this one-night-only program offers audiences a rare glimpse into the Second New England School.

The program includes three rarely heard works written at the turn of the 20th Century: Lamia (1908), a lush orchestral tone poem by Edward MacDowell; Jephthah's Daughter (1903), a dramatic concert aria by Amy Beach featuring soprano Sarah Coburn; and Il Padrone (1912), the Boston premiere of the opera by George Whitefield Chadwick, featuring a cast including soprano Toni Marie Palmertree, mezzo-soprano Kate Aldrich, baritone Troy Cook, mezzo-soprano Sarah Heltzel, tenor John Viscardi, and soprano Sarah Coburn.

The Second New England School — often referred to as the Boston Classicists — was a circle of prominent 19th Century Boston-based composers determined to give a young United States its own concert-hall pedigree. Succeeding the First New England School, this new generation looked beyond church hymnals and community choirs toward the grand concert stage, seamlessly merging European discipline with a distinctly American sensibility.

'The Second New England School was pivotal in the development of American classical music. It elevated the spirit of New England's music and created the foundation on which American classical music was based. We are honored and thrilled to salute these pioneering composers, and we hope Boston audiences gain a deeper appreciation for the profound impact our local artists had on defining our nation's musical identity.' — Gil Rose, general director & conductor, Odyssey Opera

The program begins with two short works: a symphonic poem, Lamia, by Edward MacDowell (1860-1908), founder of the music department at Columbia University; followed by a concert aria, Jephthah's Daughter, by Bostonian Amy Beach (1867-1944), performed by soprano Sarah Coburn. The evening's pinnacle is The Padrone, a 1912 opera by composer George Whitefield Chadwick (1854–1931). A former president of the New England Conservatory, Chadwick is among the composers in the generation that bridged the 19th and 20th Centuries. In contrast to American operas at the time that dramatized myths and legends from the ancient past, The Padrone brought a tragic modern story to the stage. Chadwick set out to create an American version of the Verismo operas written by Mascagni, Leoncavallo and Puccini. Set in the North End of Boston, the tragic opera explored the dark side of the 'padrone' system with an account of the harsh environment that immigrants from Italy found in the United States. Originally submitted to The Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1921, The Met rejected it, deeming it too controversial and brutally realistic. Never heard in Chadwick's lifetime, it was first heard in a concert performance in 1995 by the Waterbury Symphony in Connecticut.

2026-27 Season at a Glance

November 20, 2026, brings the release of Ulysses Kay: Frederick Douglass (BMOP/sound), the premiere recording of the three-act opera Frederick Douglass (1991) by Ulysses Kay. Some of Odyssey Opera's most talented voices are featured, including Kenneth Kellogg as Frederick Douglass, Melody Moore as Helen Douglass, Leroy Davis as Howard Davis, and Neal Ferreira as Aubrey, a Young Officer. Ulysses Kay: Frederick Douglass is Odyssey Opera's sixth collaborative (and 10th overall) opera recording with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Tobias Picker: Fantastic Mr. Fox won the 2020 GRAMMY Award for Best Opera Recording followed by a 2023 nomination in the same category for X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.

March 13, 2027, brings the East Coast premiere of David T. Little's grand opera JFK (2016) with libretti by Royce Vavrek. JFK delves into the hours President John F. Kennedy spent in Fort Worth, Texas, immediately before his assassination in Dallas, exploring the inner life of the President and Mrs. Kennedy during their final day together.

June 20, 2027, brings a special revival of Be Glad Then America, the 1976 bicentennial opera by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John La Montaine.

About Gil Rose

GRAMMY Award winner and seven-time GRAMMY nominee Gil Rose is one of today's conductors, praised as 'amazingly versatile' (The Boston Globe) with 'a sense of style and sophistication' (Opera News). Equally comfortable performing core repertoire, new works, and lesser-known historic symphonic and operatic works, he has been described as 'not just a fine conductor, but a peerless curator, sniffing out—and commissioning—off-trend, unheralded, and otherwise underplayed repertoire that nevertheless holds to unfailingly high standards of quality. In doing so, he's built an unmistakable, yet indefinable, personal aesthetic' (WXQR).

Rose is the founder of the performing and recording ensemble the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), as well as the founder of Odyssey Opera. Since its founding in 1996, BMOP has grown into an orchestra for commissioning, recording, and performing 20th- and 21st-century music. Under Rose's leadership, BMOP has received 17 ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, was named Musical America's Ensemble of the Year in 2016 and received a 2021 Gramophone Magazine Special Achievement Award for its contribution to American modern music. Under Rose's direction, BMOP has appeared at numerous festivals, including the Festival of New American Music (Sacramento, CA), Concerts at the Library of Congress (Washington, DC), and the MATA Festival, as well as Carnegie Hall in New York.

Beyond Boston, Gil Rose keeps a busy schedule as a guest conductor and educator. Rose has led performances by the Netherlands Radio Symphony, the American Composers Orchestra, the National Symphony of Ukraine, the Matsumoto Festival in Japan, the New York City Opera, and the Juilliard Symphony, among others. He has served as the Director of Opera and Sonic Exploration at Artpark in Lewiston, NY, as well as the Artistic Director of the Monadnock Music Festival in historic Peterborough, NH. He inaugurated the Ditson Festival of Music at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art and programmed three seasons for the Fromm Concerts at Harvard. Along with serving on the faculty at Tufts University and Northeastern University, Rose has also worked with students nationwide at institutions like Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, New England Conservatory, and the University of California at San Diego, among others.

About Odyssey Opera

Founded in 2013 by artistic director/conductor Gil Rose, Odyssey Opera presents adventurous and eclectic works that affirm opera as an expression of the human experience. Its artists perform the operatic repertoire from its historic beginnings through lesser-known masterpieces to contemporary new works and commissions in varied formats and venues. Odyssey Opera sets standards of musical and theatrical programming to advance the operatic genre beyond the familiar. More information is available at odysseyopera.org.

Event Details

Odyssey Opera in Concert

Saturday, October 10, 2026, at 7:30 p.m.

NEC's Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough Street, Boston, Massachusetts

Tickets are available at OdysseyOpera.org or by calling 718.324.0396.

Program + Performers

Edward MacDowell: Lamia (Orchestral Tone Poem) (1908)

Amy Beach: Jephthah's Daughter (Aria for Soprano and Orchestra) (1903), Sarah Coburn, Soprano

George Whitefield Chadwick: Il Padrone (The Padrone) Opera (1912), Boston premiere, Libretto by David K. Stevens

Toni Marie Palmertree, Soprano

Kate Aldrich, Mezzo-soprano

Troy Cook, Baritone

John Viscardi, Tenor

Sarah Heltzel, Mezzo-soprano

Gil Rose, conductor