Opera Ithaca Announces 2018/2019 Season

Opera Ithaca announces their 5th season since the company's founding in 2014. The 2018/2019 season will include Hamlet, A Little Night Music, La bohème and a double bill of Francesca Caccini's Liberation (La Liberazione di Ruggiero) and the world premiere of Kamala Sankaram and Rob Handel's Enchantress.

Hamlet, by Ambroise Thomas, opens Opera Ithaca's 5th season celebrating the 150th anniversary of the opera's Paris Opera premiere in a production by director/designer Zachary James with conductor, Keith Chambers. The cast features Garrett Obrycki as Hamlet, Holly Flack as Ophelie, Leah Marie Heater as Gertrude, Alexander Hahn as Claudius, Boris Van Druff as Laertes and Marc Webster as Polonius. Hamletplays August 30th through September 2nd 2018 at The Cherry Artspace.

Opera Ithaca continues their tradition of presenting a New Year's Eve gala production with Sondheim's A Little Night Music. Broadway star, Merwin Foard, plays Fredrik Egerman alongside Opera Ithaca's Lynn Craver as Desiree Armfeldt. Broadway's Evangelia Kingsley and Zachary James play Madame Armfeldt and Count Carl Magnus Malcolm with Ivy Walz as Charlotte, Rachel Mikol as Anne, Johnathan Riesen as Henrik and Gillian Lynn Cotter as Petra. Norm Johnson direcs alongside conductor Richard Montgomery. A Little Night Music plays December 30th at the Smith Opera House in Geneva and December 31st at the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca.

Puccini's La bohème will play February 16th and 17th 2019, conducted by the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra's Cornelia Laemmli Orth and directed by acclaimed international soprano, Emily Pulley, who made her Royal Opera, Covent Garden debut as Mimì and sang Musetta at the Metropolitan Opera. The cast includes Megan Nielson as Mimì, Jordan Schreiner as Rodolfo, SeungHyeon Baek as Marcello, Nayoung Ban as Musetta, Jake Stamatis as Schaunard, Marc Webster as Colline, David Neal as Alcindoro and Benoit and Andrew Hudson-Sabens as Parpignol.

Opera Ithaca's 5th season closes with a double bill of Francesca Caccini's 1625 opera, Liberation (La liberazione di Ruggiero) and the world premiere of Kamala Sankaram and Rob Handel's Enchantress. The programming of these two works reinforces a hallmark of Opera Ithaca's mission, a commitment to female composers. As the only opera company in the world programming a work written by a woman every season, this double bill presents the first known and most recent operas written by women, presented in one sitting. The double bill cast includes New York City Opera tenor and Broadway actor, Glenn Seven Allen, baritone Dennis Jesse, mezzo-soprano Courtney Elvira and soprano Tamara Acosta. Susannah Berryman and Mary Corsaro direct and Mila Henry, a stalwart contributor to the contemporary opera scene, conducts. This production will mark the seventh opera written by a woman in Opera Ithaca's brief history.

Opera Ithaca was founded in 2014 by international opera singer and Broadway actor, Zachary James, operatic soprano and music educator, Lynn Craver and conductor and pianist, Richard Montgomery. In the company's four years of existence they have produced Bluebeard's Castle, the professional company premiere of Il Sogno, Don Giovanni, Die Fledermaus, the world premiere of Billy Blythe, the regional premiere of Thumbprint, Abduction from the Seraglio, Cinderella, Pagliacci, The Pirates of Penzance, Bully Pulpit, Tosca, Carmen and Song From The Uproar in addition to dozens of community and outreach concerts and events.

For more information visit www.OperaIthaca.org

2018/2019 Season Art by Dan Taylor