Washington Concert Opera Announces Live & In-Person 35th Anniversary Season

Washington Concert Opera and Maestro Antony Walker have announced their 2021-2022 season. This year marks the organization's 35th anniversary and WCO is excited to celebrate that milestone with a return to live season productions (venue TBA) and with the return of their popular series, Opera Outside, which will bring two free concerts to Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park.

WCO will kick off the season on Sunday, November 21 at 6 p.m. with a performance of Gioachino Rossini's Maometto II. The opera is set during a time of consequential collisions between the Eastern and Western worlds that led to seismic shifts in world power felt to this day, complete with a city under siege, a forbidden romance and concealed identities. Ashraf Sewailam (Maometto II), Leah Crocetto (Anna Erisso), Bruce Sledge (Paolo Erisso) and Elizabeth DeShong (Calbo) will all make their WCO debuts.

On Sunday, April 24, 2022 at 6 p.m., the company will return with Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orphée, arranged by Hector Berlioz, starring WCO favorite Kate Lindsey (Orphée), and two other singers in their WCO debuts: Jacquelyn Stucker (Eurydice) and Helen Zhibing Huang (Amour). Berlioz's 1859 arrangement features a mezzo-soprano in the lead role, just one of many reasons this timeless story of love lost, regained, then lost again stands out from the rest.

Léo Delibes' Lakmé will be the final show of the season on Sunday, May 22 at 6 p.m. This performance will feature Erin Morley (Lakmé), Frédéric Antoun (Gérald), Alfred Walker (Nilakantha), Theo Hoffman (Frédéric) and Taylor Raven (Mallika), all making their WCO debuts. Delibes' penultimate opera is widely considered to be his masterpiece, touching on familiar themes of forbidden love, duty, and honor against the backdrop of the rule of the British Raj in late nineteenth century India.

In addition to the season productions, WCO will host two free Opera Outside concerts in Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park in September 2021 and May 2022. More details on these performances will be announced closer to the dates.

"With the success of vaccines in our region we are confident that we'll be able to safely return to live, in-person events this season," says WCO Executive Director, Tehvon Fowler-Chapman. "It's all the more fitting that this return is happening during such a milestone for us, our 35th anniversary season."

For more information visit: www.concertopera.org