News: Will Crutchfield's Bel Canto program to move to SUNY Purchase

Will Crutchfield announces Teatro Nuovo, a new Bel Canto opera program to debut in July 2018

The nine-day inaugural festival will feature semi-staged productions of Rossini’s Tancredi and Mayr’s Medea in Corinto at the Performing Arts Center at SUNY Purchase

Teatro Nuovo will continue and expand upon Crutchfield’s acclaimed
Bel Canto at Caramoor series

Monday, May 15, 2017 — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — Will Crutchfield, longtime director of the Bel Canto at Caramoor series, announced today the formation of a new organization, Teatro Nuovo, that will continue and expand that program’s work as it departs from Caramoor next year. 

Teatro Nuovo will make its debut in July 2018 with a nine-day festival at the Performing Arts Center at SUNY Purchase, a versatile facility with multiple performance spaces. Headline events will be semi-staged productions of Rossini’s Tancredi and Mayr’s Medea in Corinto, along with orchestral concerts, vocal recitals, chamber music, and the afternoon lectures and panel discussions that have been a popular feature of Caramoor opera days. Full details of the Festival, running from July 28 to August 5, 2018, will be announced in a forthcoming release. 

The Festival will be preceded by an expanded version of Crutchfield’s renowned training program for young singers, which already counts over 500 alumni singing on stages and serving on faculties worldwide. The intensive five-week program will now be opened to selected orchestral players as well. Teatro Nuovo and SUNY Purchase are currently finalizing a partnership to host the training program.

Crutchfield said of the new venture: “Teatro Nuovo is an exciting next step for us. It is a continuation of what our fans have enjoyed in Bel Canto at Caramoor, but goes far beyond that. Through a major expansion of the training program, the collaboration with SUNY Purchase, and the move to our own dedicated Festival, we are now poised to offer much more both to the operagoing public and to the young musicians who come to us in the summer.”

Thomas J. Schwarz, President of SUNY Purchase College, added: "Teatro Nuovo’s debut at the Performing Arts Center at SUNY Purchase will add a rich and vibrant program offering to our summer months.  We are proud to be involved in continuing this fine tradition started at Caramoor 20 years ago.  I also look forward to the intensive five-week program that will expand our efforts to collaborate with organizations that provide the finest education and training in the performing arts.”

Bel Canto at Caramoor, in its 20 years of operation, presented over 40 operas by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, and Verdi, attracting consistent coverage and high praise from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Opera News, Opera (UK), and the rest of the national and international musical press. Alex Ross of The New Yorker spoke for many when he wrote that "Under Crutchfield, Caramoor has become an operatic paradise." The program will celebrate its 20th anniversary with five performances at the 2017 Caramoor International Music Festival, after which its team and their activities will move to Teatro Nuovo. 

Said Jeff Haydon, CEO of Caramoor: “Caramoor is immensely proud of its role in creating and supporting the first 20 years of the Bel Canto Opera Program and we are happy to hear about its new home. There is a tremendous legacy to continue, and with both Caramoor’s future plans and the launch of Teatro Nuovo, there will be rich operatic summers for all in the coming years.”

Further information about Teatro Nuovo, the training program, and the organization’s personnel and other plans will be found at www.teatronuovo.org.

 ABOUT WILL CRUTCHFIELD

Will Crutchfield has divided his opera career between conducting, musicology, and education. As Director of Opera for the Caramoor International Music Festival from 1997 to 2017, he has conducted over 30 titles by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and Verdi with the Orchestra of St. Luke's and soloists including Lawrence Brownlee, Angela Meade, Vivica Genaux, Ewa Podleś, Sumi Jo, Jennifer Larmore, Georgia Jarman, John Osborn, Michael Spyres, and Hei-Kyung Hong. He has also held posts as Music Director with the Opera de Colombia (Bogota) and Principal Guest Conductor of the Polish National Opera (Warsaw), and has made guest appearances with many theaters, including the Rossini Opera Festival (Pesaro), the Canadian Opera Company, the Washington National Opera, and the Minnesota Opera among others. For Ricordi and the Fondazione Rossini he prepared the critical edition of Aureliano in Palmira, also conducting the production in Pesaro that won first place as "Best Rediscovered Work" in the 2015 International Opera Awards. In the same year he was named a Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation in recognition of his operatic work. He has contributed articles on historical performance practice to the New Grove Dictionaries of Music and numerous scholarly journals, and is currently completing a book on the same subject for Oxford University Press. 

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