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
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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