Featured on NBC Nightly News

PRESS RELEASE

OperaCréole and Opera Lafayette Featured on
NBC Nightly News

The feature highlighted the two opera companies’ joint efforts to produce the world premiere of Edmond Dédé's  Morgiane, the earliest known opera by a Black American,  for the 2024/25 season

WATCH NBC NIGHTLY NEWS PIECE HERE

(WASHINGTON, DC Feb 8, 2024) - On February 5th, NBC Nightly News featured the ongoing efforts by OperaCréole and Opera Lafayette to produce the opera Morgiane 137 years after its composition.  Morigane, composed by Edmond Dédé, is the earliest known opera by a Black American.  Dédé, a fourth-generation free person of color, was born in New Orleans in 1827. 

NBC Nightly News traveled to New Orleans to film a segment of the work that OperaCréole’s Artistic Director Givonna Joseph is doing to bring restorative justice to American opera through presentations of work by 19th-century free people of color. As part of that segment, NBC focused on the joint project between OperaCréole and Opera Lafayette to take Morgiane to the stage for the first time ever, premiering in New Orleans on November 20th, 2024, Washington, D.C., on February 3rd, 2025, and New York City on February 5th, 2025.

For the past nine months, OperaCréole and Opera Lafayette have been collaborating to finally bring Morgiane to life. OperaCréole is a historical opera company based in New Orleans whose mission is to give life to the compositional voices of the 19th-century community of free people of color who were at the heart of New Orleans’ flourishing opera scene.  Opera Lafayette, a period instrument opera company based in Washington, DC, and New York City, is a leading interpreter of music from the 17th through 19th centuries, highlighting the historical context and current relevance of often overlooked works of brilliance. 

Edmond Dédé began his music career early in his life, training as a violinist with members of New Orleans’ French and Italian opera companies, and was quickly recognized as a prodigy virtuoso. As a result of worsening conditions for free Black people in antebellum Louisiana, Dédé fled New Orleans for Paris, where he enrolled in the composition class at the Paris Conservatoire, studying with two of the greatest teachers of the time, Fromental Halévy and Adolphe Adam. Upon leaving the Conservatoire, Dédé took up the post of conductor and composer at the Alcazar Theater in Bordeaux, where he wrote over 75 works, including ballets, operetta, symphonic and popular music.

"Edmond Dédé is a towering figure in classical music that has been almost completely erased from history because of the legacy of institutionalized racism,” says OperaCréole co-founders  Givonna Joseph and Aria Mason. “His compositions are both of their time and modern to the listening ear. The music fully expresses love, longing, grief, humor, and the importance of standing up against injustice, but because of the color of his skin, the classical music audience of America. France and the world have been deprived of knowing about one of our shared musical luminaries.”

Dédé’s Magnum opus, Morgiane, was composed toward the end of his 40-year tenure in Bordeaux, however, it was never selected for production. Dédé’s score was assumed to be lost for nearly 100 years but was recently rediscovered in the collections of Harvard’s Houghton Library and given to OperaCréole by Xavier University of Louisiana’s then archivist Lester Sullivan. Since June 2024, Opera Lafayette Artistic Director Designate Patrick Dupre Quigley, has been working with a team of engravers to transcribe the single-extant 500-plus page handwritten score into modern notation.

“Morgiane is the most important piece of American music that no one has ever heard,” said Opera Lafayette's incoming Artistic Director, Patrick Dupre Quigley. “The American musical community has been deprived of this masterpiece for over 130 years; it is high time that Dédé and his music take their rightful place in the American musical canon.” 

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The award-winning OperaCréole, founded in 2011 by the mother-and-daughter team of Givonna Joseph and Aria Mason, is dedicated to researching and performing lost or rarely performed works by composers of African descent. The company specializes in works by free 19th-century New Orleanian composers of color and promoting Louisiana's Creole language and culture.

www.operacreole.org 

A leading interpreter of music from the 17th to the 19th centuries, Opera Lafayette performs little-known operatic gems and creates a legacy of these works through recordings.  Incorporating dance, stunning costumes, and intimate staging with rising star singers and musicians playing period instruments, an Opera Lafayette performance transports its audiences to an era when beauty and captivating storytelling were the order of the day.  Opera Lafayette gives new life to centuries-old compositions, supported by scholarly research that highlights both the historical context of these works and their relevance to today’s world. 
www.operalafayette.org 

Founder and Artistic Director Ryan Brown to Pass the Reins in 2025

Patrick Dupre Quigley Named Artistic Director Designate 

Ryan Brown, Founder and Current Artistic Director

Opera Lafayette’s Founder and Artistic Director Ryan Brown has announced he will be passing the reins in 2025 after Opera Lafayette’s 30th season. Opera Lafayette has announced Brown’s successor, appointing Patrick Dupre Quigley as Artistic Director Designate. Quigley’s new role is effective immediately, and he will work closely with Brown for the next two seasons along with the musicians, audience, staff, and board to ensure the continuation of the vibrant, decades-long standard set by Brown and Opera Lafayette. 

Quigley joins Opera Lafayette via Seraphic Fire in Miami, FL where he serves as Founder and Artistic Director of the critically-acclaimed vocal ensemble. Opera Lafayette audiences will recognize his name from last season’s Pergolesi production, for which he was Guest Conductor.  Quigley is known for his engaging performances of historically-informed programming that draw in new audiences and delight regular concertgoers.

Patrick Dupre Quigley, Artistic Director Designate

“Opera Lafayette fills a unique place in America’s musical life, and Quigley brings all the qualities that can broaden the importance and significance of our work,” Brown says. “He is an outstanding musician and conductor with an entrepreneurial spirit. Moreover, he is a caring human being who understands the nature of arts organizations and the crucial role they play in enriching the lives of artists, audience, and the public at large. I look forward to working with Patrick over the next two years and eagerly await the wonderful experiences he will bring us in the future.”

While serving as Artistic Director Designate, Quigley will conduct Edmond Dede’s Morgain, ou, Le Sultan d’Isphahan as part of Opera Lafayette’s transitional 30th season (2024/25). The piece is the first known opera by a Black American - a violinist, conductor and composer raised in New Orleans who made his career in France in the 19th century.  Quigley himself is originally from New Orleans, a city whose significance in American musical history Opera Lafayette has highlighted with several past productions. This production, in collaboration with New Orleans’ historical opera company, Opera Creole, will expand on this work of rediscovery. 

Following this production, Quigley will assume full Artistic Directorship on July 1, 2025, as the organization moves into its 31st season (2025/26). 

Brown’s entrepreneurial spirit has established Opera Lafayette as a leading interpreter of music from the 17th to the 19th centuries and the only opera company to perform its full season in both Washington, DC and New York City. In addition to their productions, under Brown’s helm, Opera Lafayette has issued over a dozen recordings and three DVDs on the Naxos label, ensuring a rich legacy of the timeless repertoire and of Brown’s artistry. 

Brown founded Opera Lafayette in 1995 as The Violins of Lafayette. The company was part of a period instrument renaissance, a movement that provided a primary avenue for performing musicians searching for new ways to explore music of the past. The debut season took place in the Salon Doré of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and featured four chamber music concerts by some of France’s greatest 18th-century composers. In 2001, the company was reincorporated as Opera Lafayette, reflecting their increasing concentration on opera that unites musical, vocal, and choreography to present richly nuanced realizations of the 17th–through–19th–century repertoire. In 2012 and again in 2014, Opera Lafayette achieved international fame when, at the invitation of Château de Versailles Spectacles, the organization was invited to perform at Opera Royal in Versailles, France, closing with five sold-out performances.

"It is an incredible honor to follow the revolutionary tenure of Ryan Brown and join the Opera Lafayette family as Artistic Director Designate,” Quigley says. “Opera Lafayette, under the direction of Maestro Brown, has exemplified the qualities of a 21st century arts organization. They have been uncompromising in artistic quality and indefatigable in creative energy, while constantly pushing the boundaries of what it means to be an historical opera company.”

Pergolesi! Program Notes by Professor Julia Doe, PhD

We are pleased to bring you these Program Notes about our Pergolesi! producton, written by scholar of eighteenth century music and Assistant Professor of Music, Historical Musicology at Columbia University, Professor Julia Doe, PhD. Her full bio is below.

The professional career of the Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was exceptionally brief. Pergolesi fulfilled his first operatic commission at the age of twenty-one, as a fresh conservatory graduate in 1731. He succumbed to tuberculosis only five years later, in 1736.Remarkably, the body of music he wrote in the short, intervening span included two of the most successful works of the entire eighteenth century—both of which are featured on this evening’s program. The Stabat mater (1736), a sacred reflection on Mary’s suffering at the crucifixion of Christ, was the most frequently printed piece of music of the European Enlightenment. The comic intermezzo, La serva padrona (1733; performed here in French translation), was one of the most influential and widely traveled operas of this same period. Pergolesi’s output achieved this extraordinary, pan-European renown because its style—now described as “galant”—helped to incite a large scale shift in musical aesthetics. The composer’s works, which foreground elements of clarity, balance, and “natural” simplicity, presented a challenge to the then-predominant features of the high Baroque (as reflected, for example, in the intricate, polyphonic writing of Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, or Jean-Philippe Rameau). Pergolesi particularly excelled in the genre that has come to encapsulate this stylistic evolution: comic opera. As the musicologist Richard Taruskin aptly notes, “the music of change in the eighteenth century ... was the music of comedy.” La serva padrona is a distinctly forward-looking work, placing an emphasis on highly tuneful arias, dynamic ensembles, and gentle social satire; the plot hinges on the machinations of the titular servant girl, Serpina/Zerbine, who wishes to trick her employer and guardian, Uberto/Pandolphe, into marriage.

““the music of change in the eighteenth century ... was the music of comedy.””

— Richard Taruskin, Musicologist

Pergolesi’s compositions were performed throughout the continent and in Britain in the decades following his death. In France, he achieved tremendous posthumous fame during theera of Madame de Pompadour. Both of the works highlighted in tonight’s concert took on outsize roles in a controversy known as the querelle des bouffons (or “war of the comic actors”):a Parisian musical-literary dispute over the relative merits of French and Italian opera. Themain thrust of the conflict was sparked in the summer of 1752. A traveling troupe of Italian singers (the “Bouffons”) presented a series of imported intermezzi—headlined by La servapadrona—on France’s most prestigious lyric stage, the Paris Opéra. The light, comic programming was overwhelmingly successful, but also highly unusual for this theater, whichhad long specialized in serious works by established national composers (Rameau and Jean-Baptiste Lully foremost among them). The firestorm that followed—dozens upon dozens of pamphlets and articles in the periodical press—pit partisans of modern, Italian comedy againstdefenders of the traditional and eminently French genre of courtly tragedy (tragédie lyrique).

National style in opera was a frequent subject of debate in pre-revolutionary Paris, and there were clear musical distinctions at play here: the “natural” melody of the new Italian school stood in stark contrast to the harmonic and structural complexity of the French Baroque. But the scope and vehemence of argumentation in the querelle des bouffons was unprecedented in French musical discourse. And, indeed, because the most ardent members of the Italianist camp—including philosophes like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot—were known for their progressive social views, historians have surmised that their criticism had both aesthetic and political import. In other words, to argue for operatic evolution was a veiled means of arguing against the governmental status quo, so closely linked was Bourbon absolutism with the courtly strains of tragédie lyrique. Over the course of the querelle, it was the œuvre of Pergolesi, above all, that stood in for Italian composition (and cultural modernity) writ large. Rousseau would praise the Stabat mater—presented frequently in Paris in the 1750s—as containing some of “the most perfect and touching” music ever written. To La serva padrona, the philosophe would attribute an even more significant artistic change. The Bouffons, Rousseau famously quipped, “dealt a blow to French opera from which it would never recover.”The precise role of Madame de Pompadour within the querelle des bouffons is complex.Pompadour had long been a champion of Rameau and could not openly scorn the traditional French style that he represented. And yet, the programming of her own private theater at Versailles was both varied and experimental, laying the groundwork for the broader operatic reform that took hold elsewhere.

For all the controversy it generated, the residency of the Italian troupe did not entirely transform the repertoire performed on the French tragic stage. With the exception of Rousseau’s Italianate Le devin du village, the buffa style proved something of a dead-end at the ultra-conservative Opéra. For the upstart, comic companies of Paris (the Comédie Italienne and fairground Opéra-Comique), by contrast, the impact of the visiting Italian players was immediate—and would prove lasting. These latter troupes were eager to take advantage of both the success of imported intermezzi and the skirmishes that surrounded them; their directors began aggressively to commission Italian-inspired works for production at their own theaters. One of the most important results of these programming initiatives was La servante maîtresse: a French-language translation of La serva padrona, made by Pierre Baurans for the Comédie Italienne in 1754. Baurans made modest alterations to Pergolesi’s original text and music. He granted the characters French names, inserted several additional numbers to showcase his leading soprano, Marie-Justine Favart, and replaced the recitative with spoken dialogue to satisfy local conventions. With these changes, La servante maîtresse would far surpass its Italian counterpart in Parisian popularity. As the music historian Julia Hamilton has shown, it was presented nearly every season at the Comédie Italienne—hundreds of times, in total—from the 1750s through the fall of the Bastille. During the 1790s, it enjoyed a marked resurgence. The so-called “liberty of the theaters” of 1791—a relaxation of royal dramatic monopolies—led to an explosion of further productions. The work enjoyed more than 300 performances at more than twenty-five different theaters, making it one of the most successful spectacles (of any kind) of the revolutionary decade.

“La servante maîtresse is a significant work in French operatic history not merely for its ubiquity on Parisian stages, but for the influence it exerted on French composers in the years that followed its premiere. ”

— Prof. Julia Doe, PhD

La servante maîtresse is a significant work in French operatic history not merely for its ubiquity on Parisian stages, but for the influence it exerted on French composers in the years that followed its premiere. Authors working for the nation’s comic theaters soon turned away from direct translation of pre-existing Italian operas and toward creative imitation. These artists wrote new French-language works that built upon the musical style of cosmopolitan models,while catering to the plot and character expectations of native audiences. The opéra comique composers at the foundation of Opera Lafayette’s repertoire—including André Grétry, Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny, and François-Andre Danican Philidor—were thus direct beneficiaries of,and ultimate successors to, Pergolesi’s forward-looking musical and dramatic achievements.

About Professor Julia Doe, PhD

Julia Doe is an Assistant Professor of Music, Histoical Musicology at Columbia University in New York, NY. She received a Ph.D. in musicology from Yale University in 2013. She is a scholar of eighteenth-century opera, with particular emphasis on the music, literature, and politics of the French Enlightenment. Her first book, The Comedians of the King (University of Chicago Press, 2021), traces the impact of Bourbon patronage on the development of opéra comique in the final decades of the Old Regime. This monograph interrogates how comic theater was exploited in (and worked against) the construction of the monarchy’s carefully cultivated public image—examining the aesthetic, institutional, and political tensions that arose when a genre with popular roots was folded into the courtly propaganda machine.

Prof. Doe is currently at work on two new projects—concerning, respectively, the historiography of women’s musical labor in eighteenth-century France, and the Atlantic underpinnings of the French theater industry. Essays and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Eighteenth-Century Music, Cambridge Opera Journal, Music & Letters, Current Musicology, Renaissance Quarterly, and in the edited collection Histoire de l’opéra français. Prof. Doe is the recipient of the Alfred Einstein and M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet awards from the AMS, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Program, the National Opera Association, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Before beginning her tenure-track appointment at Columbia, she served in the music department as a Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow.

In addition to her scholarly work, Prof. Doe is keenly interested in public engagement with music of the Enlightenment period; she has assisted with educational events for Columbia’s Maison Française and the Washington, DC-based Opera Lafayette, among other groups. She currently serves as a Director-at-Large on the board of the Society for Eighteenth-Century Music.

Welcome Machine Dazzle!

Machine Dazzle’s Debut Collaboration
with Opera Lafayette

Photos above are of past Machine Dazzle works, not the commissions for Opera Lafayette.
Photo credit: Gregory Kramer, Geoff Winningham, Little Fang

Opera Lafayette is thrilled to announce Machine Dazzle’s debut collaboration as Costume Designer for our production of the historic premiere of Rameau’s Io this May in Washington, DC and New York City.

Machine Dazzle will create more than a dozen new costumes for Opera Lafayette’s production of the never-before-seen Rameau comedic opéra-ballet, Io. In roles ranging from gods to mortals, singers and dancers alike will don Dazzle’s works of art. 

Hailed as a “theatrical genius” (The New Yorker), and a “renowned, multifaceted artist” (Vogue), Machine Dazzle joins us at an incredible moment in his career. Dazzle’s first solo exhibition, Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle, opened at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC in September 2022 and is up through mid February 2023. In December, in collaboration with the Catalyst Quartet, Machine is designing and performing in Bassline Fabulous, a modern take on Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” at The Metropolitan Museum. He describes himself as a “radical queer, emotionally driven, instinct-based concept artist and thinker.” 

Machine was a co-recipient the 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Visual Design, the winner of a 2017 Henry Hewes Design Award, and is a 2022 United States Artists Fellow. In 2019 Machine was commissioned by Guggenheim Works and Process and The Rockefeller Brothers to create Treasure, a rock and roll cabaret of original songs including a fashion show inspired by the content. He has collaborated with Diane Von Furstenberg, Cara Delevingne, Godfrey Reggio, Justin Vivian Bond, Taylor Mac, Basil Twist, Julie Atlas Muz, Jennifer Miller, The Dazzle Dancers, Big Art Group, Mike Albo, Stanley Love, Soomi Kim, Opera Philadelphia, Pig Iron Theatre, the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, Spiegelworld, The Curran Theatre, and now Opera Lafayette.

“Nothing quite prepared me for the sheer joy of seeing Machine’s work in person; it’s imaginative, extravagant, and thoroughly American in the way he uses ordinary objects to extraordinary effect.” 

- Ryan Brown, Opera Lafayette Artistic Director

Read Reviews and Profiles About Machine Dazzle:

Machine Dazzle Embodies a New Kind of Surrealism - New Yorker Magazine

Machine Dazzle’s Queer Maximalism Invents a Universe of Its Own - Vogue Magazine

Photos above are of past Machine Dazzle works, not the commissions for Opera Lafayette.
Photo credit: Gregory Kramer, Geoff Winningham, Little Fang

2022 Season Program Book

“Let us also praise the scholarship of the essays in the program book...”

— Meche Kroop, Voce di Meche

Photos from Opera Lafayette's Gala Dinner

A celebration of Opera Lafayette's inaugural New York Festival, celebrating The Era of Marie Antoinette, Rediscovered occurred June 8, 2022. The evening commenced at El Museo del Barrio with Opera Lafayette’s presentation of Le Salon de Musique de Marie Antoinette (The Musical Salon of Marie Antoinette). A gala dinner immediately followed the concert at a private club.

The gala honored Emily K. Rafferty, President Emerita of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and featured a post-dinner performance by internationally-renowned bass Nathan Berg.

Photos by Jo Chiang

Opera Lafayette Welcomes New Director of Development

Eric Simpson

Eric Simpson is thrilled to be joining Opera Lafayette as Director of Development. A violinist since age four, Eric brings to his new role more than seven years of nonprofit fundraising experience, deep musical knowledge, and a lifelong passion for the arts. From 2018 to 2020, he was Chief Development Officer at the Paideia Institute, an education nonprofit that promotes the study of the classical humanities. While at Paideia, he helped professionalize the young organization’s development activities, creating a regular series of engagement events, more than doubling the size of the annual gala, and securing the largest program grant in the Institute’s history. Immediately prior to joining Opera Lafayette, Eric earned his MBA degree from the Yale School of Management, with a particular focus on the administration of nonprofit organizations. We are so thrilled to have him join us and can't wait to all that he accomplishes!

Feel free to leave a congratulatory message in the comments below!

Friday Musical Moment: "Ah! je respire!" from Le Déserteur

For this Friday Musical Moment we are pleased to share with you "Ah, je respire!" from our recording of Monsigny's Le Déserteur featuring William Sharp and The Opera Lafayette Orchestra. In this aria, William's character Alexis, sings about being able to breathe freely again and is overcome with joy imagining his reunion with his love.

Friday Musical Moment: Premiere Spotlight Zélindor, roi des Sylphes

For this Friday Musical Moment we are pleased to share with you "Que dans les airs vos chants harmonieux" from our recording of Rebel and Francoeur's Zélindor, roi des Sylphes featuring Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, The Opera Lafayette Chorus and The Opera Lafayette Orchestra.

Want to learn more about this music and its modern premiere? Join us for our final salon series of the season, From Score to Modern Premiere, Thursday, May 6, 2021, 5:30 p.m.

Opera Lafayette Appoints Lisa Mion as Interim Managing Director

Opera Lafayette Appoints Lisa Mion as Interim Managing Director

Previously serving as Opera Lafayette Production Manager, Mion will take on the new role effective immediately

Opera Lafayette is pleased to announce the appointment of Lisa Mion as its Interim Managing Director. Mion has served as Opera Lafayette’s Production manager for the last seven years.  

During Mion's tenure with Opera Lafayette, she has overseen productions ranging from chamber works to fully-staged operas in an equally diverse assortment of venues, including The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall, the Opera Royal at the Palace of Versailles, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Brooklyn Academy of Music, among others. Mion began the management leg of her career more than a dozen years ago at the Helen Hayes Award-winning Rep Stage. Since that time, she has mounted over 50 productions, including five international and six regional tours in genres encompassing theatre, dance, and opera. She is delighted to have made Opera Lafayette her home.

"I am privileged to have been part of the Opera Lafayette team for the last seven years and am eager to move forward in this new role supporting Artistic Director and Founder Ryan Brown’s unique vision of rediscovering baroque masterpieces,” says Mion. “Thanks to our strong, dynamic staff and supportive board, to whom I am most grateful, I come to this endeavor knowing that Opera Lafayette is in an excellent position to continue its work of giving historic gems both new life and new relevance."

"We are delighted that Lisa Mion has agreed to take on the increased responsibilities of Interim Managing Director,” state Dorsey Dunn and Nizam Kettaneh, Board Co-Chairs. “Through her position as Production Manager for many years, she has earned the respect of everyone on the Board and on the Staff for the excellence of her work and for her commitment and dedication to Opera Lafayette. We are very confident that she will excel in this new role.”

Mion will lead Opera Lafayette back to live programming at the earliest possible time. Meanwhile, Opera Lafayette will continue hosting virtual and streaming programming until it is safe to perform again with live audiences. The critically-acclaimed children’s programming, Opera Starts with Oh! started a new season on April 7th and the popular Salon Series will restart on May 6th. 

Friday Musical Moment: Œdipe à Colone

Our Friday Musical Moment is moving to a different schedule. While we will continue share musical excerpts on Friday's, they will no longer be on a weekly basis. Please stay tuned for updates about our Friday Musical Moment and exciting upcoming events.

In anticipation of our final Salon Series of the season, From Score to Modern Premiere, we are pleased to share with you 'Divinités d'Athenes protectrices' from Sacchini's Œdipe à Colone, Opera Lafayette's first modern premiere from 2005.

From Score to Modern Premiere begins on Thursday, May 6, 2021, 5:30 p.m. EDT. For our first session, Ryan Brown and musicologist Nizam Kettaneh will review their long-standing collaboration bringing modern premieres of French opera to the stage, including Sacchini's Œdipe à Colone.

Friday Musical Moment: Production Spotlight - La Susanna

For this Friday Musical Moment we are pleased to share with you an excerpt from our 2019 co-production with Heartbeat Opera of Stradella's La Susanna featuring soprano Lucía Martín-Cartón, and our chamber ensemble. This month our family program, Opera starts with Oh! will focus on this story through song with soprano Ariana Douglas; dramaturgy with Peregrine Heard; set design with Reid Thompson; and musicianship with Jacob Ashworth.

Opera Lafayette Welcomes Austin Stewart as New Director of Development

With extensive nonprofit and cultural experience, Stewart looks to expand the organization’s presence in New York while maintaining its stature in DC

Opera Lafayette is excited to announce the hiring of Austin Stewart as its new Director of Development. Stewart comes to Opera Lafayette after serving as Director of Operations at Chorus Pro Musica in Boston for the last two years. Prior to that, he worked as a key fundraiser for Michigan Opera Theatre in Detroit. Stewart holds a doctorate in historical musicology and opera studies and has a background in early music performance. 

As Director of Development, Stewart will be responsible for the oversight, planning and implementation of a comprehensive plan to broaden the donor base and increase overall financial support from individuals, corporations and foundations. The Director of Development is critical to the realization of Opera Lafayette’s strategic plan, which calls for the expansion of the organization’s exposure in New York among individual and institutional audiences and donors, while maintaining its presence in Washington, DC.

"Opera Lafayette is embarking on an exciting multi-year festival program,” say Dorsey Dunn and Nizam Kettaneh, Board Co-Chairs of Opera Lafayette. “We have chosen Austin Stewart, with his background in both performance and management, to help us tell our story and implement our strategic plan."

"I am delighted to join Opera Lafayette at this transformative moment for the art form and our audiences,” says Stewart. “Opera Lafayette's mission has an unbounded ability to present works that reveal universal truths in fresh and innovative ways with the grace of an expertly tuned period ensemble. With gratitude to our Board of Directors for their leadership, I look forward to working with them and the entire team to develop the resources and relationships needed to achieve the bold artistic vision of Opera Lafayette's Founder and Artistic Director Ryan Brown."

Stewart started in the new role on Monday, March 29. Opera Lafayette will continue hosting virtual and streaming programming until it is safe to perform again with crowds. We will restart our critically-acclaimed children’s programming, Opera Starts with Oh! on April 7th and will kick off another round of their popular Salon Series starting on May 6th. 

Friday Musical Moment: French Airs, Chansons and Chamber Music from Rameau to Roussel

For this Friday Musical Moment we are pleased to share with you a trailer for our upcoming Sunday Serenade, which will feature soprano Laetitia Grimaldi, and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Houtzeel with pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz, and flutist Charles Brink. Our March Sunday Serenade program, In Search of Lost time: French Airs, Chansons and Chamber Music from Rameau to Roussel premieres on Sunday, March 28 at 2:00 p.m. The performance will be followed by a live talk back with the artists, facilitated by founder and artistic director Ryan Brown. After the 28th, it will be available on demand here.

Friday Musical Moment: Stephanie Houtzeel and Charles Brink

For this Friday Musical Moment we are pleased to share with you audio from mezzo-soprano Stephanie Houtzeel and flutist Charles Brink's CD, Italian love cantatas and chamber music. The piece is "Ho tanti affanni in petto" from Handel's cantata Mi palpita il cor.

Stephanie and Charles will be joined by soprano Laetitia Grimaldi and pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz for our March Sunday Serenade program, In Search of Lost time: French Chamber Works from Rameau to Roussel which premieres on Sunday, March 28 at 2:00 p.m.

Friday Musical Moment: Geminiani's La forêt enchantée

For this Friday Musical Moment we are pleased to share with you never before seen video footage from our 2018 production of Geminiani's La forêt enchantéefeaturing Kalanidhi Dance and The Opera Lafayette Orchestra.

Want to see more? Our Opera and Dance Salon Series hosted by Seán Currancontinues on Thursday, March 11, 2021, 5:30 p.m. EST. Anuradha Nehru, founder and artistic director of Kalanidhi Dance, joins Seán for our second session to discuss the Kuchipudi art form, and how its story-based style of dance brings Opera Lafayette’s productions of David’s Lalla Roukh and Geminiani's La forêt enchantée to life.

Geminiani's La forêt enchantée

Friday Musical Moment: Lamentation to Liberation

Lamentation to Liberation: Songs of Despair and Hope from 17th-century Italy opens this Sunday February 28, 2021, 2:00 p.m. EST. The program will feature solos, duets, and ensembles recorded from a distance; 17th-century Italian repertoire coupled with an original composition by bass-baritone, Jonathan Woody, with text compiled by countertenor, Reginald Mobley; and a showcase of Opera Lafayettealums and debuts.

For this Friday Musical Moment we are pleased to give you an amuse-bouche from the concert in the form of a trailer.

Please enjoy the video below as this week's Friday Musical Moment.

Lamentation to Liberation: Songs of Despair and Hope from 17th-century Italy

Friday Musical Moment: Artist Spotlight: Aaron Sheehan

February's Sunday Serenades, which opens on Sunday February 28, 2021, 2:00 p.m. EST represents the meeting of multiple elements, artistic and technical. The program will feature solos, duets, and ensembles recorded from a distance; 17th-century Italian repertoire coupled with an original composition by bass-baritone,Jonathan Woody, with text by countertenor, Reginald Mobley; and a showcase Opera Lafayette alums and debuts.

For this Friday Musical Moment we are pleased to highlight Opera Lafayette alum, Aaron Sheehan in this 2015 performance of "Nigra Sum" from Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine, 1610 for TENET Vocal Arts as part of their Green Mountain Project. You might recognize Aaron from our 2014 production of Rameau's Les Fêtes de l'Hymen et de l'Amour.

Please enjoy the video below as this week's Friday Musical Moment.

Monteverdi Vespers 1610: "Nigra Sum"

Friday Musical Moment: Artist Spotlight: Reginald Mobley

February's Sunday Serenades concert is Opera Lafayette's most ambitious technological feat this season. This program includes solos, duets, and ensembles, all of which were recorded separately then engineered together. The program includes 17th-century Italian repertoire, and features an original composition by bass-baritone, Jonathan Woody, with text by countertenor, Reginald Mobleyon Sunday February 28, 2021, 2:00 p.m. EST.

We are pleased to highlight a video shared with us by Reginald, who will make his debut with Opera Lafayette in this program. This week's Friday Musical Moment is of Reginald's 2020 performance of Henry Purcell's "Here the Deities Approve" accompanied by Stephen Stubbs on the lute for Pacific MusicWorks.

Please enjoy the video below as this week's Friday Musical Moment.

Henry Purcell: "Here the Deities Approve"

Overture: Félicien David’sLalla Roukh

We’re sorry we ran out of time! Enjoy the full overture here.