New York Opera Fest: LOTNY’s ‘Owen Wingrave’ by Benjamin Britten

Photo: Tina Buckman

The Metropolitan Opera season is over and summer festivals featuring opera (Bard, Caramoor, Mostly Mozart, not to mention Saratoga Springs and Tanglewood for long weekends) are months away, the New York Opera Fest takes place all over town through June 30.  The schedule features operas from its Baroque origins through the present.   On May 9-11 at the GK ArtsCenter , little opera theatre of NY (LOTNY) presented the NY premiere of Benjamin Britten's Owen Wingrave, written for television in 1971.  Yes, opera was part of pre-cable television, and Britten wasn't the hard sell the Met now treats his as. Based on a short short by

Music: the little OPERA theatre of ny in collaboration with New Vintage Baroque presents the New York City Premiere of Johann Adolph Hasse’s ‘Piramo e Tisbe’

Tisbe (Summer Hassan) wearing her fatal shawl and Piramo (Sarah Nelson Craft). Photo: Tina Buckman

Because early opera is highly regimented and at times surprisingly experimental, the right performance space makes all the difference.  The little OPERA theatre of ny (LOTNY) presented the NYC premiere of Johann Adolph Hasse's "Piramo e Tisbe" at the Baruch Performing Arts Center on the East Side.  The CUNY campus housing the theatre is in the corporate, no-frills Kips Bay neighborhood - making its intimate size ideal for students and those new to opera.  Since the sold-out audience consisted primarily of students, and Hasse's 1768 opera (revised, 1770) was new to most likely new to everyone else, LOTNY and the New Vintage Baroque orchestra conducted by Elliot Figg  proved both outstanding musicians and

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