n SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2025
n SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2025
New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, Boston BOSTON
PAUL O’DETTE & STEPHEN STUBBS, Musical Directors GILBERT BLIN, Stage Director
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Dear Friends,
We are delighted to welcome you to a long-standing, beloved Thanksgiving weekend tradition in Boston! Since 2008, BEMF’s annual late-November operatic productions, presented in the intimate setting of NEC’s Jordan Hall, have focused the acclaimed musical and artistic values of our fully staged Festival operas on smaller-scale works, from undeservedly neglected gems to beloved masterpieces.
Our all-new 2025 Chamber Opera Series presentation features a rare staging of Francesco Provenzale’s 1674 tragicomedy Stellidaura’s Revenge. A courtly love triangle is thrown into disarray by passionate emotions in this delightful romp set against the backdrop of the Italian Riviera. Grammy-winning Musical Directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs join with internationally acclaimed Stage Director Gilbert Blin, Movement Director Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière, a stellar cast—soprano Hannah De Priest as the vengeful Stellidaura, tenor Aaron Sheehan as the jealous Prince Orismondo, tenor Richard Pittsinger as the loyal knight Armidoro, and Giuseppe Naviglio and Mara Riley as their long-suffering servants Giampetro and Armillo—and the beloved musicians of the all-star BEMF Chamber Ensemble led by Concertmaster Robert Mealy, for two performances of this Neapolitan masterpiece.
The 2025 portion of our 25/26 Season concludes when the magnificent Tallis Scholars and director Peter Phillips return on Friday, December 5, at St. Paul Church in Cambridge, for their thirty-seventh annual appearance with BEMF. They will present a holiday program of transcendent English repertoire written about the Virgin Mary, including William Byrd’s Votive Mass and Thomas Tallis’s Missa Puer natus est nobis.
We hope you enjoy these performances, whether in person or in a later virtual viewing. Both Stellidaura’s Revenge and the upcoming performance by The Tallis Scholars will separately be made available for two weeks of online viewing starting in mid-December. In the meantime, you can enjoy Stile Antico’s 500th anniversary program of the music of Palestrina in a virtual performance available online through December 6, 2025.
Thank you for making BEMF opera a part of your holiday tradition, and our heartfelt thanks for your continued appreciation of the Boston Early Music Festival. Kathleen Fay
Kathleen Fay, Executive Director
Carla Chrisfield, General Manager
Maria van Kalken, Assistant to the Executive Director
Brian Stuart, Director of Marketing and Publicity
Elizabeth Hardy, Marketing and Development Associate & Exhibition Manager
Perry Emerson, Operations Manager
Corey King, Box Office and Patron Services Director
Esme Hurlburt, Patron Services & Advertising Associate
Andrew Sigel, Publications Editor
Julia McKenzie, Director of the BEMF Youth Ensemble
Nina Stern, Community Engagement Advisor
Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, Artistic Directors
Gilbert Blin, Opera Director
Robert Mealy, Orchestra Director
Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière, Lucy Graham Dance Director
Bernice K. Chen, Chairman | David Halstead, President
Ellen T. Harris, Vice President | Susan L. Robinson, Vice President
Adrian C. Touw, Treasurer | Peter L. Faber, Clerk
Michael Ellmann | George L. Hardman | Glenn A. KnicKrehm | Robert E. Kulp, Jr.
Bettina A. Norton | Lee S. Ridgway | Ganesh Sundaram | Christoph Wolff
Diane Britton† | Gregory E. Bulger | Amanda Pond
Robert Strassler | Donald E. Vaughan
Marty Gottron & John Felton, Co-Chairs
Deborah Ferro Burke | Mary Deissler† | James A. Glazier
Douglas M. Robbe | Jacob Skowronek † deceased
43 Thorndike Street, Suite 302, Cambridge, MA 02141-1764
Telephone: 617-661-1812 | Email: bemf@bemf.org | BEMF.org
Jon Aaron
Debra K.S. Anderson
Kathryn Bertelli
Mary Briggs
Diane Britton†
Douglas M. Brooks
Gregory E. Bulger
Julian G. Bullitt
Deborah Ferro Burke
John A. Carey
Anne P. Chalmers†
Bernice K. Chen
Joel I. Cohen
Brit d’Arbeloff
Vivian Day
Mary Deissler†
Peter L. DeWolf
JoAnne W. Dickinson
Richard J. Dix
Michael Ellmann
Peter L. Faber
Emily C. Farnsworth
Kathleen Fay
Lori Fay
John Felton
Frances C. Fitch
Claire Fontijn
James A. Glazier
Marty Gottron
Carol A. Haber
David Halstead
George L. Hardman
Ellen T. Harris
Rebecca Harris-Warrick
Richard Hester
Jessica Honigberg
Jennifer Ritvo Hughes
Thomas F. Kelly
Glenn A. KnicKrehm
Christine Kodis
John Krzywicki
Kathryn Kucharski
Robert E. Kulp, Jr.
Ellen Kushner
Christopher Laconi
Thomas G. MacCracken
William Magretta
Bill McJohn
Nancy Netzer
Amy H. Nicholls
Bettina A. Norton
Scott Offen
Lorna E. Oleck
Henry P.M. Paap
James M. Perrin
Bici Pettit-Barron
Amanda Pond
Melvyn Pond
Paul Rabin
Christa Rakich
Lee S. Ridgway
Michael Rigsby
Douglas M. Robbe
Michael Robbins
Susan L. Robinson
Patsy Rogers
Wendy Rolfe-Dunham
Loretto Roney
Ellen Rosand
Valerie Sarles†
David W. Scudder
Andrew Sigel
Jacob Skowronek
Arlene Snyder
Jon Solins
Robert Strassler
Ganesh Sundaram
Adrian C. Touw
Peggy Ueda
Donald E. Vaughan
Nikolaus von Huene
Howard J. Wagner
Benjamin D. Weiss
Ruth S. Westheimer
Allan Winkler
Hal Winslow
Christoph Wolff
Arnold B. Zetcher
Ellen Zetcher † deceased
Paul O’Dette & Stephen Stubbs, Artistic Directors
n FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2025 | 8PM
VIRTUAL AVAILABILITY: December 13 to December 27, 2025
PETER PHILLIPS, Director
For more than 50 years, the legendary singers of The Tallis Scholars have earned international acclaim for performances of unparalleled purity and clarity. Director Peter Phillips leads these transcendent voices in a seasonal program of music from the English repertoire written about the Virgin Mary. Whether celebrating her own divinity in Byrd’s Votive Mass or her role as the mother of Christ as in Tallis’s epic Missa Puer natus est nobis, these selections are some of the most glorious works of the Renaissance. The program also includes Britten’s timeless A Hymn to the Virgin and a newly commissioned piece by Matthew Martin.
n SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2026 | 8PM
VIRTUAL AVAILABILITY: February 13 to February 27, 2026
n SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2026 | 8PM
VIRTUAL AVAILABILITY: February 28 to March 14, 2026
n SUNDAY, MARCH 1, 2026 | 3PM
ROBERT MEALY, Director
CAROLINE COPELAND & JULIAN DONAHUE, dancers
n FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 2026 | 8PM
VIRTUAL AVAILABILITY: March 27 to April 10, 2026
n SUNDAY, APRIL 12, 2026 | 4PM
VIRTUAL AVAILABILITY: April 26 to May 10, 2026
n SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 2026 | 8PM
VIRTUAL AVAILABILITY: May 9 to May 23, 2026
THE BOSTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL THANKS THE FOLLOWING INDIVIDUALS AND INSTITUTIONS FOR THEIR LEADERSHIP SUPPORT OF THE NOVEMBER 2025 PERFORMANCES OF STELLIDAURA’S REVENGE :
BETTINA A. NORTON
Full Production Sponsor
GLENN A. KNICKREHM and CONSTELLATION CHARITABLE FOUNDATION
Sponsors of the BEMF Vocal & Chamber Ensembles and of Giuseppe Naviglio, Giampetro
JOANNE ZERVAS SATTLEY
Sponsor of Hannah De Priest, Stellidaura, and Aaron Sheehan, Orismondo
ANDREW SIGEL
Sponsor of Richard Pittsinger, Armidoro, and Mara Riley, Armillo
BERNICE K. CHEN
Sponsor of Gilbert Blin, Stage Director
HENK ELDERHORST
Sponsor of Grant Sorenson, Intern Assistant to the Stage Director
Boston Early Music Festival extends sincere thanks to the following individuals for their leadership support of our 2025/26 Concert Season:
SUSAN L. ROBINSON
Sponsor of the March 2026 performance by Tafelmusik & Juilliard415
ANDREW SIGEL
Sponsor of Jordi Savall, Director & viol, for his April 2026 appearance with Hespèrion XXI et al. Sponsor of the virtual presentations of Stile Antico, The Tallis Scholars, and Philippe Jaroussky & Artaserse
DAVID HALSTEAD and JAY SANTOS
Sponsors of the October 2025 performance by Opera Prima
KENNETH C. RITCHIE and PAUL T. SCHMIDT
Sponsors of Philippe Jaroussky, countertenor, for his April 2026 appearance with Artaserse
REBECCA NEMSER
Sponsor of Amanda Forsythe, soprano, for her October 2025 appearance with Opera Prima
DR. PETER LIBBY
Sponsor of the Pre-Concert video for the April 2026 performance by Philippe Jaroussky & Artaserse
You can help make this list grow. For more information about investing in BEMF with a Named Gift, please email kathy@bemf.org or call the BEMF office at 617-661-1812. Your support makes a difference!
La Stellidaura vendicante
Music composed by Francesco Provenzale (1624–1704)
Libretto by Andrea Perrucci (1651–1704)
Paul O’Dette & Stephen Stubbs, Musical Directors
Gilbert Blin, Stage Director
Robert Mealy, Concertmaster
Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière, Movement Director
Seth Bodie, Costume Designer
Zachary Connell, Lighting Designer
Jason McStoots, Assistant Stage Director
Reed Demangone, Fight Choreographer
Kathleen Fay, Executive Producer
Saturday, November 29, 2025 at 8pm
Sunday, November 30, 2025 at 3pm
New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall
30 Gainsborough Street, Boston, Massachusetts
Sunday, December 14 – Sunday, December 28, 2025 Virtual availability, BEMF.org
Hannah De Priest, soprano – Stellidaura
Aaron Sheehan, tenor – Orismondo
Richard Pittsinger, tenor – Armidoro
Giuseppe Naviglio, baritone – Giampetro
Mara Riley, soprano – Armillo
Robert Mealy, concertmaster
Sarah Darling, violin II
Kathryn Montoya, recorder I
Gaia Saetermoe-Howard, recorder II
Michelle Humphreys, percussion
David Morris, violoncello
Maxine Eilander, Baroque harp
Michael Sponseller, harpsichord
Paul O’Dette, archlute & mandolino
Stephen Stubbs, Baroque guitar
Flemish double-manual harpsichord by Earl Russell, Oberlin, Ohio, 1999, after Colmar Ruckers, 1624, courtesy of Michael Sponseller
Mercedes Roman-Manson, Production Manager
Elizabeth Hardy, Company Manager
Perry Emerson, Operations Manager
Maria van Kalken, Assistant to the Executive Producer
Grant Sorenson, Intern Assistant to the Stage Director
Jacqueline Quintal, Costume Shop and Wardrobe Supervisor
Seth Bodie, Wig, Hair, and Makeup Designer and Artist
James White, Production Assistant
Dan McGaha, Supertitles Supervisor and Operator
Kathy Wittman, Videographer and Photographer
Antonio Oliart Ros, Recording Engineer
English supertitles will be projected above the stage during the performance. We have made a PDF of the libretto and English translation available to read online; out of respect for your fellow audience members, please do not read the libretto on your screen during the live performance. We are grateful for your understanding.
ACT ONE
ACT TWO
Scene One: City street. Orismondo alone.
Scene Two: Armillo and Orismondo.
Scene Three: Giampetro and Orismondo.
Scene Four: The moon appears in the sky. Armidoro, Orismondo, and Giampetro.
Scene Five: Stellidaura with a lantern, Armillo, and the previously present.
Scene Six: Armillo, Armidoro, and Orismondo.
Scene Seven: Stellidaura with a sword, Armillo, and Armidoro.
Scene Eight: Giampetro alone.
Scene Nine: Stellidaura, Armidoro, Armillo, and Giampetro.
Scene One: The royal rooms. Orismondo writing at a small table.
Scene Two: Giampetro and Orismondo.
Scene Three: Armidoro alone.
Scene Four: Orismondo, Armidoro, and Giampetro.
Scene Five: City street. Stellidaura and Armillo.
Scene Six: Giampetro and Armillo.
Scene Seven: Armidoro and Armillo.
Scene Eight: Giampetro, then Armillo.
ACT TWO Scene Nine: Stellidaura, Armillo, and Giampetro. (continued) Scene Ten: Armidoro and Armillo.
Scene Eleven: Giampetro and Armidoro.
Scene Twelve: Orismondo and Giampetro.
Scene Thirteen: Armidoro, then Armillo.
Scene Fourteen: Stellidaura and Armidoro.
Scene Fifteen: Giampetro, Stellidaura, and Armidoro.
ACT THREE
Scene One: Courtyard. Stellidaura dressed as a man, and Armillo.
Scene Two: Gallery. Orismondo alone.
Scene Three: Stellidaura masked with a sword, and Orismondo asleep.
Scene Four: Armidoro restraining Stellidaura, and Orismondo.
Scene Five: Giampetro and the previously present.
Scene Six: Orismondo and Armidoro.
Scene Seven: Giampetro, Orismondo, and Armidoro.
Scene Eight: The Prisons. Stellidaura in her cell.
Scene Nine: Armillo and Stellidaura.
Scene Ten: Giampetro with the poison, Stellidaura, and Armillo.
Scene Eleven: Orismondo, Giampetro, and Stellidaura.
Scene Twelve: Armidoro and Armillo.
Scene Thirteen: [omitted]
Scene Fourteen: Giampetro alone.
Scene Fifteen: Royal sepulture. Armidoro, Stellidaura unconscious.
Scene Sixteen: Gallery. Orismondo alone.
Scene Seventeen: Stellidaura, Armidoro, and Orismondo.
Final Scene: Giampetro, Armillo, and the previously present.
Kathleen Fay and the Boston Early Music Festival wish to thank the following organizations and individuals for their assistance with this production:
Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, BEMF Musical Co-Directors, and Perry Emerson, BEMF Operations Manager, for creating the BEMF performing edition of Francesco Provenzale’s La Stellidaura vendicante
Gilbert Blin, BEMF Stage Director, Stephen Stubbs, and Paul O’Dette, for the Annotated Edition and Translation of the Libretto of 1674
Matteo Chiellino, PhD student in History and Analysis of Musical Cultures at La Sapienza University of Rome, for the translation of the Calabrese sections of the libretto
Dinko Fabris, Professor of Music History, Conservatorio di Bari (Bari, Italy) and University of Basilicata (Potenza, Italy), for sharing the facsimile of the 1674 libretto and his edition of the libretto with us, for our production of La Stellidaura vendicante
Alessandro Quarta, Founder & Director of Concerto Romano, for his advice and consultation throughout our Chamber Opera preparation
Paul O’Dette, for his Program Note entitled La Stellidaura vendicante and the Neapolitan Music Scene in the Seventeenth Century
Gilbert Blin, for his Synopsis and essay entitled A Note on the Dramaturgy
Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, for their enlightening pre-opera talks before each performance
Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière, BEMF Movement Director, for her engaging Community Dance Workshop Dancing at the 17th-Century Court on November 22, 2025 at Old Town Hall in Salem, Massachusetts
Julie Barry, Senior Planner, Arts & Culture, City of Salem, and Aubrey Clark, Planning Assistant for Arts & Culture, City of Salem, for their assistance with our rehearsal venue
The Staff at New England Conservatory of Music, especially Bob Winters, Director of Performance Production Services, Heather Martell, Manager of Rentals & Partnership Programs, and Grace Sexton, Assistant Director of Patron Services, for their support and technical assistance
Beth Pasquarello, Director of Sales and Catering, Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, Brandon Smith, Group Sales Manager, Hilton Boston Park Plaza in Boston, and Lisa O’Neil, Director of Sales, Marketing, and Revenue, Hampton Inn Boston/Cambridge, for their assistance with BEMF artist hospitality
Lori Harrison, Atlas Travel International, for her dedication and professionalism in all matters related to BEMF Artist Travel
James C. Busby, for his gracious hospitality
Andrew Sigel, for his meticulous attention to detail as editor of our publications including the material contained in this program book
BEMF staff members Carla Chrisfield, Elizabeth Hardy, Perry Emerson, and Maria van Kalken, for their thoughtful caretaking of our Stellidaura’s Revenge Company, and Brian Stuart, Corey King, and Esme Hurlburt, for their fastidious work in connection with marketing and box office management for these productions
PAUL O’DETTE
STEPHEN STUBBS
Musical Directors
GILBERT BLIN
Stage Director
ROBERT MEALY
Concertmaster
MARIE-NATHALIE LACOURSIÈRE
Choreographer
AARON SHEEHAN as Pyramus NOLA RICHARDSON as Thisbe
FRI, NOVEMBER 27, 2026 TROY, NY SAT, NOVEMBER 28, 2026 SUN, NOVEMBER 29, 2026 BOSTON, MA
TAYLOR WARD as Lion BRIAN GIEBLER as Moon JASON McSTOOTS as Wall
Naples was a bustling hive of musical activity in the seventeenth century, a city pulsating with religious festivals, featuring music outdoors and in, accompanied by large ensembles of singers and instrumentalists, churches overflowing with musical productions, a vibrant opera culture, chamber music performances in noble palazzi, and a robust street music scene with tarantellas danced and sung in nearly every square. Naples was also the place where the first music conservatories were founded. Originally started as orphanages to feed and house the large number of orphans in this bustling port city (hence the name “conservatories”), the Catholic Church chose four of these as places to provide intensive musical training to children ranging in age from six to eighteen. The nearly three thousand parishes in Naples each required two or three professional musicians to direct the musical activity, including a maestro di cappella, an organist, and a choir director. The constant dangers presented by the plague,
famine, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions meant that these positions needed to be regularly replenished. The conservatories provided a rigorous curriculum of musical training, including lessons in singing, keyboard playing, sight-singing, clef reading, music theory and composition, improvisation, and all the other skills a musician needed to be able to work as a professional. The descriptions of dormitory-style rooms housing more than one hundred students at a time, each sitting at their little spinettine practicing their harpsichord assignments all at once, provide a vivid image of the energy and indescribable din in these first music schools.
Francesco Provenzale was at the center of all this musical activity. As the leading composer and teacher in Naples during the second half of the seventeenth century, he was appointed maestro della Fedelissima Città di Napoli, responsible for all ceremonial music performed in the city, as well as for the music at one of the most important churches in town, Santa Maria della Pietà dei Turchini. Provenzale was also the director of the two most important conservatories for a total of forty years, at one point directing both simultaneously. In this capacity, he trained many of the composers who established the renowned Neapolitan opera school of the
eighteenth century. At the same time, Provenzale was himself active as a composer and presenter of church music and operas. While his earliest operas are lost, a score of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea survives which seems to have been used for a revival of the opera in Naples in 1651, a production probably directed by Provenzale and containing his revisions and added music. It is striking that a passage in La Stellidaura vendicante quotes directly from Arnalta’s lullaby in Monteverdi’s masterpiece! In 1653, Provenzale composed Il Ciro for Naples, an opera which was revived in Venice the next year with some new music composed by Francesco Cavalli. This was the beginning of a close working relationship between the two composers in which Provenzale presented a series of Cavalli’s operas in Naples with numerous revisions made by the Neapolitan. Provenzale also presented several of his own operas, as well as his revisions of Cavalli operas in Palermo and Messina.
While most of Provenzale’s operas are lost, the last two have survived, both in manuscripts copied out by the composer’s student and longtime assistant, Gaetano Veneziano. Lo schiavo di sua moglie premiered in 1672 to great acclaim, followed by La Stellidaura vendicante in 1674. Both works are of outstanding quality and contribute significantly to the operatic repertoire of late seventeenth-century Italy.
Provenzale’s importance as an opera composer was recognized over two centuries later in 1895 by the noted French writer Romain Rolland, and a few years after that by the venerable German musicologist Hugo Goldschmidt. Rolland credited Provenzale with being an excellent composer, “less perfect than Carissimi, but more profound,” and for being the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera, while, according to Goldschmidt: “In the depth of feeling in his music, the variety of his expressive powers, the plasticity of his melodies, and in the richness of his harmonic and contrapuntal mastery, Provenzale was not surpassed by any of his contemporaries, and was equaled by very few of the representatives of the later Neapolitan school.” La Stellidaura vendicante demonstrates all these qualities in a score of extraordinary beauty, richness, and invention. The power and depth of the heart-rending laments and soaring love duets on the one hand, and the hilarious levity of the comic tarantellas on the other, combine to create a uniquely engaging opera.
The first performance of La Stellidaura was given at the Villa Cicinelli di Cursi in Mergellina on September 2, 1674, in front of its dedicatee, the Viceroy of Naples. It was enthusiastically received, necessitating a public revival one year later at the Teatro di San Bartolomeo, the main opera house of Naples at the time. Further revivals are recorded in
Genova in 1678, Rome in 1679, and another revival in Naples in 1685. The opera must have resonated strongly in Naples since a novel based on it was published in 1690 by Francesco Massari entitled La viva sepolto ovvero la Stellidaura. After that, the opera vanished without a trace until the librarian of the Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome purchased the manuscript score in the mid-1880s. It was there that Romain Rolland and Hugo Goldschmidt saw it. But no modern edition was produced, and the work remained unperformed in modern times until 1996, when Antonio Florio conducted the first modern performance of it in Bari. It was subsequently performed in Sweden in 1999 (in Swedish!), directed by Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, and later staged at venues in Austria and Italy, directed by various Italian conductors and ensembles.
The opera’s cast of five is divided into three noble roles—the beautiful Stellidaura, her lover Armidoro, and Prince Orismondo, who is also in love with her—and two comic roles, Stellidaura’s page, Armillo, and Orismondo’s Calabrian servant, Giampetro. Casting Calabrians in comic roles was common in seventeenth-century Neapolitan theater, but in this case, Giampetro speaks a mishmash of various southern Italian dialects including diverse Calabrian dialects, with other remarks in Sicilian, Neapolitan, and Pugliese, meant perhaps to represent the immigrant culture in Naples since, to southern Italians at the time, Naples was considered “the North”: a place to which they immigrated to find work. The librettist for this work, the precocious twenty-three-year-old Andrea Perrucci, was an accomplished polyglot with a lifelong passion for southern Italian dialects. He later wrote in detail about the role these dialects should play in opera in his monumental 1699 book on acting, Dell’ Arte rappresentativa.
Naples was under Spanish rule during the seventeenth century, resulting in regular performances of Spanish plays and Spanish music. Perrucci and his contemporaries were strongly influenced by Spanish playwrights,
especially Lope de Vega, whose works were frequently quoted by Perrucci. Perrucci also translated numerous plays by Lope into Italian. La Stellidaura is a typical “capa y spada” (cloak and dagger) plot, one of Lope’s favorite genres, especially when it involved love triangles. But there were other elements derived from the Spaniard as well, including the use of gender disguises, as in the third act when Stellidaura dresses as a man to murder Orismondo. In addition to these Spanish influences, there is a strong Shakespearean influence on La Stellidaura, it clearly being inspired by Romeo and Juliet. Orismondo commands Giampetro to poison Stellidaura for her attempt to kill him (thinking she was a man), and her lifeless body is discovered by Armidoro next to a vial of poison, which, in grief, he drinks as well. While modern audiences are familiar with Shakespeare’s brilliant portrayal of this scene, it is less well-known that Shakespeare himself borrowed the idea for this scene from the Italian writer Matteo Bandello (1480–1562), whose novella of 1554 was translated into English in 1562. Shakespeare was very enthusiastic about Bandello’s gifts as a storyteller, and he openly studied the novelle as a source of dramatic ideas. Thus, we have a Sicilian (Perrucci was originally from Palermo), living in Spanishruled Naples, using an English play (Romeo and Juliet) for inspiration, which in turn had been based on a Renaissance Italian short story!
The role of Stellidaura was written for the most beloved soprano of the time, Giulia De Caro, who was also the director of the Teatro di San Bartolomeo. For a southern Italian opera to be centered around a powerful female protagonist must have been a strong statement at a time
in which female roles were often sung by male castrati. According to eyewitness accounts, De Caro was the most compelling of the singers in the first production, and her role in the opera must have been one of the reasons it was revived at San Bartolomeo, where she was the impresario!
While the music for the three noble characters is in a style similar to that of Venetian operas from the 1650s and 1660s (Cavalli, Boretti, Sartorio, etc.), Giampetro sings folksy tarantellas and other street-music-inspired dance songs. The contrast between these two distinct musical styles, as well as the contrast between the Italian and Calabrian texts, creates variety and freshness throughout the opera. In several passages, Provenzale has composed duets for characters in opposite emotional states singing at the same time, a technique that Mozart is often credited with creating over a century later!
To keep the action moving, the numerous arias and duets are generally quite short, creating a fast-paced, kaleidoscopic drama with a constant flow of catchy new melodies.
The instrumental forces notated in the manuscript score consist of two parts in treble clefs, presumably for violins, plus the basso continuo line. There are no accounts indicating
The libretto of Andrea Perrucci (1651–1704) has a double title, and this frontally expressed two-fold quality seems to be of great relevance to establish the fundamentals for a stage approach of the work: “Defending the offender or Stellidaura avenged”. This approach seems already evident when looking at the types of events incorporated by Perrucci’s “cloak and dagger” plot. Inspired by the Spanish theater masters of the “Siglo de oro” such as Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and of course Calderón, the Neapolitan writer, then at the beginning of his fertile career, created a breathless movement in his detailed
how many musicians performed the opera in 1674 or 1675, but we have chosen to emphasize the trio sonata texture of the writing, using two violins with recorders added for color and variety. Descriptions of continuo groups in the Royal Palace in Naples record the use of archlute, theorbo, guitar, harp, colascione, and harpsichord together with violoncello or viola da gamba. The Spanish guitar (“chitarra alla Spagnola”) had been introduced into Naples from Spain along with the harp, and they played a vital role in Neapolitan music. Baroque paintings of folk musicians dancing tarantellas often show various percussion instruments so we have included them as well, especially for Giampetro’s arias.
Hugo Goldschmidt’s effusive praise of Provenzale’s compositional genius is borne out in performance. But it is the combination of his outstanding music with the imaginative libretto of Perrucci which together make La Stellidaura vendicante a uniquely Neapolitan opera of remarkable originality and distinction. Its special qualities compel a renewed exploration into the riches of seicento Neapolitan music and its influence on European musical culture for the next century. n
—Paul O’Dette
libretto that only a live performance can offer. Perrucci’s melodrama—its play of revelation, repentance, and moral restitution—extends beyond its narrative to embody the broader aesthetics of Neapolitan theatricality.
From the opening of the opera, the audience is witness to a lover’s passion. We instinctively sympathize with the loving feelings Orismondo displays, and Provenzale’s music here has the same sincerity as his arias for the other lovers, but quickly we also notice the prince’s excessive passion. Our instinctive sympathy is soon in doubt, as the plot develops around this excess
and its effects. Indeed, the whole play is about the sufferings of the soul when confronted by uncontrolled feelings, all connected to Love: it brings the three lovers to act with violent displays. These expressions of passions take them to extreme actions, either good or evil, leading them always close to death.
The opera’s first act unfolds as a paradigmatic instance of the Baroque dramaturgy of passions, where disguise, jealousy, and mistaken identity converge to expose the instability of the loving soul and the moral spectacle of life tested through suffering. All the male characters are introduced: we soon discover they all revolve around one lady through their interactions with each other but also their various monologues. Before we see her, we hear about her perfections. Her name is Stellidaura, and as her name indicates, she is like a star above all other women.
This excess of love first affects Orismondo. When the prince pretends to be Armidoro to obtain a letter that the lady has asked her page to deliver, he loses his identity. The first occurrence of this expressive object, the written letter, begins a long series of occurrences that invariably bring emotional distress for the three lovers. In a frequently employed theatrical device of the time, the prince reads this letter out loud and we learn with him that Stellidaura hates him and loves Armidoro. Furthermore, the wording of the letter influences his conduct: the anxiety that Stellidaura expresses inspires
him to commit the actual violence that she wrote she feared. When Armidoro arrives in turn to serenade Stellidaura, the prince shoots him, intending murder.
This scene encapsulates another Baroque meditation on the instability of identity through the moral spectacle of license. Within this dramaturgy, the conflict between passion and virtue—between princely prerogative and private constancy—recalls the ethical dialectic of “civilitas” itself: a world where sovereignty is tested not through conquest, but through selfcontrol and the governance of desire.
Title page of the libretto to Difendere l’offensore overo la Stellidaura vendicante (1674)
Armidoro is only wounded, not slain, but the shot attracts Stellidaura who, full of love, confronts the unidentified attacker. Here, the opera’s second title is first to manifest: “Stellidaura avenged”. Fencing being reserved for men, the controversial image of Stellidaura with a blade is emblematic of the piece: it will happen, in all, three times during the performance. Wounded Armidoro, who has recognized
Orismondo, does not want Stellidaura to pursue her vengeance toward his prince and does not warn her about the identity of the jealous attacker. This is the first incidence of the primary title of the piece, “Defending the offender”, which will also occur three times. Within the volatile sensibility of late seventeenth-century Naples, such moments— where codes of honor met the improvisatory energy of the stage—must dramatize not
merely the confusion of lovers but the moral uncertainty of an entire social world. Here, virtue itself becomes a matter of interpretation, continually refracted through the changing lights of rhetoric and passion.
When a final duo closes the scene in an image of constancy restored, the lovers’ fidelity purified through ordeal, a sense of danger lingers. If this episode restores the equilibrium disrupted by Orismondo’s passion, reaffirming fidelity as both an emotional truth and a moral order, the shadow of violent jealousy still lingers in our mind.
Wounded Armidoro, who has discerned the identity of his assailant from the presence of Giampetro in the street, has chosen silence over accusation. As a man of honor bound by the duties of friendship and service, he refrains from confronting the prince who has wronged him. This chivalric attitude is connected to the code inherited from the Middle Ages but also to a contemporary “religion of the heart,” which places a form of love and faith at the center of its values. This is a recurring Baroque theme not only in poetry, but especially in theater and in lyrics, where it returns with extraordinary frequency; in La Stellidaura it acquires a peculiar depth, closely fused with the world as theater, as the following scene will demonstrate.
The next morning, at court, Orismondo, concealing his guilt, feigns surprise at Armidoro’s wound; his victim, in turn, pretends he did not recognize the identity of his assailant, remaining steadfast in his duties as chief knight, courtier, and “amico.” Armidoro upholds the decorum of loyalty, suppressing his grievance; Orismondo preserves the façade of princely integrity even as he betrays it in secret. This exchange of restraint and dissimulation, each man performing his role within the fragile economy of courtly virtue, is expressive of the most recurring trope related to the negativity of the court, a place of pretenses and dissimulation, where the characters often play double roles.
The “low” character of Giampetro clearly
expresses his doubts about the courtly world. Isn’t the court, in the broad sense the whole world, a place where everyone is forced to take on a mask and play a part? The court of the prince would be, in short, a sort of stage, a microcosm that is a faithful mirror— sometimes grotesquely distorted—of a macrocosm in which everything is a stage and humans are poor actors who play, in a supreme fiction, their part. The function of the humble characters in La Stellidaura is to demystify it. The complementarity of the old man and the young page is emblematic in this sense, as both comment abundantly on the “madness” of their masters, extrapolated to the court and the female sex. In the Neapolitan context they are the street expressions of a lively and grotesque world, which forcibly burst into the lofty and solemn universe of the powerful, in a totally ideal and stylistic reversal.
Torn between love and friendship, Orismondo yields to passion and resolves to reveal himself to Stellidaura in a letter. In a moment of uneasy candor with a hint of provocation, the two men reveal that each has written a letter to his beloved. In front of Armidoro, Orismondo entrusts Giampetro with the delivery of his own message to “you know who,” unaware that chance will soon intervene. While engaged in a game of cards with Stellidaura’s servant Armillo, in which each is trying to cheat the other (cardsharps being a common subject in the visual arts of the period), Giampetro inadvertently drops the prince’s letter to the floor. The unexpected conclusion to this game leads to more confusion: Giampetro’s distraction is soon followed by a similar error by Armidoro. These trivial accidents will propel the machinery of misunderstandings once more into motion. What begins as acts of private confession are swiftly overturned by accidents, exposing internal sentiment to the unpredictable play of circumstances.
The episode of the misplaced letters encapsulates a characteristically Neapolitan tension between secrecy and revelation, decorum and improvisation. In the theatrical
culture of late seventeenth-century Naples— shaped by the courtly ethos of its Spanish rulers and local traditions of “meraviglia,” the aesthetic transport produced by something unexpected or extraordinary—the unreliability of communication mirrors the instability of social identity itself. The letter, started as a token of sincerity, becomes a catalyst for misunderstanding: an emblem of desire rendered vulnerable to chance, rumors, and theatrical display.
The two letters are mixed up and Stellidaura’s replies reach the wrong admirer via the servants Giampetro and Armillo. The circulation of the letters, their fall from private hand to public space, echoes the porous boundaries of Neapolitan performance, where courtly decorum coexisted with the exuberant vitality of the popular stage: the nobles are misled by their humble messengers. Giampetro informs Orismondo that Stellidaura’s reply has been seized by Armidoro. Enraged by jealousy, the prince commands his servant to kill his rival. The attempt, however, is thwarted by Stellidaura, who intervenes to save Armidoro’s life a second time. Bewildered by her sudden change of heart, having earlier received what he believes to be her rejection, Armidoro accuses her of inconstancy and confronts her with the love letter he took from Giampetro.
Stellidaura, astonished and distressed by Armidoro’s jealousy, affirms her devotion but cannot explain the confusion surrounding her letter. Misled by appearances and convinced of her betrayal, Armidoro spurns the woman who has just preserved his life. At the height of despair, Stellidaura, abandoned and dishonored in the eyes of her beloved, resolves to murder Orismondo. The scene crystallizes the Neapolitan fascination with the extremes of passion and the instability of moral judgment. In this theater of affect, jealousy and desire coexist as twin forces that unsettle both ethical order and social decorum. The oscillation between accusation and rescue, love
and repudiation, reflects a broader cultural taste for emotional excess, theatrical paradox, and the sudden reversal of fortune.
Stellidaura is steadfast in her resolve to destroy Orismondo, and to do so, feels the need to disguise herself as a man to commit murder. Again, she is stopped by Armidoro, but he failed to discern the real identity of the masked assailant. Stellidaura herself doesn’t want to reveal who she is and is imprisoned and condemned to death. A prison scene—a Spanish stage theme that Neapolitan operas will use with great frequency—will show the “stella,” the light of the heroine, shining even more brightly in obscurity: to preserve the life of Armidoro, hoping to end Orismondo’s obsession, and to justify herself in the eyes of her beloved, Stellidaura sacrifices herself and only confesses her identity after drinking the deadly poison.
Orismondo, now consumed by remorse for the death he has caused, discovers by chance in a book that, before his birth, his father already had a daughter, who was sent away for safety. Like him, the audience is quick to realize the coincidence. This plot twist is a convention that allows a change of fate. Perrucci introduces the idea in a long and detailed introduction to his published libretto. On stage, this device, although based on materiality (a book), does appear as “meraviglio.” A concurrent event of this wondrous effect is when Stellidaura, who had unknowingly drunk a sleeping potion rather than poison due to the (voluntary?) inadvertence of Giampetro, awakens. Here, Perrucci is using a double twist which seems to bring the plot to a kind of template for the many “melodrama” librettos to come.
The female hero, convinced that Armidoro has been killed by the order of Orismondo, tries for a third time to murder the prince. He is saved again by Armidoro, and he reveals her identity as his unknown sister. The revelation restores order: Armidoro recognizes Stellidaura’s constancy and repents his mistrust, forgiveness replaces suspicion, and love—purified through suffering—is finally acknowledged. The prince,
humbled and chastened, renews his natural claim to Stellidaura’s affection, reaffirming the moral sovereignty that jealousy had obscured: his instinctive love for his sister. This final scene completes the moral and affective trajectory characteristic of Neapolitan dramaturgy, where harmony is achieved, not through mythological intervention, like in other operas of the same period, but through the divine revelation of human frailty.
The play’s resolution depends on the recognition of error, “agnizione,” a device central to both the tragic and comic traditions of the Baroque stage. Such an ending resonates with the Neapolitan conception of theatricality as a mirror of social and emotional reality: in this world of volatile passions and precarious honor, truth emerges only through its distortions. The vocalization by the characters of both titles of the opera during the finale emphasizes the moral restoration that concludes the drama. The scene is thus less a triumph of reason than a carefully staged reconciliation, preserving the
tensions between virtue and desire that seem to define the cultural poetics of late seventeenthcentury Naples. The spectacle of revelation of identities affirms not the stability of order, but its perpetual negotiation.
The mutable interplay between passion and decorum, concealment and disclosure, finds its visual analogue in the dynamic stage typical of late seventeenth-century Naples, where rapid transformations of poetic spaces mirrored the volatility of human affects and social order. In this sense, the stage itself participates in the moral and psychological drama: the fluid boundaries between court and street, interior and exterior, public and private, female and male, visually reflect the permeability of social and emotional identities in Neapolitan culture. The theater of passions becomes both a literal and metaphorical site of revelation, where artifice gives form to truth, and is rendered legible through spectacle. n
—Gilbert Blin
Prince Orismondo, disguised, woos Stellidaura, who mistakes him for her true love, Armidoro. Discovering her scorn for him and devotion to his rival, the jealous prince wounds Armidoro but later hides his guilt. A tangle of misdelivered letters breeds confusion and mistrust among the lovers, driving Orismondo to order Armidoro’s death. Stellidaura intervenes, then, seeking revenge: she disguises herself and attempts to kill the prince—only to be captured and given what is thought to be poison but is actually a sleeping potion. Believed dead, she awakens, and the truth finally emerges: Stellidaura is Orismondo’s long-lost sister.
A lady of mysterious lineage, Stellidaura has enflamed the heart of Prince Orismondo. Veiling his rank beneath the shadows of night, the prince comes in disguise to serenade her beneath her window. Mistaking the hidden musician for her beloved Armidoro—a knight in the prince’s own service who is likewise enamoured of her—Stellidaura dispatches her young page, Armillo, with a letter intended for her presumed lover. Assuming Armidoro’s identity, Orismondo intercepts the missive and, with the assistance of his servant Giampetro, discovers the cruel truth: Stellidaura’s heart is pledged to Armidoro, and she despises the prince who adores her. Jealousy transforms desire into violence. When Armidoro arrives to serenade his lady in turn, Orismondo, driven by wounded pride, ambushes and shoots his rival.
Alerted by the gunshot, Stellidaura rushes forth, finding her beloved bleeding. Her immediate tenderness reveals the sincerity of her affection, while Orismondo, hidden nearby, bears witness to the very intimacy that condemns him to despair. He challenges his rival to a duel without revealing his identity, but when the wounded knight cannot hold a sword, Stellidaura, fiery in love and honor, offers to take his place. She withdraws to fetch a sword, but Orismondo, unable to raise his hand against the woman he loves, vanishes into the night.
Returning, Stellidaura mistakes Giampetro for her lover’s assailant and, in a moment
of misdirected fury, challenges him instead. Armidoro restrains her, perceiving her confusion; the two lovers reaffirm their passion for one another.
The following day Orismondo, torn between love and friendship, yields to passion and resolves to reveal himself to Stellidaura in a letter. Giampetro recounts to him the events that unfolded after the prince’s departure. Orismondo, concealing his guilt, feigns surprise at Armidoro’s wound. Steadfast in his duties as courtier, Armidoro remains silent about the identity of his attacker. As a man of honor bound by the duties of friendship and service, he refrains from confronting the prince who has wronged him.
The two rivals, without directly mentioning Stellidaura, confide that each has written a letter to his lady expressing his feelings. Orismondo entrusts Giampetro with the task of delivering his own letter, but during a game of cards with Armillo, Giampetro, intent on tricking the cunning page, accidentally lets it fall to the floor.
Armidoro, who has written to Stellidaura to reassure her of his faithful love, misplaces his letter. Armillo finds the letter dropped by Giampetro and, believing it to be Armidoro’s own, returns it to him; he in turn asks the page to deliver it to Stellidaura. Meanwhile, Giampetro, realizing his mistake, comes back to search for the letter he lost during the card game. When he discovers a letter on the floor,
he assumes it to be the prince’s—unaware that it is, in fact, the one Armidoro had previously misplaced.
Both servants arrive to deliver their respective letters to Stellidaura. The lady, upon reading the one brought by Armillo—Orismondo’s declaration of love—is appalled. She commands Armillo to convey her indignant words of rejection to its sender. The page, having received his instructions from Armidoro, is bewildered. However, he dutifully delivers Stellidaura’s rebuke to Armidoro, who interprets it as proof of her fickleness.
In turn, Stellidaura responds to the letter brought by Giampetro—the one she believes to be from Armidoro—with a passionate expression of love. This reply, however, is intercepted by Armidoro, who, seeing Giampetro’s hand in its delivery, believes with bitter sorrow that the letter is addressed not to himself but to Orismondo.
Giampetro informs Orismondo that Stellidaura’s reply has been taken from him by Armidoro. Seized by jealousy, Orismondo commands his servant to avenge him by killing his rival. The attempt, however, is thwarted by Stellidaura, who intervenes to save Armidoro’s life.
Perplexed by such contradiction, but convinced of her inconstancy, Armidoro confronts her with the letter he had seized from Giampetro. Stellidaura, herself bewildered by the tangle of misunderstandings, protests her fidelity but cannot account for the circumstances of the letter’s exchange. Armidoro refuses to believe her.
Disguised as a man, Stellidaura confides in Armillo her resolve to avenge herself upon Orismondo for having ordered the assassination of Armidoro. Determined to strike, she approaches the prince with a sword in hand. At the decisive moment, Armidoro—
failing to recognize the intruder and moved by loyalty to his sovereign—prevents the attack.
Stellidaura refuses to reveal her identity and is arrested by Giampetro. Believing the assault to be politically motivated, Armidoro advises Orismondo to order the would-be assassin to kill himself. Giampetro is entrusted with the grim task of offering a bottle of poison to the prisoner.
Stellidaura drinks the potion brought by Giampetro, and reveals her identity. Giampetro fetches Orismondo, who arrives just before Stellidaura succumbs.
Armidoro learns from Armillo that Stellidaura was the would-be assassin and has drunk the poison. Resolved to share her fate, he hastens to the mortuary; at the sight of his beloved’s motionless body, he collapses in despair. Yet Stellidaura still lives: she awakens to find Armidoro lying beside her and, believing him slain by Orismondo, vows once more to avenge him. After she departs, Armidoro regains consciousness only to find Stellidaura gone.
Orismondo discovers in the royal archives that he has a sister named Stellidaura, who was sent away in infancy to protect her during a time of revolt. Unaware of this revelation, Stellidaura makes a final attempt to kill Orismondo, but Armidoro once again intervenes and saves the prince. Orismondo, moved by wonder and remorse, questions Stellidaura about her origins and realizes that she is indeed his long-lost sister.
The assembled company is astonished to see her alive, and Giampetro confesses that he had mistakenly delivered a sleeping potion instead of a deadly poison. Recognition restores harmony where jealousy and deception had reigned: Armidoro and Stellidaura are united with the prince’s blessing, and the cycle of misunderstanding resolves at last into reconciliation and restored order. n
—Gilbert Blin
Paul O’Dette has been described as “the clearest case of genius ever to touch his instrument” (Toronto Globe and Mail). He appears regularly at major festivals the world over performing lute recitals and in chamber music programs. Mr. O’Dette has made more than 155 recordings, winning two Grammy Awards and receiving nine Grammy nominations and numerous international record awards. The Complete Lute Music of John Dowland was awarded the prestigious Diapason d’Or de l’Année, and was named “Best Solo Lute Recording of Dowland” by BBC Radio 3. The Bachelar’s Delight: Lute Music of Daniel Bacheler was nominated for a Grammy as Best Solo Instrumental Recording in 2006. While best known for his recitals and recordings of virtuoso solo lute music, Paul O’Dette is also active as a conductor of Baroque opera. Together with Stephen Stubbs he won a Grammy as conductor in 2015 for Best Opera Recording, as well as an Echo Klassik Award, for their recording of Charpentier’s La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers with the Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble. Their CDs of Conradi’s Ariadne, Lully’s Thésée, and Lully’s Psyché, with the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra on the CPO label, were nominated for Grammys; their 2015 BEMF CD of Steffani’s Niobe, Regina di Tebe on the Erato/Warner Classics label was also nominated for a Grammy, and received both an Echo Klassik and the coveted Jahrespreis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. Paul O’Dette is also an avid researcher, having worked extensively on the performance of seventeenthcentury Italian and English solo song, continuo practices, and lute repertoire. He has published numerous articles on issues of historical performance practice, and co-authored the John Dowland entry in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Paul O’Dette is Professor of Lute and Director of Early Music at the Eastman School of Music, and has been Artistic Co-Director of the Boston Early Music Festival since 1993.
Stephen Stubbs, who won the Grammy Award as conductor for Best Opera Recording in 2015, spent a thirty-year career in Europe. He returned to his native Seattle in 2006 as one of the world’s most respected lutenists, conductors, and Baroque opera specialists. He now lives with his family in Agua Dulce, California. In 2007, Stephen established Pacific MusicWorks (PMW), based in Seattle, reflecting his lifelong interest in both early music and contemporary performance. The company’s inaugural presentation was South African artist William Kentridge’s acclaimed multimedia staging of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses. PMW’s performances of the Monteverdi Vespers were described in the press as “utterly thrilling” and “of a quality you are unlikely to encounter anywhere else in the world.” PMW is now a touring ensemble. Stephen Stubbs is also the Boston Early Music Festival’s Artistic Co-Director along with his long-time colleague Paul O’Dette. Stephen and Paul are also the musical directors of all BEMF operas, recordings of which were nominated for seven Grammy awards, and a win in 2015. Also in 2015, BEMF recordings won two Echo Klassik awards and the Diapason d’Or
de l’Année. In 2017, they received the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. In addition to his ongoing commitments to BEMF and PMW, other recent appearances have included conducting Gluck’s Orfeo in Bilbao, Mozart’s Magic Flute for the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, Handel’s Semele for Opera Omaha, Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie for Juilliard, Mozart’s Il re pastore for the Merola program, and seven productions for Opera UCLA including Cavalli’s Giasone and Handel’s Amadigi. He has conducted Handel’s Messiah with the Seattle, San Francisco, Edmonton, Birmingham, Houston, and Nova Scotia Symphony orchestras. His extensive discography as conductor and solo lutenist includes well over 100 CDs, many of which have received international acclaim and awards.
Gilbert Blin graduated from the Paris Sorbonne with a Master’s degree focusing on Rameau’s operas, an interest that he has broadened to encompass French opera and its relation to Baroque theater, his fields of research as historian, stage director, and designer. He was awarded a Doctorate from Leiden University for a thesis dedicated to his approach to Historically Informed Staging. His début productions include Massenet’s Werther and Delibes’s Lakmé for Paris Opéra-Comique, and Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable for Prague State Opera. Since his production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice for the Drottningholm Theatre in Sweden in 1998, Dr. Blin has established himself as a sought-after opera director for the early repertoire: he directed Vivaldi’s Orlando furioso for the Prague State Opera, designed and staged Vivaldi’s Rosmira fedele, Handel’s Teseo, and Alessandro Scarlatti’s Il Tigrane for Opéra de Nice, and directed Lully’s Thésée and Lully’s Psyché for the Boston Early Music Festival. In 2011, after the staging of Steffani’s Niobe, Regina di Tebe, Gilbert Blin presented Charpentier’s La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers and La Couronne de Fleurs. In 2013, with his production of Handel’s Almira, Gilbert Blin was appointed Opera Director of the Boston Early Music Festival. Following his acclaimed staging and set designs of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea for the 2009 Boston Festival, Dr. Blin staged Monteverdi’s Orfeo for the BEMF Chamber Opera Series in 2012 and the composer’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria in 2015. Other productions for BEMF include Campra’s Le Carnaval de Venise, Steffani’s Orlando generoso, and Francesca Caccini’s Alcina. In 2016, Gilbert Blin created Versailles: Portrait of a Royal Domain, and in 2022, he staged Lully’s Idylle sur la Paix and Charpentier’s La Fête de Rueil. His recent productions include Rameau’s Dardanus for Stockholm, Desmarest’s Circé, Keiser’s Octavia, and Telemann’s Don Quichotte for Boston, and Lampe’s The Dragon of Wantley for Stockholm and Bremen.
Robert Mealy is one of America’s most prominent Baroque violinists. The New York Times remarked that “Mr. Mealy seems to foster excellence wherever he goes, whether as director of the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, concertmaster of the Trinity Baroque Orchestra in New York, or at The Juilliard School, as director of the historical performance program.” While still an undergraduate, he was asked to join the Canadian Baroque orchestra Tafelmusik; after graduation he began performing with Les Arts Florissants. Since then, he has recorded and toured with many ensembles both here and in Europe, and served as concertmaster for Masaaki Suzuki, Nicholas McGegan, Helmuth Rilling,
Paul Agnew, and William Christie, among others. Since 2005 he has led the BEMF Orchestra in their festival performances, tours, and award-winning recordings. In New York, he is principal concertmaster at Trinity Wall Street in their traversal of the complete cantatas of J. S. Bach. He is also co-director of the acclaimed seventeenth-century ensemble Quicksilver. In summers he teaches at the American Baroque Soloists Academy in San Francisco and is often a featured artist at William Christie’s summer festival in Thiré. He made his recital début at Carnegie Hall in 2018. Recent chamber projects have ranged from directing a series of Ars Subtilior programs at The Cloisters in New York to performing the complete Bach violin and harpsichord sonatas at Washington’s Smithsonian Museum. Mr. Mealy has directed the Historical Performance Program at The Juilliard School since 2012, leading his Juilliard students in acclaimed performances both in New York and abroad, including tours to Europe, India, New Zealand, Bolivia, and (most recently) China. Before coming to Juilliard, he taught for many years at Yale and Harvard. In 2004, he received EMA’s Binkley Award for outstanding teaching and scholarship. He still likes to practice.
Dance Director of the Boston Early Music Festival, Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière is a multidisciplinary artist recognized for the originality and vitality of her stage direction and choreography. Trained in both music and dance, she explores the living dialogue between movement and sound, shaping a world where gesture and music breathe as one. A long-time collaborator of the Boston Early Music Festival since 2007, she now serves as its Dance Director, guiding the Festival’s choreographic and visual identity. In parallel, she continues to create original productions for the Festival Montréal Baroque, where her distinctive language of historical dance and imaginative staging transforms early music into a vivid theatrical experience. Her artistic path includes more than forty operas and interdisciplinary productions presented across Canada and abroad, including world premieres such as Juliet Palmer’s The Man Who Married Himself (Toronto Masque Theater) and Paolo Lorenzani’s Nicandro e Fileno (Les Boréades de Montréal). Her staging of Venus and Adonis (Clavecin en Concert) received the Opus Prize for Best Early Music Production, and De la Pavane au Swing was nominated for Best Production in 2023. Regularly invited to international festivals in France, Italy, Switzerland, and Canada, she also leads stage projects for the Festival Baroque de Prangins (Switzerland). A dedicated teacher, she directs opera stage productions and teaches movement and stagecraft to young singers at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, Cégep Saint-Laurent, and Collège Vincent-d’Indy.
Seth Bodie is currently a Boston-based theater maker. He works primarily as a costume designer, with forays into the milieu of wig and makeup design. He has worked on numerous projects as varied as Baroque opera and absurdist clown shows. His work has been called “photogenically eye catching” and “exuberant” by the New York Times. His work for BEMF includes The Dragon of Wantley and Cephale e Procris (costumes), Octavia and Circé (hair and makeup design), and Orlando generoso and Le Carnaval de Venise (stage magic). Seth has an MFA in design from Yale School of Drama.
Zachary Connell is a New York City- and Bostonbased lighting designer and programmer, and a recent BFA graduate from Boston University. After programming last summer’s mainstage production of Octavia with the Boston Early Music Festival, he is thrilled to return as lighting designer for Stellidaura’s Revenge. His design work has been seen at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre in Soft Star and How to NOT Save
the World with Mr. Bezos, as well as at Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse and Luna Stage for Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library. He also served as Associate Lighting Designer for the world premiere of humanINmotion, a collaboration with Yo-EL Cassell and NYC Ballet Lighting Designer Mark Stanley. As a programmer, recent credits include Leopoldstadt, Hadestown (2nd National Tour, Year Two), and Fun Home at The Huntington Theatre. Zachary is passionate about collaborative theater-making and grateful for opportunities to support the creation of new work. More at zacharyconnell.com.
Reviewers describe Jason McStoots as “elegantly amorous” (Parterre) and as having a “strong satiny voice [that] filled the hall with grace and, when called for, humor” (Seattle PostIntelligencer). A respected interpreter of early music, his operatic appearances with BEMF include Sancho Pansa in Telemann’s Don Quichotte, Lepidus in Keiser’s Octavia, Le Jeu in Les Plaisirs de Versailles by Charpentier, and Morpheus in Desmarest’s Circé, among many others, and he recently appeared as Odoardo in Handel’s Ariodante with Boston Baroque. He has appeared in concert with Bach Collegium San Diego, Les Délices, Folger Consort, the North Carolina Symphony, and The Newberry Consort. He is a core member of Blue Heron vocal ensemble and has been Associate Director of the BEMF Young Artists Training Program since 2017 where he provides stage direction and mentorship. Recently, he has taken on more frequent projects as stage director for operas with the Amherst Early Music Festival, Connecticut Early Music Festival, Brandeis University, and Les Délices.
Reed Demangone’s wide variety of interests have led him to collect several titles over his artistic career, including stage director, intimacy coordinator, fight choreographer, fencing instructor, and countertenor. Hailing from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Reed began his musical studies at the College-Conservatory of Music at University of Cincinnati, where he received his Bachelor of Music degree in voice, and was named captain of the UC fencing team. Reed went on to receive his Master of Music in opera from the Schulich School of Music at McGill University, where he simultaneously accepted a position as fencing instructor for the university team. As a director, Reed values making opera accessible and impactful to everyone no matter their experience with opera. When choreographing stage combat, Reed combines his experience in fencing, directing, and performing to create an effective illusion of danger on stage, while always ensuring safety and enjoyment for his actors.
For more than three decades, Kathleen Fay has served as Executive Director of the Boston Early Music Festival. She is responsible for all administrative, development, financial, and artistic departments of the organization, as well as the management of biennial Festivals, the annual concert seasons in Boston and in New York City at the Morgan Library & Museum, the annual Chamber Opera Series, and the Festival’s Baroque Opera Recording Project. The project features a total of nineteen CDs to date on the CPO and Erato labels, seven of which have been nominated for Grammy Awards, and one awarded the Grammy. Ms. Fay is a founding Trustee of the Catalogue for Philanthropy and serves on the boards of the Cambridge Society for Early Music and Constellation Center. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of Harvard University’s Early Music Society. In November 2001, Ms. Fay was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture as a result of her significant contribution to furthering the arts in France and throughout the world. In June 2003, she received the distinguished Arion Award from the Cambridge Society of Early Music for her “outstanding contributions to musical culture.” And, in June 2011, the Board of Directors of Early Music America named the Boston Early Music Festival, Kathleen Fay, Executive Director, as the 2011 recipient of the Howard Mayer Brown Award, for lifetime achievement in the field of early music. The BEMF Board of Directors established the permanent Kathleen Fay Leadership Fund in February 2017, in recognition of her thirty-year anniversary leading BEMF. Ms. Fay is a widely respected impresario and promoter of early music in North America and Europe. She holds graduate degrees in Piano Performance and Music Teaching from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music.
Soprano Hannah De Priest is a fearless performer especially renowned for her “masterful” (Olyrix) performances of Baroque repertoire. Consistently described as a “standout” and praised for her “bright, ideally-focused sound, allied to a probing expressive intelligence” (Chicago Classical Review), the young soprano enjoys a fast-rising career in North America and Europe. Recent highlights include débuts with the Wrocław Baroque Orchestra (Bach’s Johannes-Passion), the Innsbruck Early Music Festival (Gilde, L’amazzone corsara), and her Kennedy Center début with Opera Lafayette (Serpina, La servante maîtresse). Her 2025–2026 season includes débuts with Music of the Baroque, the Seattle Bach Festival, and the Washington Bach Consort, opera productions with Boston Early Music Festival and Ars Lyrica Houston, and a concert tour of Handelian cantatas with Les Délices. Her début solo album Arcadian Dreams will be released in spring 2026. Hannah has earned acclaim at numerous international competitions, winning 2nd Prize at the Cesti Competition for Baroque Opera in 2021.
Tenor Aaron Sheehan is a first-rate interpreter of the works of Bach, Handel, and Mozart. He sang the title role in Boston Early Music Festival’s Grammy Award–winning recording of Charpentier’s opera La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers. He has performed at Tanglewood, Lincoln Center, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Washington National Cathedral, the Early Music Festivals of Boston (BEMF), San Francisco, Vancouver, Washington D.C., Carmel, Regensburg, and the Halle Handel Festival, and with American Bach Soloists, Boston Baroque, Handel and Haydn Society, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Pacific MusicWorks, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and Tafelmusik. His roles with BEMF include L’Amour and Apollon in Lully’s Psyché, the title roles in Charpentier’s Actéon, Monteverdi’s Orfeo, Steffani’s Orlando generoso, and Handel’s Acis and Galatea, Ulisse in Desmarest’s Circé, Demetrius in Graupner’s Antiochus und Stratonica, Moore in Lampe’s The Dragon of Wantley, Orfeo in Campra’s Le Carnaval de Venise, and Eurimaco in Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria
American tenor Richard Pittsinger has been credited with a winning versatility in his singing and stage presence. He has appeared on opera and concert stages in roles including Lurcanio in Handel’s Ariodante with Boston Baroque, Le Convive and Premier Juge in Rameau’s Samson with L’Opéra Comique, Fabius in Keiser’s Octavia with the Boston Early Music Festival, and Purcell’s The Fairy Queen with Vox Luminis, among others. This season Pittsinger has relocated to Paris to partake in the 12th edition and international tour of Le Jardin des Voix, singing the roles of La Peinture and Ixion/Orphée in Charpentier’s Les arts florissants and La descente d’Orphée aux enfers. He looks forward to more concert débuts with Les Arts Florissants, Portland Baroque Orchestra, and Oratorio Society of New York, and return engagements with the Boston Early Music Festival and ARTEK. He holds degrees in voice from The Juilliard School where he studied under Elizabeth Bishop.
Giuseppe Naviglio, born in Bari, studied with Gino Lo Russo-Toma and Rina Filippini Del Monaco, later refining his technique with Maestro Paride Venturi. After débuting in Il barbiere di Siviglia, he was a soloist at the Bonn Opera from 1992 to 1996, performing in over two hundred productions. Since 1996, he has collaborated with Maestro Antonio Florio and the Baroque ensemble Cappella della Pietà de’ Turchini, appearing in major theaters worldwide—from Teatro di San Carlo in Naples to Vienna’s Konzerthaus, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. His repertoire spans from Baroque to contemporary, including works by Rossini, Mozart, Bach, Handel, Stravinsky, and Glass. He has recorded for Opus111, Naïve, and Glossa, earning international acclaim. Professor of Historical Singing at the “Niccolò Piccinni” Conservatory of Bari, he teaches masterclasses across Europe and serves as Artistic Director of the Harmonia Association of the University of Bari.
Mara Riley is a Boston-based soprano and flutist with an affinity for early music, art song, and ensemble singing. This season, she sings the role of Belinda in Errolyn Wallen’s Dido’s Ghost
with Emmanuel Music. She will join the Boston Early Music Festival’s production of Telemann’s Don Quichotte at the Magdeburger TelemannFesttage in Germany. She will also sing with Aeternum in Napa Valley, the Handel and Haydn Society chorus, and will be featured as a soloist on Emmanuel Music’s 55th Bach Cantata Series. She sang last season with the Boston Early Music Festival, Sarasa Ensemble, Colorado Bach Ensemble, Emmanuel Music, Nightingale Vocal Ensemble, and the Boulder Bach Festival. She was a 2024/2025 Voces8 US Scholar and a 2025 Vocal Fellow with Toronto Summer Music. As a Baroque flutist, she has played with Blue Hill Bach, BEMF, and the Handel and Haydn Society (upcoming). Her website is at marariley.com
Described as “supremely communicative,” “a tireless force of musical curiosity, skill, and enthusiasm” and “the one to up the ante” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), Sarah Darling enjoys a varied musical career as a performer, educator, and musical co-conspirator on viola and Baroque violin. Sarah is a member and coartistic director of the self-conducted orchestra A Far Cry, as well as Boston Baroque, Musicians of the Old Post Road, Emmanuel Music, Boston Ballet Orchestra, Les Bostonades, Newton Baroque, The Boston Camerata, Boston Early Music Festival, and the Carmel Bach Festival. Sarah studied at Harvard, Juilliard, Amsterdam, and Freiburg, and received her DMA from New England Conservatory (NEC), working with James Dunham, Karen Tuttle, Nobuko Imai, Wolfram Christ, and Kim Kashkashian. She has recorded for many labels, including three Grammy-nominated discs and a solo album on Naxos. A passionate educator, Sarah serves on the performance faculty of the Longy School of Music, teaching Baroque viola at NEC, and co-directing the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra.
Maxine Eilander has been performing on historical harps throughout Europe and the United States for over three decades. She is the harpist for Pacific MusicWorks and the Boston Early Music Festival. Recordings featuring Maxine as a soloist include Handel’s Harp, released on ATMA, with all of Handel’s obbligato music written for the harp, including his famous harp concerto, which she has also recorded with Tafelmusik (A Baroque Feast, Analekta). The release of William Lawes’s Harp Consorts garnered much favorable press. Other recordings include Sonata al Pizzico, a recording of Italian music for harp and Baroque guitar with duo partner Stephen Stubbs, and Teatro Lirico. In 2012, Maxine performed Handel’s harp concerto at the World Harp Congress in Vancouver. Maxine is adjunct professor of historical harps at the Thornton School of Music, USC, and is a regular guest teacher
at the Historical Performance Department at The Juilliard School. Maxine also teaches students nationwide online. Her website is at maxineeilander.com.
Praised by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as “musically outstanding and visually delightful,” Michelle Humphreys has established herself as a dynamic presence in the early music and modern percussion scenes. Her performance credits include serving as Principal Percussionist with Opera Lafayette and Principal Timpanist with Washington Bach Consort. Humphreys performs with renowned ensembles such as Boston Early Music Festival, Tempesta di Mare, and The Thirteen. She is known for her ability to make “the intent of the music come to life” (Broadway World), whether performing centuries-old compositions or premiering new works. As a recording artist, Michelle can be heard on seven opera recordings for the Naxos label with Opera Lafayette, and has contributed to multiple albums with Tempesta di Mare, including the critically acclaimed Telemann – The Concerti-En-Suite (Chandos, 2019). A dedicated educator, she serves as Associate Professor at Towson University and on the University Pedagogy Committee of the Percussive Arts Society.
Kathryn Montoya appears with a variety of orchestral and chamber music ensembles, including the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Tafelmusik, and Apollo’s Fire. She received her degrees at Oberlin Conservatory and Indiana University School of Music, Bloomington. While at IU she received the prestigious Performer’s Certificate and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Germany. Kathryn teaches historical oboes at Oberlin Conservatory and has been on the faculty of Longy’s International Baroque Institute, the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin, SFEMS workshops, and has given masterclasses in the U.S. and China. She enjoys a varied musical career, performing for the Grammy Award–winning recording of Charpentier’s La Couronne de Fleurs with BEMF and Tony Award–winning production of Twelfth Night and Richard III on Broadway with Shakespeare’s Globe of London. Kathryn can regularly be found in Hereford, England, converting an 18th-century barn into a home with her husband, James.
David Morris has performed across the U.S., Canada, and Europe on Baroque violoncello, viola da gamba, lirone, and bass violin. He has been a continuo player for the Boston Early Music Festival’s opera productions since 2013 and is a member of Quicksilver and the Bertamo Trio. He is a frequent guest performer on the New York State Early Music Association and Pegasus Early Music series and has performed with Tafelmusik, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seattle’s Pacific MusicWorks, and the Mark Morris Dance Group. He has produced operas for the Berkeley Early Music Festival and the SF Early Music Society series and has been a guest instructor in early music performance-practice at
Cornell University, Amherst College, Oberlin College, the University of Colorado at Boulder, UC Berkeley, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has recorded for Harmonia Mundi, New Albion, Dorian, Drag City Records, CBC/Radio-Canada, and New Line Cinema.
Gaia Saetermoe-Howard, praised for her “poignant, pliant sound” (New York Classical Review), performs historical oboes and recorders throughout North America. She was appointed as principal oboe of Tempesta di Mare, the Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra, in 2022. Her recent engagements include performances with Apollo’s Fire, the Handel and Haydn Society, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, and others. An artist-scholar, Gaia is also a PhD student in Historical Musicology at Harvard University and a graduate of The Juilliard School, Eastman School of Music, and the University of Rochester. Gaia maintains a private teaching studio, and has taught in renowned programs like S’Cool Sounds, the Wildwood Institute of Music, and the Juilliard Music Advancement Program.
Michael Sponseller is recognized as one of the outstanding American harpsichordists of his generation. A highly diversified career brings him to festivals and concert venues all around the world in recital, as concerto soloist, partner to several of today’s finest musicians, and as a busy continuo performer on both harpsichord and organ. He studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music with Lisa Goode Crawford with additional studies at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague. He garnered prizes at the International Harpsichord Competitions at Bruges and Montréal (1998, 2001), and 1st Prize at both the American Bach Soloists and Jurow International Harpsichord Competitions. Mr. Sponseller has appeared with America’s finest ensembles and orchestras, including the Boston Early Music Festival, Chamber Society of Lincoln Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Camerata Pacifica, and Pacific MusicWorks. Since 2016, he has been Associate Director of Bach Collegium San Diego. In 2023, he joined the Eastman School of Music as Guest Artist.
The Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble was established in October of 2008, and delighted the public a month later at the inauguration of the Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Opera Series, which débuted in Boston with a production of John Blow’s Venus and Adonis and Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon. The BEMF Chamber Ensemble is an intimate subset of the BEMF Orchestra. Depending upon the size and scale of a project, the BEMF Chamber Ensemble is led by one or both of BEMF’s Artistic Directors, Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, or by BEMF’s Orchestra Director Robert Mealy, and features the best Baroque instrumentalists from around the world. The BEMF Chamber Ensemble’s third CD on the CPO label, the Charpentier opera double bill of La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers and La Couronne de Fleurs, won the Grammy Award in 2015 for Best Opera Recording. Their fifth CD, Steffani’s Duets of Love and Passion, featuring sopranos Amanda Forsythe and Emőke Baráth, tenor Colin Balzer, and bass-baritone Christian Immler, was released in September 2017 in conjunction with a six-city tour of North America, and received a Diapason d’Or. Their sixth CD—of Johann Sebastiani’s 1663 Matthäus Passion—was recorded immediately prior to their presenting a concert of the work at the prestigious Musikfest
Bremen, and was released in February 2018. The seventh CD, a return to Charpentier featuring Les Plaisirs de Versailles and Les Arts Florissants, was nominated for a Grammy in 2019, and the eighth, Lalande’s Les Fontaines de Versailles and Le Concert d’Esculape, was released in September 2020. Their ninth CD, featuring Pergolesi’s La serva padrona and Livietta e Tracollo, was released in December 2023, the tenth, a combination of Lully’s Idylle sur la Paix and Charpentier’s La Fête de Reuil, was released in April 2025, and the eleventh, Marco Marazzoli’s Cantatas of Peace and Pleasure, has just been released.
Play a vital and permanent role in BEMF’s future with a planned gift. Your generous support will create unforgettable musical experiences for years to come and may provide you and your loved ones with considerable tax benefits.
Join the BEMF ORPHEUS SOCIETY by investing in the future of the Boston Early Music Festival through a charitable annuity, bequest, or other planned gift. With many ways to give and to direct your gift, our staff will work together with you and your advisors to create a legacy that is personally meaningful to you.
To learn more about Planned Giving with BEMF, please call us at 617-661-1812, email us at kathy@bemf.org, or visit us online at BEMF.org/plannedgiving/
BEMF’S 2023 PRODUCTION OF DESMAREST’S CIRCÉ
The Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) is universally recognized as a leader in the field of early music. Since its founding in 1980 by leading practitioners of historical performance in the United States and abroad, BEMF has promoted early music through a variety of diverse programs and activities, including an annual concert series that brings early music’s brightest stars to the Boston and New York concert stages, and the biennial weeklong Festival and Exhibition, recognized as “the world’s leading festival of early music” (The Times, London). Through its programs BEMF has earned its place as North America’s premier presenting organization for music of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods and has secured Boston’s reputation as “America’s early music capital” (Boston Globe).
One of BEMF’s main goals is to unearth and present lesser-known Baroque operas performed by the world’s leading musicians armed with the latest information on period singing, orchestral performance, scenic design, costuming, dance, and staging. BEMF operas reproduce the Baroque’s stunning palette of sound by bringing together today’s leading operatic superstars and a wealth of instrumental talent from across the globe to one stage for historic presentations, all zestfully led from the pit by the BEMF Artistic Directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, and creatively reimagined for the stage by BEMF Opera Director Gilbert Blin. Biennial centerpiece productions feature both the Boston Early Music Festival
Orchestra, led by BEMF Orchestra Director Robert Mealy, and the Boston Early Music Festival Dance Company, led by BEMF’s newly appointed Dance Director, MarieNathalie Lacoursière.
The twenty-third biennial Boston Early Music Festival, Love & Power, was held in June 2025 and featured Reinhard Keiser’s 1705 opera Octavia. The twenty-fourth Festival, in June 2027, will have as its centerpiece Georg Philipp Telemann’s 1728 opera Emma und Eginhard.
BEMF introduced its Chamber Opera Series during its annual concert season in November 2008, with a performance of
John Blow’s Venus and Adonis and MarcAntoine Charpentier’s Actéon. The series features the artists of the Boston Early Music Festival Vocal and Chamber Ensembles and focuses on the wealth of chamber operas composed during the Baroque period, while providing an increasing number of local opera aficionados the opportunity to attend one of BEMF’s superb offerings. Subsequent annual productions include George Frideric Handel’s Acis and Galatea, Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, combined performances of Charpentier’s La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers and La Couronne de Fleurs, Monteverdi’s Orfeo, a double bill of Pergolesi’s La serva padrona and Livietta e Tracollo, a production titled “Versailles” featuring Les Plaisirs de Versailles by Charpentier, Les Fontaines de Versailles by Michel-Richard de Lalande, and divertissements from Atys by Jean-Baptiste Lully, Francesca Caccini’s Alcina, the first opera written by a woman, a combination of Telemann’s Pimpinone and Ino, joint performances of Lully’s Idylle sur la Paix and Charpentier’s La Fête de Rueil, John Frederick Lampe’s The Dragon of Wantley, and most recently Telemann’s Don Quichotte. Acis and Galatea was revived and presented on a four-city North American Tour in early 2011, which included a performance at the American Handel Festival in Seattle, and in 2014, BEMF’s second North American Tour featured the Charpentier double bill from 2011. In summer 2025, The Dragon of Wantley was performed at Confidencen in
Stockholm, Sweden, and at Oldenburgisches Staatstheater in Oldenburg, Germany, as part of Musikfest Bremen.
BEMF has a well-established and highly successful project to record some of its groundbreaking work in the field of Baroque opera. The first three recordings in this series were all nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording, in 2005, 2007, and 2008: the 2003 Festival centerpiece Ariadne, by Johann Georg Conradi; Lully’s Thésée; and the 2007 Festival opera, Lully’s Psyché, which was hailed by BBC Music Magazine as “superbly realized…magnificent.” In addition, the BEMF recordings of Lully’s Thésée and Psyché received Gramophone Award Nominations in the Baroque Vocal category in 2008 and 2009, respectively. BEMF’s next three recordings on the German CPO label were drawn from its Chamber Opera Series: Charpentier’s Actéon, Blow’s Venus and Adonis, and a release of Charpentier’s La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers and La Couronne de Fleurs, which won the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording and the 2015 Echo Klassik Opera Recording of the Year (17th/18th Century Opera). Agostino Steffani’s Niobe, Regina di Tebe, featuring Philippe Jaroussky and Karina Gauvin, which was released in January 2015 on the Erato/Warner Classics label in conjunction with a seven-city, four-country European concert tour of the opera, has been nominated for a Grammy Award, was
named Gramophone’s Recording of the Month for March 2015, is the 2015 Echo Klassik World Premiere Recording of the Year, and has received a 2015 Diapason d’Or de l’Année and a 2015 Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. Handel’s Acis and Galatea was released in November 2015. In 2017, while maintaining the focus on Baroque opera, BEMF expanded the recording project to include other select Baroque vocal works: a new Steffani disc, Duets of Love and Passion, was released in September 2017 in conjunction with a sixcity North American tour, and a recording of Johann Sebastiani’s St. Matthew Passion was released in March 2018. Four Baroque opera releases followed in 2019 and 2020: a disc of Charpentier’s chamber operas Les Plaisirs de Versailles and Les Arts Florissants was released at the June 2019 Festival, and has been nominated for a Grammy Award; the 2013 Festival opera, Handel’s Almira, was released in late 2019, and received a Diapason d’Or. Lalande’s chamber opera Les Fontaines de Versailles was featured on a September 2020 release of the composer’s works; Christoph Graupner’s opera Antiochus und Stratonica was released in December 2020. BEMF’s recording of Desmarest’s Circé, the 2023 Festival opera, was released concurrently with the opera’s North American premiere, Pergolesi’s La serva padrona and Livietta e Tracollo was released in December 2023, Telemann’s Ino and opera arias for soprano featuring Amanda Forsythe, was released in October 2024 and has been nominated for a Grammy, Lully’s Idylle sur la Paix and Charpentier’s La Fête de Reuil was released in May 2025, and the newest recording, Marazzoli’s Cantatas of Peace and Pleasure, was released in October 2025.
Some of the most thrilling musical moments at the biennial Festival occur during one of the dozen or more concerts presented around the clock, among them a program by
the acclaimed Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, which often feature unique, once-in-a-lifetime collaborations and programs by the spectacular array of talent assembled for the Festival week’s events. In 1989, BEMF established an annual concert series bringing early music’s leading soloists and ensembles to the Boston concert stage to meet the growing demand for regular worldclass performances of early music’s beloved classics and newly discovered works. BEMF then expanded its concert series in 2006, when it extended its performances to New York City’s Gilder Lehrman Hall at the Morgan Library & Museum, providing “a shot in the arm for New York’s relatively modest early-music scene” (New York Times).
The nerve center of the biennial Festival, the Exhibition is the largest event of its kind in the United States, showcasing nearly one hundred early instrument makers, music publishers, service organizations, schools and universities, and associated colleagues. In 2013, Mozart’s own violin and viola were displayed at the Exhibition, in their firstever visit to the United States. Every other June, hundreds of professional musicians, students, and enthusiasts come from around the world to purchase instruments, restock their libraries, learn about recent musicological developments, and renew old friendships. For four days, they visit the Exhibition booths to browse, discover, and purchase, and attend the dozens of symposia, masterclasses, and demonstration recitals, all of which encourage a deeper appreciation of early music, and strengthen relationships between musicians, participants, and audiences. n
Revenue from ticket sales, even from a sold-out performance, accounts for less than half of the total cost of producing BEMF’s operas and concerts; the remainder is derived almost entirely from generous friends like you. With your help, we will be able to build upon the triumphs of the past, and continue to bring you thrilling performances by today’s finest Early Music artists.
Our membership organization, the FRIENDS OF THE BOSTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL, includes donors from around the world. These individuals recognize the Festival’s need for further financial support in order to fulfill its aim of serving as a showcase for the finest talent in the field.
PLEASE JOIN THE FRIENDS OF THE BOSTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL BY DONATING AT ONE OF SEVERAL LEVELS:
•
•
•
THREE WAYS TO GIVE:
• Visit BEMF.org and click on “Give Now”.
• Call BEMF at 617-661-1812 to donate by telephone using your credit card
• Mail your credit card information or a check (payable to BEMF) to Boston Early Music Festival, 43 Thorndike Street, Suite 302, Cambridge, MA 02141-1764
• Increase your philanthropic impact with a Matching Gift from your employer.
• Make a gift of appreciated stocks or bonds to BEMF.
• Planned Giving allows you to support BEMF in perpetuity while achieving your financial goals.
• Direct your gift to a particular area that interests you with a Named Gift
QUESTIONS? Please e-mail Kathleen Fay at KATHY@BEMF.ORG, or call the BEMF office at 617-661-1812. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
This list reflects donations received from April 1, 2024 to November 7, 2025
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Barbara R. Bishop
James Bowman
Sally & Charlie Boynton
C. Anthony Broh & Jennifer L. Hochschild
Jane K. Brown
Robert Burger
Deborah & Richard Burke
Derek Campbell
Anne Chalmers† & Holly Gunner
Mary Chamberlain
Peter Charig & Amy Briemer
JoAnne Chernow
Carol & Alex Collier
Linzee Coolidge
Gray F. Crouse
Tekla Cunningham & David Sawyer
William Depeter
Michael DiSabatino, in honor of Nancy Olson
Kathryn Disney
Ellen Dokton & Stephen Schmidt
Charles & Sheila Donahue
The Rev’d Richard Fabian
Deborah Fegan
Mary Fillman & Mary Otis Stevens
Dr. Patrick J. Fox, in honor of Nancy Olson
Fred Franklin, in memory of Kaaren Grimstad
Elizabeth French
Jonathan Friedes & Qian Huang
Fred & Barbara Gable
Sandy Gadsby & Nancy Brown
Barbara Gauditz
Tom Golden
The Graver Family
Thomas H. & Lori B. Griswold
Laury Gutierrez & Elsa Gelin
Eric Haas, in memory of Janet Haas
Eric & Dee Hansen
Deborah Haraldson
Joan E. Hartman
Diane Hellens
Catherine & John Henn
Phyllis Hoffman
David Hoglund
Charles Bowditch Hunter
Chris & Klavs Jensen
Karen Johansen & Gardner Hendrie
Robin Johnson
Patrick G. Jordan
David P. Kiaunis
George Kocur
Christopher Larossa
Frederick V. Lawrence, in memory of Rosemarie Maag Lawrence
Jasper Lawson
Susan Lewinnek
Mary Maarbjerg
Dr. Bruce C. MacIntyre
Marietta Marchitelli
Anne H. Matthews
June Matthews
Donna McCampbell
Ray Mitzel
Andrew Modest & Beth Arndtsen
Agatha Morrell
Gene Murrow
Debra Nagy, in honor of Kathy Fay
Michael J. Normile
Eugene Papa
Jane P. Papa
Henry Paulus
David & Beth Pendery
Joseph L. Pennacchio
Phillip Petree
Bici Pettit-Barron
Stephen Poteet
Anne & François Poulet
Lawrence Pratt & Rosalind Forber
Julia M. Reade & Robert A. Duncan
David Rehm
Marge Roberts
Michael Rogan & Hugh Wilburn
Sherry & William Rogers
Ellen Rosand
Rusty Russell, in memory of Alan Durfee
Richard L. Schmeidler
David Schneider & Klára Móricz
Clem Schoenebeck, in memory of Bill Schoenebeck
Maria Schreiber
Alison M. Scott
Miriam N. Seltzer
Mr. Terry Shea & Dr. Seigo Nakao
Michael Sherer
Mark Slotkin
Jeffrey Soucy
Ann Stewart
Ronald W. Stoia
Victoria Sujata
Jonathan Swartz
Tim & Ann Szczesuil
Ken & Margo Taylor
Mark S. Thurber & Susan M. Galli
John & Dorothy Truman
Elizabeth Trumpler, in memory of Donald Trumpler
Peter & Kathleen Van Demark
Robert & Therese Wagenknecht
Beverly Woodward & Paul Monsky
J. Yavarkovsky & C. Lowe
The Zucker Family
($100 or more)
Anonymous (15)
Joseph Aieta III
Joanne Algarin
Karen Atkinson
Neil R. Ayer, Jr. & Linda Ayer
Judith Bairstow
Eric & Rebecca Bank
Dr. David Barnert & Julie Raskin
Rev. & Mrs. Joseph Bassett
Alan Bates & Michele Mandrioli
Alan Benenfeld
Susan Benua
John Birks
Sarah Bixler & Christopher Tonkin
Dan Bloomberg & Irene Beardsley
Wes Bockley & Amy Markus
Deborah Boldin & Gabriel Rice
Claire Bonfilio
Richard Borts & Paulette York
Sibel Bozdogan
James Bradley
David Breitman & Kathryn Stuart
Joel Bresler
Andrew Brethauer
Derick & Jennifer Brinkerhoff
David C. Brown
David L. Brown
Lawrence Brown
David & Barbara Burke, in memory of
Carroll Ann Sheridan Bottino
John H. Burkhalter III
Judi Burten in memory of Phoebe Larkey
Alice Butler
Joseph Cantey
Verne & Madeline Caviness
Floyd & Aleeta Christian
Robert B. Christian
Daniel Church & Roger Cuevas
John K. Clark & Judith M. Stoughton
Alan Clayton-Matthews
Derek Cottier & Lauren Tilly
Robert B. Crane
Francine Crawford
Donna Cubit-Swoyer
James Cyphers
Ruta Daugela
Carl & May Daw, in memory of Ned Kellogg
Leigh Deacon
Alison Desimone
Jim Diamond
Forrest Dillon
Paul Doerr
Duane R. Downey
Diane L. Droste
John Dunton & Carol McKeen
Peter A. Durfee & Peter G. Manson
Michael Durgin, in memory of Lisle Kulbach
Jane Edwards
Mark Elenko
Thomas Engel
David English
Chuck Epstein & Melissa Bensussen
Seth Estrin
Lila M. Farrar
Marilyn Farwell
Gregg & Abby Wolf Feigelson
Annette Fern
Mary B. Findley
Janet G. Fink
Carol L. Fishman
Dr. Jonathan Florman
Howard C. Floyd
Frederick S. Frank
Gary Freeman
Robert Freeman
R. Andrew Garthwaite
George & Marla Gearhart
Gisela & Ronald Geiger
Stephen L. Gencarello
Monica & David Gerber
The Goldsmith Family
Lisa Goldstein
Nancy L. Graham
Winifred Gray
Judith Green & James Kurtz
Mary Greer
Janet Grogan
Deborah Grose
John Gruver & Lynn Tilley
Peter F. Gustafson
Sonia Guterman, in memory of Martin Guterman
Quang Ha
Peter Hainer
Tunie Hamlen
Suzanne & Easley Hamner
Joyce Hannan
Jasjit & Donald L. Heckathorn
Karin Hemmingsen
Katherine A. Hesse
Patricia G. Hoffman
Valerie Horst & Benjamin Peck
Judith & Alan Hudson
Keith L. & Catherine B. Hughes
Joe Hunter & Esther Schlorholtz
Francesco Iachello
Willemien Insinger
Susan L. Jackson
Michele Jerison
Mary Parke Johnson
Judith L. Johnston & Bruce L. Bush
Lucy Johnston
David K. Jordan
George Kaminsky
David Keating
Patricia Keating
Thomas Keirstead
Mr. & Mrs. Seamus C. Kelly
Louis & Susan Kern
Joseph J. Kesselman, Jr.
David & Alice Kidder
Maryanne King
Pat Kline
Valerie & Karl KnicKrehm
Ellen Kranzer
Benjamin Krepp & Virginia Webb
Robert W. Kruszyna
Jay Carlton Kuhn, Jr.
Claire Laporte
Bruce Larkin & Donna Jarlenski
David A. Leach & Laurie J. LaChapelle
William Lebow
Ellen R. Lewis
Robert & Janice Locke
Laura Loehr
John Longstreth
William Loutrel & Thomas Fynan
Sandra & David Lyons
Desmarest Lloyd MacDonald, in memory of Ned Kellogg
Mary Mackay & Edward Wheatley, in memory of Carroll Ann Sheridan Bottino
Anna Mansbridge
Robert Marshall
Peter Martin
Barbara Mauer
Sally Mayer
Mary McCallum
Anne McCants
Lee McClelland
Heidi & George McEvoy
George McKee
Dave & Jeannette McLellan
Cynthia Merritt
Susan Metz, in memory of Gerald Metz
Marg Miller
Deborah Mintz
Nicolas Minutillo
Stephanie Moritz
Rodney & Barbara Myrvaagnes
David Nadvorney
Amelia Nagoski
Jennie Needleman
Cindy Hannig Neels
Avi Nelson
Arthur & Charlotte Ness, in memory of Ingolf Dahl
Gerald & Carol Neuman
Nancy Nicholson
Jeffrey Nicolich
Caroline Niemira
Leslie Nyman
Kathleen O’Dea Kelly
Clara M. & John S. O’Shea
David & Claire Oxtoby
Gene & Cheryl Pace
William Packard
Valerie Palms
John R. Palys
Theodore Parent, in memory of Ruth Parent
Susan B. Patrick
John Percy
John Petrowsky
Andrea Phan
Elizabeth V. Phillips
Susan Porter & Robert Kauffman
Helen Powell
Thomas Prescott
Klaus & Andrea Radebold
George Raff
Rodney J. Regier
Susan Reutter-Harrah
Douglas Riis
Sue Robinson
Paul Rosenberg & Harriet Moss
Sara Rubin & David Montanari
Charlotte Rutherfurd
Paul Rutz
Cheryl K. Ryder
Gregory Salzman
Robert & Barbara Schneider
R. Scholz & M. Kempers
Fred Schulze
Michael Schwartz
David Sears
Jean Seiler
Aaron Sheehan & Adam Pearl
Kathy Sherrick
Hana Sittler
John & Carolyn Skelton
Jacob & Lisa Skowronek
Elliott Smith & Wendy Gilmore
David Snead & Kate Prescott
Jon Solins & Mary Peterson
Scott Sprinzen
Scott Stansbury
Esther & Daniel Steinhauer
Steve Stelovich
Francine Stieglitz
John Strasswimmer
Barbara Strizhak, in memory of Elliott Strizhak
Richard Stumpf
Jacek & Margaret Sulanowski
Jeffrey & Boryana Tacconi
Richard Tarrant
John & Barbara Tatum
Michael Thompson
Edward P. Todd
Pierre Trepagnier & Louise Mundinger
Carol Tsang
Ruth W. Tucker
Konstantin & Kirsten Tyurin
Richard Urena
Nancy E. Van Baak, in memory of Edward B. Kellogg
Stephen Wallace
Sonia Wallenberg
Susan Walters
Thomas & LeRose Weikert
The Westner Family
Juanita H. Wetherell
The Rev. Roger B. White, in memory of Joseph P. Hough
Sarah Whittaker
Susan & Thomas Wilkes
David L. Williamson
John Wolff & Helen Berger
Susan Wyatt
David Yutzler
Ros & Andy Zimmerman, in memory of Carroll Ann Sheridan
Lawrence Zukof & Pamela Carley
† deceased
Anonymous (2)
Aequa Foundation
American Endowment Foundation
Appleby Charitable Foundation
Applied Technology Investors
BNY Mellon Charitable Gift Fund
Bank of America Charitable Gift Fund
The Barrington Foundation, Inc.
The Bel-Ami Foundation
The Boston Foundation
Boston Private Bank & Trust Company
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Inc.
Gregory E. Bulger Foundation
Burns & Levinson LLP
The Catherine and Paul Buttenwieser Foundation
Cabot Family Charitable Trust
Cambridge Community Foundation
Cambridge Trust Company
Cedar Tree Foundation
Cembaloworks of Washington
City of Cambridge
The Columbus Foundation
Combined Jewish Philanthropies
Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts
Connecticut Community Foundation
Constellation Charitable Foundation
The Fannie Cox Foundation
The Crawford Foundation
CRB Classical 99.5, a GBH station
Daffy Charitable Fund
The Dusky Fund at Essex County Community Foundation
Eastern Bank Charitable Foundation
Fidelity Charitable
Fiduciary Trust Charitable
French Cultural Center / Alliance Française of Boston
Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation
GlaxoSmithKline Foundation
Goethe-Institut Boston
The Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund
The Florence Gould Foundation
GTC Law Group
Haber Family Charitable Foundation
Hausman Family Charitable Trust
The High Meadow Foundation
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The Isaacson-Draper Foundation
The Richard and Natalie Jacoff Foundation, Inc.
Jewish Communal Fund
Key Biscayne Community Foundation
Konstantin Family Foundation
Maine Community Foundation
Makromed, Inc.
Massachusetts Cultural Council
Mastwood Foundation
MLE Foundation, Inc.
Morgan Stanley
National Endowment for the Arts
Newstead Foundation
Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation
The Packard Humanities Institute
Plimpton-Shattuck Fund at The Boston Foundation
The Mattina R. Proctor Foundation
REALOGY Corporation
Renaissance Charitable
The Saffeir Family Fund of the Maine Community Foundation
David Schneider & Klára Móricz Fund at Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts
Schwab Charitable
Schwalbe & Partners, Inc.
Scofield Auctions, Inc.
The Seattle Foundation
Shalon Fund
Kathy & Alexander Silbiger Fund of the Triangle Community Foundation
TIAA Charitable Giving Fund Program
The Trust for Mutual Understanding
The Tzedekah Fund at Combined Jewish Philanthropies
The Upland Farm Fund
U.S. Small Business Administration
U.S. Trust/Bank of America
Private Wealth Management
Vanguard Charitable
Walker Family Trust at Fidelity Charitable
Archie D. & Bertha H. Walker Foundation
Marian M. Warden Fund of The Foundation for Enhancing Communities
The Windover Foundation
Women On The Move LLC
21st Century Fox
Allegro MicroSystems
Amazon Smile
AmFam
Analog Devices
Aspect Global
Automatic Data Processing, Inc.
Biogen
Carrier Global
Dell, Inc.
Exelon Foundation
FleetBoston Financial Corporation
Genentech, Inc.
Grantham, Mayo, van Otterloo & Co. LLC
John Hancock Financial Services, Inc.
Community Gifts Through Harvard University
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
IBM Corporation
Intel Foundation
Investment Technology Group, Inc. (ITG)
Microsoft Corporation
Natixis Global Asset Management
Novartis US Foundation
NVIDIA
Pfizer
Pitney Bowes
Salesforce.org
Silicon Valley Community Foundation
Takeda
Tetra Tech
United Technologies Corporation
Verizon Foundation
Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Xerox Foundation
Two
PAUL O’DETTE & STEPHEN STUBBS , Artistic Directors
2026 GRAMMY NOMINEE BEST CLASSICAL SOLO VOCAL ALBUM
“Exceptional stylish elegance and theatrical vitality.” —GRAMOPHONE
“Perfect Telemann recording.” —CLASSICS TODAY “Forsythe handles this music with grace and ease.” —FANFARE
