Fri 5/16-Sun 5/25
The Cleveland Orchestra’s Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival, an annual spring event founded in 2023, is back, with a plethora of special programming at Severance Music Center and partner venues across the area, including film screenings, discussions, forums, art exhibits and performances. This year’s theme is Reconciliation.
The centerpiece opera this year is Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa, with performances May17, 22 and 25, conducted by the orchestra’s music director Franz Welser-Möst and featuring vocalist Latonia Moore and Nina Stemme. It’s a complicated story that involves all the good stuff of opera: tangled relationships, deception, rage, betrayal, revenge, infanticide, and ultimately, reconciliation.
It kicks off on Friday May 16 with a morning symposium on immigration and reconciliation at Severance Music Center in collaboration with CCWA and Global Cleveland. That evening at Severance, five storytellers will share their stories in The Moth Mainstage. The next nine days are packed with events. Standouts include Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés and his band the Royal Quartet at Severance Hall Sunday May 18, co-presented with Tri-C JazzFest and a solo performance on Monday May 19 by pianist Michelle Cann (also at Severance Hall), honoring Chicago’s Black Renaissance with music by groundbreaking Black women composers, punctuated with Cann’s storytelling.
Get information about all the festival events here.