Thu 5/11 @ 7:30PM
Sat 5/13 @ 2-4PM
Sat 5/13 @ 7:30PM
Sun 5/14 @ 3PM
This evening, the Cleveland Orchestra officially kicks off its first Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival: The American Dream, which runs through Saturday May 20. It includes an opera, an orchestra concert, education concerts, discussions, films, poetry readings, talks and other events, many of which are free.
“The festival is devoted to the examination, exploration and changing promise of the American Dream,” they say. “The American Dream festival will aspire to engage conversation from different perspectives including: What is the relevance of the American Dream today? What does it mean to the Greater Cleveland community?”
The event kicks off on Thursday May 11 at Severance Music Center with a unique program called Fragments, created and performed by Alisa Weilerstein, a Cleveland-raised cellist who has gone on to a thriving international concert career. Her multi-year project incorporates 27 newly commissioned works by contemporary composers with Bach’s six suites for solo cello. In this concert, she’ll perform some of these new works integrated into Bach’s first cello suite, accompanied by lighting, scenic and costuming elements. Weilerstein and her production team will also host a post-concert discussion. Get tickets here.
On Saturday May 13 at Severance Music Center, United in Song! A Free Community Choral Celebration, hosted by Orlando Watson, will feature voices from the Humbly Submitted Gospel Chorus, Andy Andino and Voces Hispanas, the Tri-C Vocal Arts Academy, the Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus, and Jimmy Olulami and Choir Africa in a free concert. No tickets or reservations are needed.
That evening at 7:30pm author/journalist Isabel Wilkerson will present the festival’s keynote talk, moderated by the City Club’s Dan Moulthrop, at Severance Music Center. The program will also include three pieces written by Black composers from different eras: the second movement from String Quartet in G Minor by Florence Price (1887-1953); selections from Blue Dialogues by Cleveland-based composer/pianist/ educator Dolores White who died in March at the age of 90; and the first movement from Warmth from Other Suns by 37-year-old Carlos Simon, inspired by Wilkerson’s 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.
A small ensemble of musicians from the Orchestra will perform including violinists Wei-Fang Gu, Isabel Trautwein and Jeffrey Zehngut; violist Eliesha Nelson; and cellist David Alan Harrell. Wilkerson will also do a book signing following the event. Go here for tickets and more info.
Finally, on Sunday May 14 @ 3PM, the Orchestra will present the first of three performances of Giacomo Puccini’s opera The Girl of the Golden West. (They also perform it on Wednesday May 17 and Sunday May 20 @ 7:30pm.) Music director Franz Welser-Möst conducts the production of the three-act opera, which debuted in 1910 to mixed reaction: many found the idea of an opera in Italian dealing with the gold rush of the mid 1800s in the American west to be somewhat incongruous. The May 14 concert will feature a post-performance discussion with Welser-Möst.
For lots more information and tickets go here.
clevelandorchestra/festivals/opera-and-humanities-festival/
Cleveland, OH 44106