Organization

Boston Early Music Festival

Choreographer

Melinda Sullivan

Costume designer

Anna Watkins

Executive producer

Kathleen Fay

Singer

Shannon Mercer

Alcina

Colin Balzer

Ruggiero

Kelsey Lauritano

Melissa

Conductor

Paul O'Dette

Stephen Stubbs

Stage director

Gilbert Blin

Concertmaster

Robert Mealy

Others

Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble

Boston Early Music Festival Vocal Ensemble

La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina -  (The Liberation of Ruggiero from the Island of Alcina)

New York City

United States

The Morgan Library and Museum

Gilder Lehrman Hall

Boston

NEC Jordan Hall

Public

The Liberation of Ruggiero from the Island of Alcina

Approved

Go behind the scenes with the GRAMMY Award-winning BEMF Chamber Opera Series and our new production of the first opera by a woman composer, Francesca Caccini...

Alcina (+1 More)

Since 2008, the Boston Early Music Festival has has taken the internationally acclaimed musicianship, scholarship, and direction showcased in BEMF’s fully staged Festival operas and focused it on small-scale works in intimate productions on Thanksgiving weekend with the BEMF Chamber Opera Series. Go inside the rehearsal studio for Francesca Caccini's Alcina and learn what makes these stagings so  much more than "semi-staged".

What is the BEMF Chamber Opera Series?

A contemporary of Monteverdi and a colleague of Galileo, Francesca Caccini came of age in Florence during the earliest years of opera as an art form. Both a composer and a performer, she was one of the most important musical figures at the Medici court during the regency of Christina of Lorraine and her daughter-in-law Maria Maddalena. In 1625, amid this time of female leadership, she created the first opera by a woman composer, La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina.

Alcina is a brilliant entertainment, full of wit, magic, and drama, with a demanding title role first sung by the composer herself. At the center of a struggle of illusion and destiny, the sorceress Alcina stands between the valiant magician Melissa and her quest to save the warrior Ruggiero and liberate the captives who Alcina has transformed into plants and trees to ornament her island.

GRAMMY Award-winning Musical Directors Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs and Stage Director Gilbert Blin lead a gorgeous production joined by Concertmaster Robert Mealy, Choreographer Melinda Sullivan, Costume Designer Anna Watkins, and the all-star singers and instrumentalists of the BEMF Vocal & Chamber Ensembles.

English

The Liberation of Ruggiero from the Island of Alcina by Caccini, From (2018/2018), Directed by Gilbert Blin,, Conductor Paul O'Dette, Stephen Stubbs, NEC Jordan Hall, Boston, United States

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Ensemble

Program, About & Synopsis

Videos

Photos

Further reading

Performance Dates & Venues

Venues