Opera Philadelphia Unveils Scaled-Back O23 Festival and Previews Its 50th Anniversary Season

Opera Philadelphia on Tuesday revealed the artists and repertoire for its 2023-24 season, along with early details of the following year, as the company works to regain momentum lost during the pandemic.

The fall O Festival has anchored the company's programming for several years. After a scaled-back edition in 2022, the newly announced plans restore some of that ambition, though not all of it. At its peak the festival offered seven main productions; general director and president David B. Devan said three now seems "the right amount." "We're in a different place than we foresaw before the pandemic, but we're still O-ing," he said, adding that the festival has been resized to match what the company sees as emerging supply and demand.

O23 opens in September with the world premiere of 10 Days in a Madhouse, by composer Rene Orth and librettist Hannah Moscovitch. The work draws on the story of journalist Nellie Bly, who in 1887 posed as a patient in an asylum to report on conditions inside. Daniela Candillari will conduct.

The festival also includes Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, in a production from Belgium's Opéra Royal de Wallonie. Baritone Quinn Kelsey sings the Doge of Genoa and soprano Ana María Martínez performs Amelia, with Corrado Rovaris on the podium. A third festival offering, Unholy Wars, features tenor Karim Sulayman, who combines music by George Frideric Handel, Claudio Monteverdi and contemporary composer Mary Kouyoumdjian to tell the story of the crusades from a contemporary Arab American perspective. The piece uses live performers, choreography, video projections and animation.

Outside the festival, the company will stage The Anonymous Lover by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, in February 2024 at the Academy of Music. It is the only surviving opera by the composer, whose music has been revived in recent years. Bologne was born in 1745 in Guadeloupe to a Black enslaved woman and her French enslaver.

The season concludes in April and May of 2024 with Puccini's Madame Butterfly, directed by Toronto-based Aria Umezawa and conducted by Rovaris. The production adds new elements intended to tell the story through a more authentic lens of Japanese culture.

Opera Philadelphia also offered a glimpse of its 50th anniversary season. O24 will include the U.S. premiere of the psychological thriller The Listeners, by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, and the world premiere of Woman with Eyes Closed, by composer Jennifer Higdon and librettist Jerre Dye.

The pandemic cut into attendance. In 2019, the company sold just over 12,000 tickets to its O19 festival, while last fall's O22 drew 6,970 ticket buyers. For O23, the company plans a few more performances and larger venues than it used for O22.

Devan said that while many in the industry describe a slow return of audiences, "we are pretty convinced the return is complete — that the people that wanted to come back came back." He noted that buying habits remain a moving target after the pandemic and that he can describe who attended last fall and last month and what they wanted to hear. "Ask me next month, I'll have a different answer," he said.

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