Glimmerglass Festival

The Festival invites you to immerse yourself in myth, mystery, and adventure as the repertory for the 2024 season explores the connection between identity and illusion.

Festival Schedule:

1:00pm: La Calisto

The 2024 production of Cavalli’s La Calisto features Artistic & General Director Rob Ainsley’s 2013 realization of the score, expanding Cavalli’s continuo and strings with original parts for winds and brass. Comedy and pathos, gods and mortals, and a few rutting satyrs for good measure—this sparkling early opera, which weaves together two myths of transformation, has it all. Written at the midpoint of Cavalli’s career, La Calisto was conceived to deliver maximum entertainment to its discerning Venetian public, resulting in a hilarious caper full of mistaken identities, raunchy trysts, and celestial magic. This bold take will be conducted by Ainsley, directed by Mo Zhou, and choreographed by Eric Sean Fogel.

MUSIC | Francesco Cavalli
LIBRETTO | Giovanni Faustini
SUNG IN | Italian
PROJECTED TEXT | English
RUN TIME | 2 hours and 25 minutes

CONDUCTOR | Rob Ainsley
DIRECTOR | Mo Zhou
CHOREOGRAPHER | Eric Sean Fogel
SET DESIGNER | Charlie Corcoran
COSTUME DESIGNER | Carlos Soto
LIGHTING DESIGNER | Amith Chandrashaker
HAIR & MAKEUP DESIGNER | Tom Watson

5:30 pm: Festival Dinners

Enjoy dinner, drinks, and conversation with friends and artists from the 2024 Festival. The Horned Dorset will cater all Festival Dinners. Menus available in the spring; vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options always available.

Tickets: $75 per person

7:30pm: Elizabeth Cree

Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell’s modern masterpiece Elizabeth Cree rounds out the season’s mainstage roster in a new production directed by Alison Moritz, starring 2024 Artist-in-Residence Tara Erraught. Set in London in the 1880s, this highly suspenseful and theatrical opera interweaves several narratives: the trial of the titular heroine for the poisoning of her husband; a series of brutal murders committed by a Jack the Ripper-style killer; the spirited world of an English music hall; and, finally, some “guest appearances” by luminaries from the Victorian Age. Elizabeth Cree is a work that combines the factual with the fictive and the historical with the imaginary. Initially written for a small chamber ensemble, Elizabeth Cree will be performed with an expanded string complement at Glimmerglass.

MUSIC | Kevin Puts
LIBRETTO | Mark Campbell
SUNG IN | English
PROJECTED TEXT | English
RUN TIME | 1 hour 40 minutes (no intermission)

CONDUCTOR | Kelly Kuo
DIRECTOR | Alison Moritz
SET DESIGNER | Edward Morris
COSTUME DESIGNER | Amanda Seymour
LIGHTING DESIGNER | Kate Ashton
HAIR & MAKEUP DESIGNER | Tom Watson