For Les Délices’ 2020-21 Season, entitled Embracing Change, we have partnered with Cleveland-based artist Lori Kella to create a bespoke suite of images to accompany the programs. At once dramatic and serene, hopeful and uncanny, Kella’s work evokes the complex emotions of the pandemic era, and represents, for us, an emergence from a period of mourning into the glow of...
News & Reviews, SalonEra / 26.06.2020
SALONERA DEBUTS AUGUST 24
Having recently released the concert series details for its all-virtual 2020-21 season entitled Embracing Change, Les Délices is pleased to announce a second, concurrent series called SalonEra; a live-streamed early music-focused variety show designed as a salon experience for the 21st century. SalonEra will debut on Monday August 24 at 7:30pm and will be available for viewing on YouTube, and on...
EMBRACING CHANGE New realities and an uncertain future demand innovation. Join us as we REIMAGINE the concert experience DISCOVER the delights Tune in from ANYWHERE ABOUT OUR ALL-VIRTUAL CONCERT SERIES Virtual concert hall optimized for an engaging experience High-quality immersive audio 60-minute concerts complete with on-screen titles, “notes” on the program, artist interviews, and behind-the scenes footage The Concert Series’ 60-minute performances will premiere on Thursday...
Originally scheduled for an April 2020 premiere, The White Cat most ambitious project to date: a large-scale collaboration intended for theatrical performance that would immerse audiences in a fantastical world of Baroque music, dance, puppetry and projected visuals. Though we are truly excited about Les Délices 2020-21 programs, we sadly must accept that the current climate simply will not allow us...
On Saturday evening, March 7 at Lakewood Congregational Church, soprano Hélène Brunet joined Debra Nagy (oboe), Mélisande Corriveau (viola da gamba), and Eric Milnes (harpsichord) in new pairings of French Baroque arias with 20th-century love laments. This is a radical idea that can work superbly, since the theme of unrequited love is universal and knows no temporal boundaries. But you need...
News & Reviews, The White Cat / 25.02.2020
The White Cat: What will we hear?
This April, Les Délices Artistic Debra Nagy has assembled a fabulous creative team to create a new musical entertainment based on 17th & 18th century sources. Every element - from the 17th century fairytale, to set pieces, ornament, and visual projections - takes some inspiration from the Baroque era. The newly-created score is no exception! In music, a pasticcio or...
Artists, News & Reviews, The White Cat / 25.02.2020
Creating the White Cat: Interview with Puppet Designer Ian Petroni
Well-known for his collaborative work for the Cleveland Museum of Art’s annual Parade the Circle, Cleveland-based designer-builder Ian Petroni excels at building sculptural, site-specific sets and props that solve unique problems. Ian will conceive and create the sets and puppets for Into the Labyrinth and The White Cat, for which he will use different styles of puppetry – ranging from...
News & Reviews, The White Cat / 25.02.2020
Creating the White Cat: Interview with director Jason McStoots
Tenor Jason McStoots is a beloved, long-time collaborator who will not only perform the character of The Prince in Les Délices' upcoming productions of Into the Labyrinth and The White Cat, but will also serve as Stage Director. In addition to his performing career, McStoots is an experienced stage director and dedicated educator. He has stage directed operas with the Connecticut...
Artists, News & Reviews, The White Cat / 25.02.2020
Creating the White Cat: Interview with librettist Larry Rosenwald
Les Délices' Artistic Director Debra Nagy commissioned Larry Rosenwald to write the libretto for The White Cat. Having decided early on that everyone – from age 5 to 95 – should understand everything that was going on without supertitles or translations, Nagy knew that meant commissioning poetry in English to be set to 18th century music. She couldn't think of...
News & Reviews, The White Cat / 24.02.2020
The White Cat – What’s it about?
This April, Les Délices and a team of fabulous collaborators will create The White Cat, a fairytale-based opera inspired by Baroque entertainments and based on the story by 17th-century author Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy. Who is d'Aulnoy and what is The White Cat about? Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy In the world of fairytales, d'Aulnoy is probably the most important writer you've never heard of. She literally invented the...