
Curtis Opera Theatre to Open Season with ‘Comet/Poppea’
By Francisco SalazarCurtis Opera Theatre is set to launch its 2024–25 centennial series with the East Coast premiere of “The Comet / Poppea” at Philadelphia’s historic 23rd Street Armory.
The performances will be held on Nov. 1, 2 & 3, 2024, and features MacArthur Award-winning composer George Lewis’ and librettist Douglas Kearney’s wildly inventive operatic setting of Pan-Africanist civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1920 science fiction short story, “The Comet,” juxtaposed with Claudio Monteverdi’s “L’incoronazione di Poppea.”
The production is directed by Yuval Sharon and stars rising young stars of the Curtis Opera Theatre, alongside original cast members bass-baritone Cedric Berry, soprano Joelle Lamarre, and mezzo-soprano Amanda Lynn Bottoms.
The cast will be joined by members of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia musicians theorbist Theodore Creek and gambist Gretchen Gettes, and Reese Revak at the harpsichord, under the baton of conductor Marc Lowenstein.
In a statement, Sharon said, “’The Comet / Poppea’ explores exclusion in classical music by creating an uneasy tessellation between the Baroque and the contemporary, and by enacting the experience of double consciousness.”
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