The Teatro Nuovo has announced its 2025 Bel Canto Festival.

Verdi’s “Macbeth” will be presented in its original 1847 version. The production will star Ricardo José Rivera, Alexandra Loutsion, and Martin Luther Clark. Jakob Lehmann conducts and directors.

Performance Dates: July 19, 2025 at Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University & July 23, 2025 at New York City Center

Bellini’s “La Sonnambula” will be performed with Teresa Castillo in the title role alongside Christopher Bozeka, Owen Phillipson, Abigail Raiford, and Abigail Lysinger. Will Crutchfield conducts.

Performance Dates: July 20, 2025 at Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University & July 24, 2025 at New York City Center

In a statement Crutchfield said, “The Romantic era was fascinated by altered states of consciousness. Hypnosis, enchantment, insanity, somnambulism–all these were part of the exploration of the extremes of human experience. These operas are not limited to individual scenes of sleepwalking; they are themes woven through everything. In Shakespeare–and it is one of the lines Verdi took care to have preserved in the libretto–the loss of sleep is Macbeth’s punishment for killing the sleeping King, and Lady Macbeth is condemned to relive her guilt in her own troubled sleep. In La Sonnambula we see a whole village of sleepwalkers living in the past, gossiping, seeing ghosts, obsessed with partners they can’t have, and obsessed with their departed relatives. Only Amina is wide awake and living in the present, and her sleepwalking, in effect, wakes everyone else up.”

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