Teatro Nuovo announces full in-person performances of The Barber of Seville,
July 27 & 28 at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park

The events will mark the first full opera performance in New York City in over a year

Teatro Nuovo’s singular period instrument orchestra, led jointly by Will Crutchfield and Jakob Lehmann, will accompany a cast of rising stars in semi-staged performances

“...for abundance of real musical ideas, for comic verve and truth of declamation, the most beautiful comic opera in existence.”

- Giuseppe Verdi on Il barbiere, 1898

Teatro Nuovo today announced the first full opera performances in New York City in over a year, offering Rossini’s The Barber of Seville on July 27 and 28 on the summer stage at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park.

Artistic Director Will Crutchfield said in announcing the production that The Barber was chosen because “it is the longest-lasting and most beloved opera in the whole repertory of Bel Canto.” Verdi called it “the most beautiful comic opera in existence.” Audiences had confirmed that judgment by the time Verdi made it, eighty-two years after the opera was written, and have kept on confirming it up to the present day, 123 years after Verdi said it.

“This is a moment for both continuity and novelty,” he added, “so instead of our usual rarities, we decided to return with an opera known and loved by all, but to do it in our radical new way. Teatro Nuovo is about empowering the individual singers and players who create the core experience of opera. As we return after the longest interruption in the history of the artform, our most important job is to make sure we know what that core experience is, and how to bring it forth.”

For The Barber Teatro Nuovo will use an orchestra of 35 players - “exactly the number employed at its 1816 premiere in Rome,” observed TN Associate Artistic Director Jakob Lehmann, who will lead the band as primo violino e capo d’orchestra. Crutchfield will join him as maestro al cembalo, playing a newly restored 1804 fortepiano by the London firm of Astor and Company. This form of divided direction, without any standup conductor, was universal in Italian opera of Rossini’s day, and is a key element in TN’s performer-centric style that led Heidi Waleson to declare in the Wall Street Journal “the effect is transformative.” 

The opera will be performed nearly complete, with a few cuts to hold running time under three hours (with one intermission). It will be played in Teatro Nuovo’s now-traditional semi-staged style - fully enacted, but without stage director, again in conformity with the practice of Rossini’s day.

Full cast and ticket information will be announced at a later date.

ABOUT TEATRO NUOVO

Teatro Nuovo is a new American opera company specializing in Italian opera of the Romantic or “Bel Canto” period. Launched in 2018 with performances of Tancredi and Medea in Corinto, it was quickly hailed as “transformative” (Wall Street Journal) and “stupendous” (Opera News) for its innovative restoration of period performing style. For complete information and further press coverage: teatronuovo.org/about-teatro-nuovo and teatronuovo.org/press

COVID-19 PROTOCOLS

Teatro Nuovo is working closely with Lincoln Center to ensure a streamlined, efficient, and safe audience experience. Exact protocols are not yet fully defined as we await evolving governmental guidelines.  Every precaution is being taken for the performing company itself: it will be a 100% vaccinated ensemble, and among other safety precautions, all participants will be given daily tests from the first day of rehearsals through the final performance.