Season 2026-2027
Il Delirio d’Amore
(The madness of Love)
Attic Opera's inaugural recital serves up delicious vocal morsels by some of the 19th century's most important Italian composers of song, including Giovanni Pacini, Saverio Mercadante, Jules Alary, and Angelo Mariani.
From comic character sketches, odes to love, elegies, and dramatic cantatas, there is something for everyone! Most of these pieces have never been publicly performed or recorded in the modern era.
Artists
Susannah Hardwick, Mimi Hilaire, Bridget Hogan, Elizabeth Treat (sopranos); Hayden DeWitt (mezzo-soprano); Ryan Allais (tenor); Muir Ingliss (baritone)
Drew Spradlin (piano)
Thea Cook (Artistic Director and Music Editor)
Songs and Duets of the 19th Century Salon
November 8, 2026, 2pm
November 10, 2026, 7pm
Seventh Church of Christ, Scientist
Reading Room
516 West 112th Street, Manhattan
$32 General Admission; $24 Seniors 65+ and Current Students
Portrait of Pauline Viardot-Garcia, ca 1846
Fandango
The Weird, Witty, and Winsome Salon Music of Pauline Viardot-Garcia
Pauline Viardot-Garcia, younger sister of the legendary prima donna Maria Malibran, was trained as a pianist by Franz Liszt and toured the world as a child prodigy before being forced to renounce piano performance and become an opera singer.
Throughout her career, she composed songs, piano and chamber works, and chamber operas; but her gender relegated her compositions to obscurity until their genius began to be recognized in the last few decades.
While her music has had a resurgence, a significant portion of her ingenious and witty art song repertoire remains unfamiliar. This recital will focus on hitherto unperformed and lesser-known Viardot songs and duets. The varied programme includes passionate scene-painting odes, a waltzing toad, and a risque tale of two teens struck by Cupid's arrows.
January, 2027 (Date/Venue TBA)
Portrait of Alessandro Nini, ca. 1837
Discarded Genius
A Virtual Introduction to the Life and Operas of Alessandro Nini
Nini not only writes beautiful melodies, but he also has a rich harmonic palette to color them and to allow them freely to expand beyond the frameworks imposed by a basically regular phrase structure. – Philip Gossett
Join founding artistic director Thea Cook, vocalists working with Attic Opera and a surprise guest or two for an informal virtual talk about the life, career, and operas of composer Alessandro Nini (1805-1880). After his sensational Italian debut with Ida della Torre (Venice, 1837) a series of Nini’s operas were received with delirious excitement by public and reviewed with admiration by the European press, yet were unaccountably never revived. Even sympathetic musicological authorities saw these poor performance histories and inaccurately assumed Nini’s operas during this period to have been failures. Nini’s contemporary admirers included the great Rossini, and there is a strong argument to be made that Nini’s music was a major influence on the young Giuseppe Verdi. Yet Nini all but abandoned the stage after 1847, disillusioned at his lack of enduring success, and focused on teaching and composing sacred music.
The troubled history of Nini's fifth opera Margarita di Yorck, which the company plans to perform in its entirety next season, will be discussed in detail. Based on an 1839 French melodrama, the opera is a fictionalized account of Margaret of York's attempt to topple King Henry Tudor and install pretender Perkin Warbeck as King after the Wars of the Roses.
Together with our “Peek in the Trunk” concert, this event serves as an introduction to Nini's world and his music.
Winter, 2027 (Date/Zoom Link TBA)
Margaret of York praying in front of the Church of St. Gudula of Brussels (Attributed to Master of Girart de Roussillon)
A Peek in the Trunk
A glimpse of the treasures Attic Opera has found among the rafters through this program of arias, duets, and ensembles from unknown operas by Alessandro Nini, Giovanni Pacini, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, and Frederick Shepherd Converse.
In a program that spans violent tragedies to historical epics and bubbly comedies, this concert gives Attic Opera’s friends a privileged glimpse of our future plans. The pieces included here have not been heard in over a century!
Included are excerpts from our next full opera, the thrilling medieval “game of thrones” in which the powerful Margaret of York (sister of English Kings Richard III and Edward IV) schemes to topple Henry Tudor from the throne. Hearts break and heads roll in this thrilling drama that anticipates the vigor and breakneck pacing of Verdi’s early works.
Make sure you’re among the first audiences to sample these thrilling operas!
A Preview of Attic Opera’s Future Plans!
March, 2027 (Date/Venue TBA