2022 Summer Arts Season: The Grenchus Foundation @ Opera Italiana Is in the Air: REBIRTH by Italian Conductor Casellati
Mary Grenchus
2022 Summer Arts Season: The Grenchus Foundation @ Opera Italiana Is in the Air by Italian Conductor Casellati
Italian conductor Alvise Casellati is bringing his unique and popular ‘Opera Italiana is In the Air’
Casellati quit his job as an attorney to focus on his passion – to make opera more accessible to a young, diverse audience through a fresh, new approach. Maestro Casellati is on a mission to bring opera out of fancy concert halls and into the street with free, casual, outdoor performances. He wants to make opera and classical music more modern, relevant and inclusive.
The concert in Central Park, on June 27, will feature world-class musicians from the Metropolitan Opera and two superstar sopranos, Grammy-award winning Dísella Làrusdóttir and nationally acclaimed Caitlin Gotimer, who is originally from Malverne, NY. It will also feature two members of the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers. Fourteen year old singer Paloma Dineli Chesky will perform. The concert will open with a piece composed by Jordan Millar, a 15-year-old from Brooklyn, NY who attends PS 11, is a fan of hip hop and R&B artists like Drake and TLC, and also loves to compose classical music. She’s been doing it since the age of 9. Her latest composition is based on something she loved as a child – the Tinkerbell Fairies series, specifically Iridessa – the Light Fairy. Musicians performing in Central Park include members of the Metropolitan Opera and students from Juilliard and other top music schools in Manhattan as well as the Sloan Kettering Rising Voices choir.
“One of my main goals is to inspire young girls and young girls of color to write music and be authentic. You don’t see a lot of young female composers or a lot of young black composers and that’s important to me,” Jordan says. “How can we make it more inclusive and adapt it to fit where we are now? Hopefully through my work, which doesn’t sound like Bach or Beethoven, I can help open up that conversation.”
Opera Italiana is presented with the invaluable support of the Consulate General of Italy in New York, the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Italia. This event is made possible through the generous contribution of Intesa Sanpaolo, GKSD Investment Holding, the Alexander Bodini Foundation, BEL Real Estate, ENI, Ferrero North America, Bracco Diagnostics, and the Foundation for Italian Art & Culture (FIAC).