New York’s first opera with audience since Covid will be…

Rossini’s The Barber of Seville on July 27 and 28 on the summer stage at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park.

The opera will be performed with a few cuts to keep it under three hours (with intermission). It will be semi-staged – fully acted, but without stage director, in conformity with the practice of Rossini’s day.

Nuovo will use an orchestra of 35 players – the number employed at its 1816 premiere in Rome. Artistic Director Will Crutchfield said: ‘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.’