New job for Renee Fleming
OperaThe singer, 65, has been named Festival Director of the 2025 Cincinnati May Festival.
‘I’m honored,’ she says. ‘Beyond music’s power to express the most profound ideas and feelings, we are learning more every day about its enormous potential to improve our health and well-being. The Festival is programmed with those goals in mind.’
For those unfamiliar, Cincinnati May Festival began in the 1870s when the city was known for its large population of German immigrants or descendants and their community sing-alongs. It has always featured works with a substantial choral component, using a high-quality community chorus and, after those early years, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (founded 1895). The main events are concentrated on two weekends in May, but several other Festival-connected performances (or regular CSO concerts using the May Festival Chorus) take place through the year.
Its past music directors have included Theodore Thomas, Eugene Ysaye, Eugene Goossens, Josef Krips, Max Rudolf, James Levine, and–from 1979 to 2016–James Conlon, all of these supplemented by visiting guest conductors. It has usually described itself as the oldest continuing choral Festival in the Western Hemisphere.
The 2025 Festival repertoire:
https://mayfestival.com/concerts-and-events/season-at-a-glance/
And the “Victorian Gothic”-style Cincinnati Music Hall, which received its most recent renovation about seven years ago:
https://otj.com/projects/cincinnati-music-hall/
When the Cincinnati Symphony was re-formed in 1909 with Stokowski as its new conductor he found the orchestra rehearsed entirely in German.