OPERA
THURSDAY & SATURDAY, AUGUST 15 & 17, 2019 (continuing through AUGUST 25)
7:30 PM

Francesca Caccini: La Liberazione di Ruggerio
Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble
La MaMa
66 East 4th Street, East Village, Manhattan

$38-$44; $35-$38 seniors; $25 students
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4092158

Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble's annual Summer series of lively performances of rare operas with eager young singers is sufficiently modest that it would seem wrong to call it one of the highlights of Summer in New York; instead, call it one of the treats. First up this Summer is a rarity of rarities: the only surviving opera of Francesca Caccini, who knew the first generation of opera composers as the Renaissance turned into the Baroque, and is the only woman we know of who composed opera that early. (If her name seems familiar, it's because, like almost all the Italian women artists and composers we know from this period, her father was a famous artist or composer himself: in her case, Giulio Caccini, one of the very inventors of the Baroque musical style.) None of us has heard this piece before -- but I, for one, can't wait.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Mediterranean-style seafood at Lamia's Fish Market.