Singer

From the candlelit theaters of Rome in 1730 to Spotify today, experience a once-forgotten masterpiece of 18th-century opera seria, preserved in a recording by Chicago’s Haymarket Opera and GRAMMY® Award-winning label Cedille Records.

Recording: Artaserse

Haymarket Opera Company

Purcell’s ground-breaking opera makes its long-awaited Opera Lafayette debut. Mary Elizabeth Williams returns to Opera Lafayette as Dido, the ill-fated Queen of Carthage, following her internationally lauded performance in last season’s Morgiane. The famously haunting aria “When I Am Laid in Earth” brings the resilient Dido to a crossroad in this woman-centered storyline, delivering an unforgettable saga of love, loss, power, and humanity.

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Dido and Aeneas

El Museo del Barrio

Sixth & I

Haymarket presents a new, fully staged production of Leonardo Vinci’s 1730 tour de force opera, Artaserse. This rarely performed opera is an immersive time capsule that bridges centuries, revealing the genius of Vinci and the grandeur of 18th-century theatrical art to opera enthusiasts and newcomers alike. Murderous ambition tests the strength of a royal dynasty in an intriguing tale of assassination and reconciliation underscored by Vinci’s dazzling music!

Artaserse

DePaul University Welcome Center

The final part of IN Series’ Monteverdi trilogy, Poppea brings the composer’s most famous and audacious final opera of love, power, sex, and betrayal to life inspired by the performance tradition of South India, and specifically Bharatanatyam dance. This landmark production, running March 14-30 at Dupont Underground, St. Mark’s Capitol Hill and Baltimore Theatre Project, is of one of opera’s undisputed masterpieces. IN Series’ production will be a collaboration with Indo-American choreographer Hari Krishnan, whose work brilliantly combines the aesthetics of this traditional dance form with contemporary movement and questions of gender norms, and will feature original dance music composed by sitar player Ami Dang, and mridangam percussionist Rajna Swaminathan. The work will be directed and conducted by IN Series Artistic Director Timothy Nelson and feature a cast of local favorites and international artists known for their interpretations of opera of the Baroque. The INnovātiō Orchestra, IN Series’ own period baroque band, will blend music of South India in an evening of whirling passion, music, poetry, and dance. Opening night will be a celebration of the Indian festival of Holi.

Poppea

Dupont Underground

St Marks Capitol Hill

Baltimore Theatre Project

From the rich legacy of psalm settings, our season finale juxtaposes music from the Jewish and Christian traditions. In convertendo (Psalm 126) from the operatic master Jean-Philippe Rameau infuses the psalmist’s words with flair and passion, while companion pieces by Salamone Rossi and J. S. Bach infuse psalm texts with sonorous counterpoint.

Songs of Zion

Hobby Center for the Performing Arts

This program of soulful and moving compositions by four of the German Baroque’s most masterful composers begins with a 10-part setting of “Christ lag in Todesbanden” by Johann Pachelbel. Its seven movements unfold the deep richness of the composer’s reflections on the Easter text that Bach would later use for one of his earliest cantatas. And from the pen of one of Bach’s favorite composers, Dieterich Buxtehude, comes a bittersweet setting of the famous Eastertide chorale, “Jesu, meine Freude,” that would have been a great inspiration to Bach when he composed his own motet setting of the same verses several decades later. One of Bach’s earliest surviving cantatas, “Der Herr denket an uns” (Psalm 115: “The Lord is mindful of us”) is a joyful celebration of gratitude and blessedness that was probably composed to celebrate the wedding of the minister who had married Bach and his wife, Maria Barbara, about a year earlier. The Passion-themed orbit of this program finds its greatest resonance in a truly hypnotic and almost trance-inducing setting of the Saint Matthew Passion by Johann Theile. From its first movement to its last, Theile’s music mesmerizes the listener and grippingly captivates that attention until the final note.

Soprano

Elijah McCormack

Events

Past events

Mar 13, 2026

Recording: Artaserse · Haymarket Opera Company

16 - 20 Oct, 2025

Dido and Aeneas · Opera Lafayette

Future and recently performed repertoire

Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas by Purcell

Opera Lafayette

Semira in Artaserse by Vinci

Haymarket Opera Company

About

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