The Princeton Festival has announced “Virtually Yours,” a free online festival of live and recorded performances of instrumental and vocal music, musical theater, opera and poetry, plus educational presentations. There will be different events every day from June 1 to 28; a full schedule is available at www.princetonfestival.org.
“When the coronavirus threat forced cancellation of our regular season, we responded by creating Virtually Yours as another way to bring the inspiration of the performing arts to our community,” Richard Tang Yuk, executive and artistic director, said in the statement. “This online program maintains the high artistic quality Princeton Festival audiences have come to expect in a variety of genres, both classical and popular. It includes totally new material prepared especially for us by leading artists, plus performances from our recorded archives. We’re confident audiences will find it to be an exciting and engaging series of events.”
Highlights of the Virtually Yours online festival include the following:
- Videos of four festival opera productions, each streamed just once on Sundays at 1 p.m. The operas are Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (June 7), Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (June 14), the 2019 production of John Adams’s Nixon in China (June 21), and Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman (June 28).
- A “Live Musical Theater Review” (June 20, 8 p.m).
- Broadcasts of 2019 festival concerts by Concordia Chamber Players, Van Cliburn competition pianist Rachel Cheung, and the Princeton Festival Baroque Orchestra and Chorus, airing Fridays at 8 p.m. on WWFM radio, 89.1 FM in the Trenton area and worldwide over The Classical Network at www.wwfm.org.
- Videos of musical artists performing from their homes on various days.
- Latin band Fleur Seule on June 13.
- A series of podcasts launched each Wednesday on such topics as “Women in Music” and “Costuming Operas and Musicals,” along with interviews with Shai Zohar, pianist, and Sylvia McNair, soprano.
- Twelve renowned poets from the U.S., Japan, and China, reading poems on the theme of women, in a compilation of videos made especially for the Festival. To be released on June 22.
- An opera workshop for people who want to learn more about the art form, starting June 9; and a musical workshop for aspiring singers beginning June 15.
- Lectures by prominent experts: Professor Timothy Urban on “Why We Love Opera” (June 4) and Professor Stacy Wolf on “Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theater across America” (June 18).
A full roster of Virtually Yours events, plus periodic updates to the schedule, may be viewed at https://princetonfestival.org/virtually-yours/.