NEW YORK — In its seventh season since leaving the Caramoor Festival in 2017, Will Crutchfield’s ongoing applied musicological opera project has become the must-see event of the summer for opera-starved New Yorkers. Teatro Nuovo concluded this year’s six-week bel canto boot camp with concert productions of two Italian romantic operas.
After tryouts in Montclair, N.J., I attended Verdi’s Macbeth and Bellini’s La Sonnambula at the century-old Moorish Revival New York City Center on July 23 and 24. Both evenings offered fresh young voices — one of the great pleasures of these concerts — as well as fresh musical revelations. The Verdi was by far the more polished performance, but the Bellini provided a more vivid illustration of the project’s educational goals.
Crutchfield has long championed the restoration of older performance practices of bel canto opera, and his creative musicology draws not only on written documentation but also on physical evidence. The sounds of 19th-century instruments (or copies) as well as scratchy old recordings of singers who trained with 19th-century practitioners provide clues to what the music of Rossini, Bellini, and their cohorts might have sounded like. Crutchfield’s young singers learn to be detectives and composers as they develop their own style of singing bel canto.
After a string of 21st-century revival premieres of lost repertoire, this year Crutchfield braved comparisons by programming two works from the standard repertoire. Both operas share common formal elements from the mid-19th century: a procession of distinct numbers — choruses, recitatives, and melodically inventive arias offering display opportunities for the singers, most commonly in the format of cavatina-cabaletta, meaning a slow, smooth section followed by a fast, virtuosic complement. The practice builds on the Baroque convention of da capo arias to express contrasting emotions in response to a given situation and to show off. Also noted: the common plot points of the intervention of supernatural elements, and a sleepwalking scene.
Crutchfield chose to present the original 1847 version of Macbeth, which lies squarely in the bel canto tradition while expanding the format. Macbeth, Verdi’s fourth collaboration with the librettist Francesco Piave, was the Italian public’s first exposure to the Scottish play, though Shakespeare’s version (in translation) later became a vehicle for some of Italy’s greatest actors. In the first version, Verdi adhered to the conventions of opera construction, with recitatives advancing the action and plenty of cavatina-cabaletta pairings. In addition, Verdi includes through-composed scenes that are more than recitatives but less squarely structured than standard forms (choruses, dances, songs/arias). This expansion beyond formal norms heightens dramatic interest by reducing predictability.
When the composer revisited Macbeth for the 1865 Paris production, he carried this trend further: Finding that the florid cabalettas tended to interrupt the dramatic flow, Verdi excised no fewer than five cabalettas to create the more taut and energetic version usually performed today. There are enough recurring musical motifs to anchor the listener’s experience, but this is no mere “numbers” opera. Verdi varied the musical forms enough that the audience often can’t predict from an opening oom-pah intro what will come next.
On the whole, this earlier Macbeth is recognizable to those familiar with the later version. But worth mentioning is the entirely rewritten last-act chorus of the Scottish exiles, which in the earlier version of “Patria oppressa” sounds startlingly like the lilting 6/8 lament of the Hebrew slaves in the 1843 Nabucco. The 1847 version is tuneful but lacks the sorrowful weight of the newer version.
in Macbeth, the orchestra of historical instruments created a vivid soundscape, with less volume than a modern orchestra but richer in colorful timbres. The dramatic snarl of the lower winds, including a rarely heard ophicleide, invoked the infernal realm of the witches, contrasting with more delicate strings. Crutchfield has based his arrangement of the orchestra on a seating chart from Rossini’s tenure in Naples (1815-1822): basses flanking the sides of the ensemble, winds arrayed across the ensemble facing the audience, strings arranged in front, with some violins facing the stage, and the concertmaster standing to lead with bow and body language (Jakob Lehmann led the orchestra for Macbeth, with Elisa Citterio leading Sonnambula).
With the musicians able to see one another, the arrangement looked more like a jam session than a performance. A fortepiano at the front of the band (played by Crutchfield) aided ensemble cohesion but was rarely audible to the public. The orchestra was seated at auditorium level, enabling more direct contact with the singers, especially important for the frequent singer-instrumental duets.
For Macbeth, the company put more effort into staging than in previous productions, with blocking by Lehmann and stage manager Brenna Skinnon DiNapoli. Adam J. Thompson designed background projections for both operas, a simple innovation introduced last season that added immensely to the dramatic ambiance, along with Stephen Smart’s simple lighting design. It was a reminder that opera is drama, not just pretty singing.
Macbeth requires singers of a certain maturity, and Crutchfield found a strong team to supplement the resident artist-trainees. As Lady Macbeth, Alexandra Loutsion displayed a voice of size and flexibility, with both metal and delicacy. She deployed the colors of her different registers to underscore the drama, acting with voice and demeanor — not always a given in this fiendishly difficult role. In the title role, baritone Ricardo José Rivera made a welcome return after 2024’s production of Carolina Uccelli’s Anna di Resburgo. He wielded a sturdy baritone, smoothly produced throughout his range, with long lines and more charisma than many a Macbeth I have heard in higher-profile theaters.
A fourth-act surprise was Martin Luther Clark as Macduff. In an opera dominated by the baritone anti-hero, the tenor seized his one solo turn with a compelling “Ah, la paterna mano” before rousing the troops to overthrow the usurpers.
La Sonnambula is the third Bellini opera in Teatro Nuovo’s planned complete Bellini cycle — an ambitious goal for a young singers’ training program. Bellini’s simple comedy about a lovers’ misunderstanding and reconciliation is more formulaic than Macbeth, and the staging was more rudimentary than the previous evening, so the focus was squarely on the music. Of the principals, soprano Teresa Castillo, who impressed in 2023’s Crispino e la Comare, came closest to my bel canto ideal, marrying creamy lyricism to flights of fancy as she ornamented Anina’s many solos. Her bright and soaring upper extension also allowed Crutchfield to restore some of the music to its original, higher keys. As Lisa, Amina’s would-be rival for her betrothed’s affections, Abigail Raiford also made strong impression, beginning with her opening lament, oozing with self pity yet luscious of tone and tastefully embellished.
The evening suffered with comparison to the Verdi, both in musical and dramatic interest. Yet it provided a chance to hear more of the young singers display their newly developed bel canto skills. The choristers, prepared by Derrick Goff, carefully directed in their many roles in Macbeth, were apparently left to their own devices to give life to their collective role of Swiss villagers, but they sang lustily.
Teatro Nuovo’s website provides fascinating detail about Crutchfield’s theories and working methods. It’s a great resource while we wait for the 2026 season.
