The New School's Mannes Opera has announced its 2025-2026 season, which will include the U.S. premiere of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's The Silent Serenade.
The Austrian-Jewish Korngold had been a successful composer of operas in Europe before coming to Hollywood in the 1930s to start composing for film. By the mid-1940s, Korngold had become one of Hollywood's most celebrated film composers, with the scores to films such as Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood being considered some of the most revolutionary in the form. The Silent Serenade was intended to be Korngold's Broadway debut as a composer, following successful productions of operettas by Strauss and Offenbach which he had arranged and conducted. However, disagreements between the composer and the Shubert brothers prevented the production from materializing. After the war, Korngold returned to Europe where The Silent Serenade was performed, first as a radio broadcast in 1951, and then staged in Dortmund in 1954. Mannes Opera's production, directed by Emma Griffin and conducted by Cris Frisco, will be the work's New York premiere, 80 years later than originally planned. The Silent Serenade will be performed at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater March 13-14, 2026.
Mannes Opera's season will also include works by Kaija Saariaho, Ferruccio Busoni, Unsuk Chin, and David Henry Hwang. The season officially opens October 10 with Saariaho's La Passion de Simone, an oratorio inspired by the life and work of Jewish-French philosopher and labor activist Simone Weil, who fought in the Spanish Civil War as an Anarchist. Mannes Opera previously presented La Passion de Simone in concert in 2018, during Saariaho's tenure as resident composer at the New School's College of Performing Arts. This new fully staged production at the Baruch Performing Arts Center will be directed by Emma Griffin and conducted by Micah Gleason.
Busoni's Turandot will be presented as part of an Opera in Concert program at Alice Tully Hall November 20. Although Turandot is best known these days as the final opera by Giacomo Puccini, Carlo Gozzi's 18th-century play and its 19th-century German adaptation by Friedrich Schiller inspired many operas, and Busoni's predates Puccini's by nearly a decade, and is truer to Gozzi's commedia dell-arte treatment of the story. The hour-long opera will be paired with a performance of Puzzles and Games, a selection from Unsuk Chin's opera Alice in Wonderland, with a libretto by David Henry Hwang.
Tickets to all Mannes Opera performances are free to attend with prior registration. To register, and for more information, visit Events.NewSchool.edu.
