2024 Festival

The Festival invites you to immerse yourself in myth, mystery, and adventure as the repertory for the 2024 season explores the connection between identity and illusion. Mainstage productions will include Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, Cavalli’s La Calisto, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, and Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell’s Elizabeth Cree. 

The 2024 Festival will also feature the world premiere of the youth opera Rumpelstiltskin and the Unlovable Children by Jens Ibsen and Cecelia Raker and an exciting new works initiative called Project Pipeline. Curated by Artistic & General Director Rob Ainsley, Project Pipeline will give voice to rising artists while giving patrons an inside glimpse at the creative process.

2024 Season Calendar

The Pirates of Penzance | Gilbert & Sullivan

10 performances | July 22m, 27, 30m; August 1, 4m, 9, 13m, 15, 17m, 19m

A Gilbert & Sullivan classic, combining soaring vocal lines and slapstick comedy, returns to Glimmerglass for the first time in nearly 20 years. This colorful, family-friendly production features elegant Victorian ladies and an aristocratic band of pirates stuck in perpetual adolescence.

La Calisto | Cavalli/Faustini

6 Performances | July 23m, 26; August 3m, 5m, 11m, 17

Comedy and pathos, gods and mortals, and a few rutting satyrs for good measure–this sparkling early opera, which weaves together two myths of transformation, has it all. Written at the midpoint of Cavalli’s career, La Calisto was conceived to deliver maximum entertainment in a theater with minimal musical resources.

Pagliacci | Leoncavallo

7 Performances | July 27m, 29m; August 2, 6m, 8, 10, 18m

When passions ignite among a troupe of traveling players, the offstage drama spills into the performance in this new production of Pagliacci. Ruggero Leoncavallo’s comedy/thriller, inspired by a true crime report, contains two complete and overlapping stories in one compact work: a farce performed by a troupe of “pagliacci,” or clowns, and an all-too-real drama of jealous love.

Elizabeth Cree | Puts/Campbell

6 Performances | July 28m; Aug 3, 10m, 12m, 16, 20m

Set in London in the 1880s, this highly suspenseful and theatrical opera interweaves several narratives: the trial of the titular heroine for the poisoning of her husband; a series of brutal murders committed by a Jack the Ripper-style killer; the spirited world of an English music hall; and, finally, some “guest appearances” by luminaries from the Victorian Age. Elizabeth Cree is a work that combines the factual with the fictive and the historical with the imaginary.