TEATRO LIRICO D’EUROPA (617.824.8000), Boston’s favorite touring opera company, returns to the Cutler Majestic Theatre with Puccini’s Turandot (February 2-4), then La bohème (March 2), Carmen (March 3), Madama Butterfly (March 4), and an “Opera Gala” (March 6). OPERA BOSTON (617.451.3388) begins its new year with Gil Rose conducting and Sam Helfrich staging Kurt Weill’s tuneful and biting Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Soprano Amy Burton sings Jenny, the role created by Lotte Lenya (Cutler Majestic; February 23, 25, 27). BOSTON LYRIC OPERA (617.542.4912) offers one of Verdi’s best operas, the darkly dazzling Il ballo in maschera (Shubert Theatre; March 30 + April 1, 4, 6, 8, 10). No foolin’, Donald Teeters’s BOSTON CECILIA (617.232.4540) revives Scott Wheeler’s delicious opera based on Kenneth Koch, The Construction of Boston (Jordan Hall; April 1).
New music comes early in the New Year. COLLAGE NEW MUSIC (617.325.5200) offers work by Julian Anderson, John Heiss (a world premiere), Olly Wilson, and Martin Brody’s Millennium Sightings featuring mezzo-soprano Janice Felty (Longy School; January 29), and a program including Michael Dougherty and two pieces by Charles Fussell, with soprano Janet Brown (Harvard’s Paine Hall; March 25). Gil Rose’s BOSTON MODERN ORCHESTRA PROJECT (617.363.0396) kicks off the New Year with its ninth annual Boston Connection concert, this one featuring stellar saxophonist Kenneth Radnovsky (Jordan Hall; January 20). Alan Pierson’s Alarm Will Sound (617.566.1401) presents an evening of music by avant-gardist Conlon Nancarrow (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; February 16).
The CANTATA SINGERS (617.868.5885), under David Hoose, have a program with two major pieces they’ve commissioned from John Harbison: the 1986 Pulitzer-winning Flight into Egypt, with Janet Brown and Sanford Sylvan, and last year’s But Mary Stood, with Karyl Ryczek. Surrounding them will be Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 1 and his Cantata No. 101 (Jordan Hall; January 19). Hoose also leads the Cantata Singers in Bach’s B-minor Mass (Jordan Hall; March 6 + 8). Another “old music” event is BOSTON BAROQUE 617.484.9200) doing Vivaldi’s only surviving and rarely performed oratorio, Juditha Triumphans (Jordan Hall; March 30-31). The BOSTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL (617.661.1812) season includes a musical dialogue between Matthias Maute on recorder and Krystian Bezuidenhout on harpsichord (Harvard’s Paine Hall; January 26); the Venice Baroque Orchestra under Andrea Marcon, with violinist Giuliano Carmignola (Emmanuel Church; February 16); the popular Tallis Scholars (St. Paul Church in Harvard Square; March 24); and the Trio Medieval in 13th-century French and Italian music (First Congregational Church in Cambridge; March 20). Joel Cohen’s BOSTON CAMERATA (617.262.2092) continues its French season with a 12th-century “Tournament of Love” staged by Anne Azéma (First Congregational Church in Cambridge and St. Ignatius Parish at Boston College; March 16-17). SARASA (617.492.4758) has an evening of Italian Baroque cantatas with soprano Emily van Evera (Friends Meeting House in Cambridge and First Parish Church in Concord; February 2 + 4).
