KENT—It’s May, so it must be time for Mozart.
At least that is the mantra of Matt Harris, director of music for St. Andrew’s Church and chairman of its annual Music in the Nave series.
The series will present more Mozart opera highlights Saturday, May 23, at 3 p.m. at the church at 1 Main St. The program will again feature moments from the great master’s operas, sung by quartet of emerging operatic stars.
Soprano Juliet Schlefer, mezzo-soprano Abbegael Greene, tenor Maximillian Jansen and baritone Benjamin Powell will sing a new selection of arias, duets and quartets from “The Marriage of Figaro,” “Don Giovanni,” “Cose Fan Tutte,” and “The Magic Flute.”
Accompanying them will be pianist Margarita Nuller and cellist Adam Grabois.
This is the third annual Mozart concert and is a growing tradition for the Music in the Nave series.
Harris, who likes to vary the four concerts offered in the series each year, inaugurated the Mozart theme as the Mostly Mozart Festival, a prestigious annual classical music festival at New York City’s Lincoln Center, disbanded in 2023.
He said he had been searching for a new direction for the spring concert. “It was like pulling teeth to get serious musicians,” he reported. “I thought, ‘What do people like? They like Mozart.’ When Mostly Mozart disbanded, I thought, ‘This is right; we’ll start a new tradition.’ We have the tradition of Handel’s Messiah in December, which is part of people’s Christmas celebration. I want this to be like that for the spring. They will hear pretty music when the weather is getting pretty.”
Even within the confines of performing Mozart’s Music, he seeks to offer variety. “Mozart is what stays the same, but the genre will change,” he said. “Basically, we are expanding on the blueprint of last year—keeping everything that worked well and expanding.”
The first Mozart in May program featured the Manhattan String Quartet. Last year he shifted directions and brought in three singers, accompanied by Margarita Nuller and a cellist. He sought to return to chamber music this year, but the artists he hoped to engage were unavailable, so he decided to add a singer, expanding the scope of the operatic singing.
He is bringing back two of last year’s singers—one has moved on to a larger stage—and added a tenor.
“Last year’s mezzo-soprano has now moved on and that is the way it should be,” he said. “These people are on the cusp of making the big time. The next time you want to hear them you may have to add a zero to the $25 you will pay this time.”
Nuller and the Grabois will play much more this time, he added. “Together they have a synergy. The audience will hear a lot of the cello to fill out the base.”
The singers include Juliet Schlefer, a 2025 Young Concert Artists semi-finalist, who was the soprano soloist in Music in the Nave’s “Messiah” Sing-In this season; Abbegael Greene, who was alto soloist in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Roberts Symphony Orchestra and returns to the Berkshire Opera Festival this summer; Maximillian Jansen, who performed with the Berkshire Opera Festival as well and who joins the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program this summer; and Benjamin Powell, who is a freelance acoustic and electric bass player and who recently made his New York operatic debut in Off-Brand Opera’s “Don Giovanni.”
Harris noted that the singers will be “off book” and can move around, acting out what is happening.
“These people are so good. They read the room and react to the audience,” he continued. “They have learned these pieces a long time ago from other performances and, just like last time, they will introduce each number for the audience. The program will also have English translations so the audience will know what is happening.”
He said the sanctuary of St. Andrew’s is a perfect venue for the program, “not too small and not too big.”
“It feels like a big event, but everyone has a good seat,” he observed, “and, unlike going to the opera, there is the chance you can have an encore.”
“It will be very lively music,” he concluded. “We will begin with the wedding in “Don Giovanni” “and end with the “Marriage of Figaro.” The two pieces will tie it together, a theme within a theme. It should make people happy and put them in a great mood.”
Tickets, priced at $25, are available online and at the door. For more information, call 860-927-3486, email office.sa.kent@gmail.com, or visit www.standrewskentct.org/mitn.html.
