Cleveland Orchestra’s Expansive “American Dream” Festival

“Two facts were immediately clear to André Gremillet when he came to the Cleveland Orchestra in 2016: its opera productions were both culturally significant and seriously underutilized,” writes Zachary Lewis in last Monday’s (5/8) Cleveland.com. “Thus were planted the seeds that are soon to blossom into ‘The American Dream: The Jack, Joseph & Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival’ … [with] several weeks of events, many of them free, all of them involving local arts and culture organizations and all of them grounded in the orchestra’s May production of Puccini’s opera ‘La Fanciulla del West.’… In music director Franz Welser-Möst, Gremillet found a ready ally … eager not only to produce opera but also to explore it from social and historical perspectives [and] an advocate for highlighting and establishing relationships with nonprofits all over town…. The orchestra and its partners will present an exhibit, panel discussions, a film, a play, a poetry reading, and numerous concerts steeped in questions of whether and how the U.S. has fulfilled its promises. Along the way [are] spotlights on the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, Karamu House, the Cleveland Public Library, City Club of Cleveland, Ideastream, and Case Western Reserve University, among others.”