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Doors open at 5:30 pm
Star baritone Lucas Meachem returns to Festival Napa Valley to perform the title role in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, widely considered to be one of the funniest operas of all time. Maestro Kent Nagano makes his Festival debut and leads Meachem, soprano Mikaela Bennett, tenor Mario Rojas, mezzo-soprano Simone McIntosh and Festival Orchestra Napa in this comic farce featuring some of Puccini’s best music, including the famous aria "O mio babbino caro.” Jean-Romain Vesperini directs.
Performers
Mikaela Bennett is a graduate of the Juilliard School and is celebrated as a singer and actress for her work on stage and in the concert hall. She received critical acclaim for her debuts as "Maria" in West Side Story at Lyric Opera of Chicago and as "Penelope" in The Golden Apple at City Center Encores!, and in 2019, she was honored with a "Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists."
Swiss-Canadian mezzo-soprano Simone McIntosh is a graduate of the Adler Fellowship Program with San Francisco Opera and the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio. She was a member of Opernhaus Zürich’s International Opera Studio and was a Song Prize Finalist at the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition in 2023.
Grammy® Award winner Lucas Meachem is one of the most in-demand singers of the moment, captivating audiences with his "earnest appealing baritone" (New York Times). Meachem performs regularly at major opera houses around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, Vienna Staatsoper, Royal Opera House, Opéra National de Paris, and Los Angeles Opera where he gave his Grammy® Award-winning performance.
Kent Nagano is considered one of today’s outstanding conductors for both operatic and orchestral repertoire. He will be the next Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España in Madrid in September 2026 and is the newly appointed Principal Artistic Partner of Filarmonica Toscanini.
Originally from Torreón, Mexico, tenor Mario Rojas is an alumnus of the Ryan Opera Center of Lyric Opera of Chicago and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. One of the youngest singers to receive the Plácido Domingo Scholarship from SIVAM, Mexico’s most prominent young artist program, Rojas is the recipient of many awards, including the 2020 Luminarts Foundation Fellowship and 2018 William M. Sullivan Foundation Award.
Jean-Romain Vesperini is a widely acclaimed artistic director and producer of operatic performances on stages from La Scala to Paris, from The Bolshoi to Monte Carlo. A trained baritone, he is deeply connected to music, with a unique awareness of what a score brings to dramaturgy.
The GRAMMY Award-winning Pacific Boychoir offers Bay Area boys unparalleled performance opportunities, worldwide travel, collaborations with world class artistic organizations, and ambassadorial experiences resulting in a compelling personal development experience.
Venue
Charles Krug Winery
