News

The festival launched its 20th Anniversary Season on July 10 with the Uytengsu Family Opening Night at Charles Krug Winery in St. Helena, led by conductor Stephanie Childress. The program opened with Beethoven and closed with a symphonic reimagining of songs by Bob Dylan, Billy Joel and other American songwriters—an exhilarating finale that set the tone for a landmark anniversary year.

There may have been no better place to premiere an opera about the 1976 Judgment of Paris — the blind wine tasting that first put California wines on the map — than the valley whose reputation it transformed.

Festival Napa Valley marked its 20th anniversary with a record-breaking Arts for All Gala on July 12, raising $6.5 million to support its year-round education, scholarship and community initiatives. Held at Nickel & Nickel in Oakville, part of Far Niente Wine Estates, the gala brought together philanthropists, artists, vintners and civic leaders. 

Festival Napa Valley seemed a little closer to Kansas when Charles Krug Winery in St. Helena hosted an outdoor screening of The Wizard of Oz with live accompaniment by Festival Orchestra Napa on July 16. A sold-out audience of 1,100 gathered to watch the beloved Technicolor tale of Dorothy and friends with a full orchestral score conducted by Ming Luke

The 20th century is littered with the corpses of high-minded comic operas. Satire is what closes on Saturday night, said George S. Kaufman, whose witticism has passed into theater folklore. Fearlessly, composer Jake Heggie and his long-time librettist Gene Scheer took up the challenge with The Judgment of Paris — it was the exclamation point of Festival Napa Valley’s 20th anniversary season.

Festival Napa Valley (FNV), a music-centric charity organization that funds arts initiatives in the valley, marked its 20th anniversary this year, capping off over two weeks of performances with $6.5 million raised at its capstone event, the Arts for All Gala.

If Festival Napa Valley’s Symphonic Finale was a poker hand, it would have been a royal flush. Presented Sunday, July 19, at the FNV Stage at Charles Krug in St. Helena, the late evening program featured the works of a quintet of American compositional royalty performed by Festival Orchestra Napa under the guidance of conductor JoAnn Falletta.

Fleming returned to Festival Napa Valley with Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene, a multimedia concert inspired by her 2023 Grammy Award-winning album. Accompanied by an original film curated by the National Geographic Society and the Pacific Symphony under conductor Alexander Shelley, the program wove Romantic-era art songs by Grieg, Liszt, Fauré and Hahn together with works by contemporary composers Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw and Kevin Puts.

What soprano Lisa Delan brought to Festival Napa Valley this year was termed a classical cabaret and not the song recital format in which she’s been featured in past summers. It was a welcome discovery for all.