Da Ponte's Oratorio: A Concert for New York

A performance in 1826 at the Basilica of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Little Italy changed America’s cultural landscape with the introduction of Italian opera to New York City – an event Mozart’s librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte helped organize. Lost to history for almost 200 years, the program was recently rediscovered and restaged by an Italian opera company, Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, with Donato Renzetti conducting and featuring the music of Cimarosa and Zingarelli along with that of Haydn, Handel, and Arne.