As part of its mission to provide high-quality public performance opportunities to undergraduates outside of the winter mainstage, Harvard College Opera puts on several programmed recitals throughout the year. These recitals uniquely highlight vocalists, instrumentalists, accompanists, and other musicians of various backgrounds and experience levels to explore solo and small-ensemble performance outside of the mainstage production and engage more broadly with the vibrant Harvard art scene.

All of our formal recitals are programmed by our team of Recital Coordinators under the leadership of our Artistic Director, and each recital features instrumentalists, vocalists, and pianists (as both soloists and accompanists). Our programmed recital season typically includes each of the following:

• Fall Recital: a themed recital developed in collaboration with the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute, designed to incorporate repertoire complementing a concurrent annual exhibition at the Institute

• Winter Recital: a themed recital, often exploring non-denominational religious or holiday repertoire, or a particular language and/or genre combination, such as or German Romantic works or lieder

• Spring Recital: a themed recital, including a collection of art songs or on scenes

• First-Year Showcase: a unique opportunity for first-year musicians to present a selection of ensemble and solo repertoire, which often includes semi-staged operatic scenes.

Explore our Season to see specific programmed HCO recitals past, present, and planned.

If you would like to participate in a programmed HCO recital, please reach out to our recital team at season.harvardcollegeopera@gmail.com at any time — even if there is no upcoming recital visible on our website, expressing interest allows us to add you to contact you directly at the next opportunity.

Our Guest Artist Series, which included our 2021–2022 Masterclass series, provides undergraduates of all backgrounds the opportunity to work with world-class experts in their artistic fields. We aim to feature all varieties vocalists, instrumentalists, directors, musicians, music educators, arts administrators, theatre technicians, and myriad other professionals drawing from across all industries and disciplines within the arts.

Past invited artists have included:

• Matthew Aucoin (HCO ’12) – composer, conductor, pianist, writer

• Anthony Roth Costanzo – countertenor, actor, and producer

• Drew Forde (@ThatViolaKid) – violist and content creator

• Simone Porter – violinist

• Sumi Jo – lyric coloratura soprano

• Erin Morley – lyric coloratura soprano

• Golda Schultz – lyric dramatic soprano

• Lawrence Brownlee – bel canto tenor

• Morris Robinson – bass

We often collaborate with other student organizations to bring artists to campus, and we welcome any and all suggestions for guest artists to invite or industry areas to target.

If you, or a group you represent would like to work with HCO to bring a particular artist to campus, or you would like to request we focus our attention on a particular area within the arts, please reach out to our Guest Artist Lead at season.harvardcollegeopera@gmail.com.

Produced by the Office for the Arts at Harvard, ARTS FIRST is an annual festival celebrating the arts community at Harvard. HCO is regularly invited to provide opportunities for our performers to showcase their talents and passion for the arts.

HCO typically stages some form of recital, concert, or other performance exceeding the scale of our seasonal programmed recitals . In recent years, these concerts have incorporated more moving parts, including our 2020 semi-staged one-act opera (unfortunately cancelled due to COVID), our 2021 virtual performance of Va Pensiero, and our 2022 orchestra- and chorus-accompanied scenes concert and orchestral collaboration with THUD.

Like our recitals, the HCO ARTS FIRST Festival performance is open to participants of all backgrounds: the 2022 performance, for example, featured vocal soloists and ensemble performers, choral singers, orchestra members, and several conductors and rehearsal pianists.

If you would like to be a part of the upcoming HCO ARTS FIRST Concert, reach out to our Artistic Director and Orchestra Liaison at season.harvardcollegeopera@gmail.com. Likewise, if you would like to propose a collaboration on behalf of another Harvard performance group, contact our Collaborations team at collaborations.harvardcollegeopera@gmail.com

Extending its commitment to providing undergraduate performance opportunities to students of all backgrounds, HCO will begin holding regular informal recitals in the fall of 2022. These will feature no theme or repertoire programming, no list of performers set far in advance, no extensive rehearsals, no implicit dress codes, no automatic performance recording or live-streaming, and no extensive publicity effort.

Somewhat like an open-mic events for classical vocal and instrumental performance, these recitals are designed to further lower the barriers to accumulating performance experience by intentionally and regularly fostering safe, comfortable, and encouraging environments with other student performers, where the stakes are minimal and the support maximal.

The detailed logistics for these informal recitals will be worked out over the summer of 2022, but regardless of the precise form taken, interested performers will be encouraged to use repertoire they are currently working with the knowledge that they will be provided with suitable accompaniment.

Please check back for more details as the fall approaches. If you have a question you feel must be answered in the meantime, you can reach out to our recital coordinators at season.harvardcollegeopera@gmail.com.