Get Involved: Arts

Harvard College Opera boasts a vibrant and diverse arts season! In addition to the Mainstage, HCO organizes regular programmed recitals, hosts a guest artist series with world-class professionals across disciplines, performs in Harvard’s annual ARTS FIRST festival, collaborations with other student arts groups, and puts on informal recitals for musicians of all backgrounds and levels. These opportunities bring together students across disciplines and provides additional performance opportunities year-round.

Explore the many performing and learning opportunities available within Harvard College Opera’s Arts Season below.

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: a Fall, Winter, Spring, First-Year Showcase, and Instrumentalist recital.
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 harvardcollegeopera@gmail.comat 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 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
- Lucas Meachem – baritone
- Liv Redpath – mezzo
- John Holland – violinist
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.
Produced by the Office for the Arts at Harvard, ARTS FEST 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 semi-staged opera scenes, including our 2025 Don Giovanni finale scene, our 2024 La Cenerentola and The Magic Flute, 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 FEST Festival performance is open to participants of all backgrounds: our most recent performance, for example, 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 FEST Concert or propose a collaboration on behalf of another performance group, reach out to our Artistic Director and Orchestra Liaison at harvardcollegeopera@gmail.com.