WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK — The Washington Square Park Music Festival looks to thrill opera enthusiasts when it kicks off with a free libretto Tuesday evening.
The four-week festival starts with a night of arias for the festival's first session, Opera in the Park. For the free concert, Michael Spierman will conduct the Festival Chamber Orchestra in Mozart's The Impresario and Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.
"The Impresario recounts the trials, tribulations and comic turns of an impresario, his assistant, a wealthy benefactor and his two quarreling soprano mistresses, an ingénue and another, slightly overripe," the Washington Square Park Festival site said about the "hilarious comedy" performed by the The Bronx Opera.
Schubert's Symphony No. 5, a "delightful early symphonic score" will also be performed during Opera in the Park.
The festival will also introduce a five-octave marimba, an instrument similar to a xylophone, to curious New Yorkers during "The Joy of Unfamiliar Music" segment of the festival next Tuesday.
In the last two weeks, the festival will also feature free classical and jazz music during "Music Making by the Master: Stanley Drucker" on July 26 and "The Charles Mingus Orchestra Plays Jazz" on Aug. 2.
The Washington Square Music Festival will continue on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. through Aug. 2 on the Main Stage of the Square, close to the Waverly Place entrance. The rainspace is located at St. Joseph's Church on 371 Sixth Ave.
