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To•Day

DIARY, Weekend, July 11-13, 2025

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

FRIDAY: Ohio Light Opera (2 pm, Brigadoon in Wooster)  | Stars in the Classics (6:30, A Summer Garden Concert in Orange | Piano Cleveland (6:30, Forte Fridays in Westlake | Chagrin Arts Blind Injustice (7:30 in Playhouse Square, sold out. Pictured: Brian Keith Johnson, Tim Culver & Marian Vogel).

SATURDAY: Athena String Quartet (12 Noon in Cain Park) | Ohio Light Opera (2 pm, Carousel in Wooster) | Cleveland Silent Film Festival (His People, 1925 with live score at Main Cleveland Public Library) | The Cleveland Opera (4 pm arias and duets at Darl Center in Cleveland) | The Cleveland Orchestra (7 pm Carmina Burana at Blossom) | Ohio Light Opera (7:30 Tip-toes in Wooster) | Chagrin Arts (7:30 Blind Injustice in Playhouse Square).

SUNDAY: Ohio Light Opera (2 pm, Brigadoon in Wooster) | Chagrin Arts (3 pm, Blind Injustice in Playhouse Square) | The Cleveland Opera (4 pm arias and duets at St Cyprian in Perry) | Stars in the Classics (4 pm, A Summer Garden Concert in Orange | Music at Bath (5 pm Hunter Skeens and the Forerunners. Original Bluegrass at The Bath Church).

For details visit our Concert Listings.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

By Jarrett Hoffman

A 1,088-page book published a few years back is a timely — if time-intensive — way to celebrate lyricist, librettist, and musical theater icon Oscar Hammerstein II, who was born on July 13, 1895 in New York City. [Read More…]

Pre•Views & Features

Piano Days 2025: two weeks, six international pianists, and many creative performances

by Stephanie Manning

As the hosts of the Cleveland International Piano Competition, Piano Cleveland spends plenty of time promoting traditional classical repertoire. But their other programming, like the summer festival Piano Days, focus on celebrating the instrument in all its forms.

“ We say this all the time — piano is the most accessible instrument,” Piano Cleveland executive director Marissa Moore said. “Our real goal in programming a festival like this is always to push the boundaries of what people think of when they think about classical music.”

The 2025 edition of Piano Days, which will take place at venues across the area from July 20 through August 2, features six musicians who champion crossovers in genre, presentation, and cultural influence. Tickets are available online. [Read on…]

Conductor Osmo Vänskä returns to Blossom Music Center

by Mike Telin

“It’s great to come to Cleveland, because the Orchestra is always willing to do their best,” conductor Osmo Vänskä said during a recent interview. “And they expect that if someone is on the podium, that person should have the same attitude and have done their homework.”

On Saturday, July 12 at 7:00 pm, Osmo Vänskä will revisit Blossom Music Center to lead The Cleveland Orchestra in a program that includes Jean Sibelius’ En Saga and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Tickets are available online.

Speaking to him via Zoom from his home in Minneapolis, I began our conversation by asking him if there is a connection between the Sibelius and Orff. “To be honest, I don’t know if they’re connected,” Vänskä said. “There are many ways to come to a final program. Obviously in this case the concert was about Carmina Burana, and we needed another piece to start with.”

[Read on…]

Blind Injustice: a conversation with the stage director, conductor, and chorus master (4th of 4 articles)

by Mike Telin

This weekend, Chagrin Arts will present the Northeast Ohio premiere of Blind Injustice at Outcalt Theatre in Playhouse Square.

Composed by Scott Davenport Richards with a libretto by David Cote, the opera is based on Ohio Innocence Project co-founder Mark Godsey’s book of the same name and interviews with six people who had their convictions overturned. The 90-minute opera will be presented on Friday, July 11 (sold out), Saturday, July 12 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, July 13 at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

We caught up with director Eric van Baars, conductor Andrew Grams, and chorus master Jay White on Zoom. I began our conversation by asking them how they became involved with the project.

[Read on…]

Blind Injustice: the making of an opera (3rd of 4 articles)

by Mike Telin

This weekend, Chagrin Arts will present the Northeast Ohio premiere of Blind Injustice at Outcalt Theatre in Playhouse Square.

Based on Ohio Innocence Project co-founder Mark Godsey’s book of the same name and interviews with six people who had their convictions overturned, the 90-minute opera will be presented on Friday, July 11 (sold out), Saturday, July 12 at 7:30 pm, and Sunday, July 13 at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

We caught up with composer Scott Davenport Richards and librettist David Cote on Zoom.

Mike Telin: Who originally approached whom about creating this opera? 

David Cote: The Cincinnati Opera reached out to me because they heard about my work, but the director, Robin Guarino, was already attached to the project. At the time, she was running the opera program at Cincinnati Conservatory, so I flew out there, met her, and we hit it off. We did some initial interviews with the exonerees. So we had a framework, but we needed to find the perfect composer.

[Read on…]

The cast of Blind Injustice discuss portraying real people and the power of hope (2nd of 4 articles)

by Stephanie Manning

 While the team at Chagrin Arts was in talks to bring Blind Injustice to Northeast Ohio, the question of location became increasingly important. “We talked about doing it in different cities, but it became clear that this needs to happen in Cleveland,” tenor Tim Culver said.

Composed by Scott Davenport Richards with a libretto by David Cote, the 90-minute opera follows the stories of six people who had their convictions overturned with help from the Ohio Innocence Project. Four of them lived in Cleveland or East Cleveland, while the other two lived in neighboring Lorain and Summit counties.

[Read on…]

Blind Injustice: Six lives wrongly incarcerated, one story of hope and resilience (1st of 4 articles)

by Mike Telin

When Karen Prasser started her job as executive director of Chagrin Arts in January of 2019, she found herself going through the files of programs that participants in Chautauqua-in-Chagrin had said they wanted to learn more about. Among them was the University of Cincinnati-based Ohio Innocence Project (OIP) who have a simple goal: to free every innocent person in Ohio who has been convicted of a crime they didn’t commit.

At the same time, Prasser — who had worked in opera for many years — was made aware of Blind Injustice, a work that was to receive its premiere by Cincinnati Opera on July 22, 2019. The 90-minute, one-act opera is based on OIP co-founder Mark Godsey’s book of the same name, and on interviews with six people who had their convictions overturned through the efforts of the Ohio Innocence Project. [Read on…]

Ohio Light Opera: three key players discuss this season’s repertoire and some bittersweet changes ahead

by Stephanie Manning

This summer, Ohio Light Opera artistic director Steven Daigle is crossing not one, but two shows off his bucket list.

“ I would’ve loved to direct all six of the shows this summer,” he said. But after dividing up assignments between him and his three fellow directors, eventually he had to choose.

So what drew him to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel and Noël Coward’s Bitter Sweet?  These shows aren’t just visual and musical spectacles — they also grapple with some complicated emotions. [Read on…]

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