Save the date for Down with for Love: Battle of the Exes in Broadway, Opera, and the Great American Songbook, featuring great tunes by Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, and Bloomington’s own Hoagy Carmichael.

Last year we featured a romantic love story through songs, arias, and scenes. This year we flip the script! We’ll focus on two feuding exes who show up to perform at the same gala concert, brought together by their booking manager who wants to barter a truce – but who has another motive as well. Will romantic chemistry save the day, or will everyone declare that they are done – and down – with love?

Pittsburgh soprano Anna Singer and North Carolina tenor Joseph Ittoop reunite with Bloomington baritone Richard Lewis for this romantic comedy, and Baton Rouge conductor Michael Borowitz rejoins us at the piano. Our operatic scenes by Bizet, Mozart, Puccini, and Tchaikovsky are featured in the “gala” concert-within-a-concert, while our characters express their emotions in great songs like “I Get Along without You Very Well,” “So in Love,” and “How Long Has This Been Going On?”

We continue our annual tradition of accepting donations to benefit Fairview Elementary School’s literacy and arts integration programs. Since 2014, you – our dedicated, generous audience – have raised over $36,000 for these vital programs. Your generosity helps provide Fairview students – whose families often face significant economic challenges – with opportunities to excel in ways they may never have dreamed possible. We will share information at the concert about ways to give in person, by QR code, or securely online. Thank you!

We will film our live concert for a fall YouTube broadcast so that we can share this musical event with our online audience. For now, please plan to join us in person on Sunday, August 24 at 4:00 p.m. for Down with Love: Battle of the Exes in Broadway, Opera, and the Great American Songbook.