Opera News

Fort Worth Opera to open its 2024-25 season with favorite Little Women

Fort Worth Opera presents Little Women

Ellen Appel

The Fort Worth Opera will open its 2024-2025 season with a crowd pleaser: Mark Adamo’s operatic adaptation of the beloved literary classic, Little Women.

Performances will be held the week before Thanksgiving, on November 22 and 24, at the W. E. Scott Theatre in the Fort Worth Cultural District.

“Louisa May Alcott’s timeless story of the March sisters has been a fixture in American literature for over 150 years,” says Fort Worth Opera General & Artistic Director Angela Turner Wilson in a release. “Mark Adamo’s exquisite contemporary opera adaptation provides a rich new version of that story, breathing exciting life into the resonant themes of family, sisterhood, growing up, and coming home.”

Last performed by Fort Worth Opera in 2005, Little Women makes its 2024 Fort Worth homecoming as a fully staged mainstage production, with direction by Claire Choquette and chamber orchestra accompaniment by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Tyson Deaton.

Mezzo-soprano Kelly Guerra — who arrives in Fort Worth following her Metropolitan Opera debut in Osvaldo Golijov and David Henry Hwang’s Ainadamar — stars in the role of Jo March. She's joined by Bridget Cappel (mezzo-soprano) as Meg, Mary Feminear (soprano) as Beth, and Megan Koch (lyric coloratura soprano) as Amy.

Several members of the cast mark homecomings of their own with this production as they previously performed as Fort Worth Opera Resident Artists (RAs) and Studio Artists. Two are also celebrating a love story: Cappel and baritone Erik Earl Larson met, fell in love, and married as Fort Worth Opera RAs. They will be falling in love and getting married all over again onstage as the opera’s Meg March and John Brooke.

This production also represents a homecoming for star-on-the-rise stage director Claire Choquette, who was born in New Orleans, grew up in Oklahoma City, and now lives in Dallas.

“When people think of Little Women, it feels very nostalgic,” Choquette says in a statement. “It's a book that many of us read when we were younger and just starting to dive into the classics. But it's also an important piece of literature with a relatable story about the value of family connections and growing up together. In modern American society, individuality is often more heavily valued than family ties. We're encouraged to leave our family homes and pursue our dreams alone, while rarely being reminded that it's okay to prioritize family, whether chosen or biological, and keep them close to your heart.”

To suggest those varieties of families onstage, Choquette has changed an offstage chorus of voices from previous productions into a fully staged chorus of modern young women: four undergraduate performers from TCU's Opera Studio program, to underscore the relevance of the opera’s themes of sisterhood, family, and emerging maturity.

The W. E. Scott Theatre provides a final, bittersweet element, as the arts complex is slated for imminent closure and potential redevelopment. Little Women may be the last production to occupy the Scott Theatre in its current state.

To purchase tickets or season ticket packages for the 2024-25 season — which includes The Elixir of Love with the Hattie Mae Leslie Resident Artists in January 2025, the biennial McCammon Voice Competition in March 2025, and the mainstage production of La Cenerentola (Cinderella) at Bass Hall in April, 2025 — visit the Fort Worth Opera website at fwopera.org.

The Fort Worth Opera production of Little Women takes the stage on Friday, November 22 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, November 24 at 2:00 pm at the W. E. Scott Theatre, 1300 Gendy St. The production is in English with English supertitles. The performance will run for two hours, with one 20-minute intermission.

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Ancient Sculpture News

Fort Worth museum one of only 3 in U.S. to get rare sculpture exhibit

Lorenzo di Masi/Torlonia Collection

The Torlonia Nile

A major exhibition of ancient Roman masterworks is coming to the U.S. for the first time to be viewed at only three museums — including the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

Called Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection, it's an assemblage of works stewarded by the Torlonia Family beginning in the early-19th century, and will be installed at the Kimbell from September 14, 2025 – January 25, 2026.

As part of the Foundation’s mission to showcase these historical works to the public, the exhibition will premiere at the Art Institute of Chicago on March 15 through June 29, before traveling to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. Its third stop will be at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, from March 14 - July 19, 2026.

The Torlonia Collection was established during the course of the 19th century by the Franco-Italian banker Prince Giovanni Torlonia and his son Alessandro, then handed down over generations, eventually growing into the largest private collection of ancient Roman sculptures.

Today, the Torlonia Foundation represents the culmination of the Family’s continued passion for art. Created at the behest of Prince Alessandro Torlonia (1925–2017), the Foundation’s mission is to preserve and promote the Torlonia Collection and Villa Albani Torlonia.

In 1876, Prince Alessandro Torlonia (1800-1886) created a museum to house and exhibit the Family’s holdings, which was open to small groups until its closure at the onset of World War II. The sculptures remained unseen by the public from that time until the Foundation’s first exhibition at the Musei Capitolini in Rome in 2020. That was followed by a stint at the Louvre, the first presentation of the collection outside of Rome, where it has drawn more than 600,000 visitors to date, an unprecedented feat.

The exhibit
The curators of Myth & Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection are Lisa Ayla Çakmak and Katharine A. Raff of the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition is co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Torlonia Foundation, in collaboration with the Kimbell Art Museum, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and The Museum Box. All of the sculptures in the exhibition have been restored by the Foundation with the support of Bvlgari.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue co-published by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Torlonia Foundation, edited by Lisa Ayla Çakmak and Katharine A. Raff, with essays by Silvia Beltrametti and Salvatore Settis.

The North American presentation will feature 58 highlights from the Torlonia Collection, including 24 newly restored works that have not been on view in nearly a century. The sculptures date from approximately the 5th century BCE to the early 4th century CE, with the majority of the works dating to the High Imperial period (1st–2nd centuries CE). Highlights include examples of the most emblematic genres of ancient marble sculpture, acquired by the Torlonia Family from the most prominent collections of Rome’s patrician families, as well as from excavations made on the Family’s own estates throughout Italy.

“The Foundation is excited to be sharing the Torlonia Collection with audiences in North America for the first time. This exceptional group of ancient sculptures is a testament to the enduring cultural legacy of ancient Rome, as well as the vision and passion of multiple generations of the Torlonia Family,” said Alessandro Poma Murialdo, President of the Torlonia Foundation.

The presentation is organized thematically in six sections, featuring sculptures found on the Torlonia Family’s properties in Rome and the surrounding suburbs and their estate in Porto, Portugal, as well as a number of exceptional sarcophagi (stone coffins), among the largest sculpted works in marble to survive from ancient Rome.

The tour reinforces the work of the Foundation to advance the appreciation and understanding of this unparalleled collection and the rich cultural heritage it represents. The Foundation’s mission is carried out through a continuous joint effort between the public and private sectors, including with the cooperation of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The Foundation is supported by a longstanding collaboration with Bvlgari as the principal sponsor of the restoration project since its inception in Rome and throughout the global tour, and Chiomenti, who has lent invaluable support to the Foundation’s core activities.

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