What a whirlwind yesterday was for us! We began with pure elation, thanks to the kindness and generosity of the luminous Joyce DiDonato, whose Monday evening pep talk for our teens sent us to the moon and back, ready to launch our campaign with verve. That was followed up by a spectacular day of giving, in which we raised a total of $3160.00, the single biggest fundraising day in our tiny workshop’s history.
We would like to express our most sincere and humble gratitude to Joyce, and to everyone who supported us through the day by joining our Facebook event, sharing, liking, and retweeting our posts, leaving us words of encouragement, and of course to those who gave so generously to help keep our program going and our teens singing. We are in your debt, and we will do everything we can to deliver in the form of beautiful music and ecstatic teen faces. I have no doubt that our students will leave our program, go out into the world, and make it a better, more compassionate, and more beautiful place, through music or whatever they end up ultimately pursuing. Your investment in them will not be in vain.
On that note, I wanted to add that for me, personally, one of the most gratifying things about the day was watching and listening to my own teens talk about the program and what it’s meant to them. I’d be lying if I pretended that I didn’t know they are enjoying themselves in the opera workshop, but I spent much of the day with tears in my eyes, listening to my own students talk about the work we’ve come to think of as routine at our studio. I was also extremely moved by the 11th-hour video contribution from my friend, Emilie Renard, whose thoughtful (and thorough!) discussion of our work and why she has supported us so consistently over the past few years basically validated all the work I love most dearly in the span of seven minutes.
Thank you, all of you, for your generosity and your belief in what we’re doing at Act Too Studio Opera Workshop. It means the world to us, and we will work to give back in all the beauty we can muster.
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As the air cools, we’re already deep into the year’s 
This year, as you may know, with the assistance of classical radio host and early music expert James David Jacobs, we’ll be assembling a collection of Monteverdi madrigals and opera fragments to create a new narrative of our own (tentatively named Il sogno d’Arianna), in our own new edition with new English translations adapted specifically for our singers. We’re very grateful to have James on board, and are especially looking forward to him working with our students to deepen their understanding of material.
We’re still recovering from this weekend’s performances of