Bel Cantanti Opera Visitors", at St. James Episcopal Church in Leesburg, Virginia. Bel Cantanti has had continued success with its productions of : Donizetti's "L'elisir d'Amore", Verdi's "Rigoletto", Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors", Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin", Rossini's "Il barbiere di Siviglia", Donizetti's "La fille du régiment", Humperdinck's "Hänsel und Gretel", Rachmaninoff's "Aleko", Tchaikovsky's "Iolanta", Mozart's "Le nozze di Figaro", and Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor". The company's 2007-2008 season produced fully staged versions of Mozart's "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" ("The Abduction from the Seraglio", performed in German, March 2008) and G. Puccini's birth with an abridged version of "La bohème". In December
Josephine Lucchese "Rigoletto", Lady Harriet Durham in "Martha", Micaëla in "Carmen", Rosina in "The Barber of Seville", Violetta in "La traviata", and the title role in "Lucia di Lammermoor". In 1925 Lucchese performed Violetta to 's Alfredo at the Academy of Music in the very first performance of the Philadelphia La Scala Opera Company. In 1926 she made her debut with the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company (PGOC) as Gilda to Millo Picco's Rigoletto. She later became a resident artist with the PGOC from 1929 until the company's bankruptcy in 1932, performing such roles as Konstanze in "The Abduction from the Seraglio", Leïla