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
Il caso Mortara Il caso Mortara Il caso Mortara (The Mortara Case) is an opera in two acts composed by Francesco Cilluffo to an Italian-language libretto by the composer himself, inspired by "The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara" by David Kertzer. The opera was commissioned by the Dicapo Opera Theater, New York, and premiered in February 2010. It is the first Italian opera commissioned to an Italian composer by a New York opera company since the times of Giacomo Puccini at the Metropolitan Opera. "New York Times" critic Anthony Tommasini hailed it as one of the most important events of New York's 2010 operatic