Lincoln Center Announces 2018 Mozart Festival Lineup

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — With the return of summer approaching, Lincoln Center is gearing up for its annual Mostly Mozart Festival. The performing arts center has celebrated the music of legendary Austrian classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for more than half a century.

This year's festival "marks an expansion of the festival," according to a Lincoln Center press release. The festival — which starts July 12 and runs until August 12 — will feature a significantly increased programming schedule, greater emphasis on contemporary music and an expanded footprint to Central Park and Brooklyn, according to a press release.

"What is most inspiring about Mozart is his unmatched capacity for invention and innovation,” Jane Moss, Lincoln Center's Ehrenkranz artistic director, said in a statement. "Any festival that carries his name must exhibit an equally bold and adventurous commitment to ongoing growth and transformation."

The annual festival will once again be led by Louis Langrée, who signed a three-year extension last year to remain at Lincoln Center through 2020. This year's Mostly Mozart Festival will feature performances from both established musicians and up-and-coming artists, according to a press release.

Members of Lincoln Center's "Friends of Mostly Mozart" program will have first dibs on tickets starting April 4. Tickets for the general public will go on sale starting April 16. Tickets can be purchased online, over the phone or in person at Lincoln Center's David Geffen Hall or Alice Tully Hall box offices.

Highlights from this year's festival include (information courtesy Lincoln Center):

• Available Light, the groundbreaking collaboration by choreographer Lucinda Childs, composer John Adams, and architect Frank Gehry in its first New York revival since its premiere three decades ago

• Haydn’s The Creation, in the North American premiere of a production by the radically inventive Catalan theater collective La Fura dels Baus

• A revival of the landmark production of Yukio Ninagawa’s Macbeth in its final staging

• A world premiere by Mark Morris set to Schubert’s Trout Quintet

• The world premiere of a Lincoln Center commission, In the Name of the Earthby John Luther Adams, for 800 voices in Central Park

• A celebration of the Bernstein Centennial with Leonard Bernstein’s MASS, in a new staging by Elkhanah Pulitzer in her New York debut, featuring theMostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, led by Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director Louis Langrée, with bass-baritone Davóne Tines

• The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra performs eight programs with guest artists including Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Thomas Dausgaard, and soprano Rosa Feola (New York debut), among many others

• New York premiere of Ashley Fure and Adam Fure’s installation opera The Force of Things: An Opera for Objects, to be performed in Brooklyn by the International Contemporary Ensemble

• A Little Night Music, a returning series of intimate, late-night performances; documentary film presentations, and special free events also featured.

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