Ars Minerva

Ars Minerva's mission is to bring back to life music that has not been played since its creation in the Baroque era. Our artistic activity is unique as the operas we perform are played nowhere else in the world. Most major opera houses, ensembles and orchestras tend to perform a 19th-century-dominated standard repertoire. As a consequence, the audience’s experience of classical music can be repetitive, while part of our operatic and cultural heritage remains hidden from audiences and artists. We aim to engage new audiences through innovative productions of Baroque operas. Our staged productions are modern—we place our re-creations of Baroque scores in a context that makes them relevant to today’s world. Since its inception, Ars Minerva has presented the modern world premieres of five long-forgotten Venetian operas in San Francisco. -March 2015: La Cleopatra, composed by Daniele da Castrovillari for the 1662 Venice carnival season. -May 2016: The Amazons in the Fortunate Isles, composed by Carlo Pallavicino in 1679. -September 2017: La Circe, composed by Pietro Andrea Ziani in 1665. -November/December 2018: Ifigenia in Aulide, composed by Giovanni Porta in 1738. -November 2019: Ermelinda, composed by Domenico Freschi in 1680. In November 2021, Ars Minerva will bring to the stage Messalina, an opera composed by Carlo Pallavicino in 1676. In 2020 Ars Minerva has started a collaboration with the San Francisco Girls Chorus: Juditha - The Journey of a Warrior Woman, based on Vivaldi's Juditha Triumphans. The full staged production will be presented in 2023. In addition, Ars Minerva has collaborated with other Bay Area organizations such as Humanities West, The Museum of Performance + Design, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, and The Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco.