The title “Connecting” reflects the intertwining and continuity of human relationships.

This concert program brings together three American vocal works from the twentieth century and beyond. It opens with Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, followed by Jake Heggie’s Natural Selections, and concludes with Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera The Telephone.

Together, these works explore different dimensions of “connection”—from familial memory and intimacy, to reflections on nature and humanity, and finally to the emotional bonds between lovers shaped by the technology of the telephone.