Ars Minerva - Ifigenia in Aulide.
Short Biography
Ars Minerva was founded in 2013 by Céline Ricci with a vision for a new performing arts organization that would recreate forgotten music and create multidisciplinary events around early music, while remaining locally rooted and outreach-oriented.
Since its inception, Ars Minerva has presented the modern world premieres of three long-forgotten Venetian operas in San Francisco: La Cleopatra (1662), Le Amazzoni nelle Isole Fortunate (1676) and La Circe (1665).
![]()
Project
IFIGENIA IN AULIDE - an opera composed by Giovanni Porta in 1738 with a libretto by Apostolo Zeno.
Synopsis
The Greek army, ready to battle against Troy under the command of King Agamemnon, was detained by contrary winds for several months in the port of Aulis. Agamemnon appealed to the Oracle; and the soothsayer Calchas responded that it would not be possible to sail to Troy, without first placating the wrath of the Goddess Diana with a death, and with the sacrifice of Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon.
Dates and Venues
November 30th & December 1st at 7.30pm: Semi-Staged Performances.
At ODC THEATER, San Francisco.
And a new venue for Ars Minerva!
November 9th at 8pm: Abridged Concert Version.
At RESONANCE CONCERT SERIES - First Congregational Church, Berkeley.
Your Contribution
Thanks to your donations, we'll be able to recreate a long-lost baroque opera!
Ticket sales cover only about 30% of our budget. In fact, 70% of our production budget comes from individual donations. Your support will help Ars MInerva to remunerate the performing artists, the researching artists and the creating artists.
Bringing back forgotten music to life is an act of beauty and love and an amazing human adventure. Join the team!
Thank you so much for your generosity and for spreading the word.
![]()
Goals
Cultural and historical preservation
By recreating Ifigenia in Aulide in 2018, Ars Minerva will promote cultural heritage and historical preservation. Nowadays, most major opera houses, ensembles and orchestras tend to play a 19th-century-dominated standard repertoire. As a consequence, the audience’s experience of classical music can be repetitive and beautiful music from our past remains un-played and unheard. An important part of our operatic heritage remains hidden from audiences and artists.
Hire Bay Area artists & young artists
For Ifigenia in Aulide we will mainly hire local artists, among which will be some current and former students of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Ars Minerva is proud to primarily collaborate with so many talented artists in the SF Bay Area who fully embrace the process of musical re-creation.
Bring new and younger audiences to the opera
We aim to engage new audiences for classical music through innovative productions. Our staged productions are modern—we place our re-creations of original Baroque scores in a context that makes them relevant to today’s world. Our audience is growing and we have noticed that young people and students are enthusiastically engaged with our performances.
Impact
Audiences
Our audiences will experience innovative new music reborn from the past, unexpected contrasts with past mindsets, and an incredible energetic and dramatic performance by a vibrant new troupe. It is important for lesser-known operas to be revived. Many are forgotten gems in their own right, and they also provide context for the greatest composers and the eras in which they worked. For instance, we cannot fully understand 17th-century Venetian opera if the only composer we know is Claudio Monteverdi.
Participants
Our participants will engage in a unique music re-creation process, an intense and high quality work that will demand lots of creativity, being part of an energetic team proud to bring Ifigenia in Aulide back to life. When singers and instrumentalists experience an opera re-creation, they have no references to refer to, no previous performances, no CD to listen to or DVD to watch. They will have to rely on their deep learning about music and their stylistic knowledge of that period of time, and be very creative and flexible during rehearsals.
Risks & Challenges
As a young organization, our big challenges are raising funds and selling tickets, but as in the previous years, we'll do our best to make it.
![]()
Reviews
"Céline Ricci and her Ars Minerva company are a cultural treasure, and we are lucky indeed to have them here in the Bay Area." THE BERKELEY DAILY PLANET, 2018.
"Outstanding and delightful... a useful reminder of the operatic riches that remain yet uncovered." THE REVERBERATE HILLS, 2017.
“The Amazons Enchant San Francisco" OPERA TODAY, 2016.
"The staging and fine singing made for a vibrantly entertaining performance." SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE, 2016.
"This revival of Castrovillari’s La Cleopatra was a rare treat for San Francisco audiences." THE BERKELEY DAILY PLANET, 2015.
Thank you very much for your support,
Ars Minerva team.
Ars Minerva is a 501(c)3 performing arts non-profit organization based in San Francisco. All contributions to Ars Minerva are fully tax-deductible to the extent allowed by the law.
