Beethoven wrote one opera. Everything he had to say about love surviving confinement, about identity bent in service of rescue — it all lives in Fidelio, and the work carries that compression like a spring. Sotto Voce and the Avanti Festival Orchestra bring Beethoven’s singular operatic statement to Asbury Hall at Babeville in Buffalo on Friday, August 14, closing out the third annual Buffalo Beethoven Festival.
About the Show
This production marks the third collaboration between Sotto Voce and conductor Mason Cancilla, and the Buffalo company’s “opera nouveau” approach shapes it in visible ways. Soprano Amanda Santos makes her Sotto Voce debut as Leonore, the wife who disguises herself as a young man named Fidelio to reach her imprisoned husband Florestan. Tenor Danny Leclerc makes his company debut as Florestan. Bass Tim Flynn returns as Rocco. Sotto Voce founder and artistic director Jessie Downs steps into the role of Marzelline, and tenor Robert Flora joins as Jaquino; three members of the principal cast are making their Sotto Voce debuts.
What distinguishes this staging is the cinematic layer: co-director Alex Huddleston has created two original short films to accompany the overtures, consistent with Sotto Voce’s practice of weaving film and theatrical performance rather than treating them as separate arts. The company’s 2024 Magic Flute incorporated Bergman-inspired short films; their Suor Angelica wove survivor narratives directly into the staging. For Fidelio, Huddleston’s films extend a work that already presses against the line between music and image. The opera is sung in German, with spoken dialogue in English and English supertitles, in a fully staged production with sets, costumes, and props.
Founded in 2016 as a contemporary music vocal collective and incorporated as an opera company in 2023, Sotto Voce has moved through new-music premieres to canonical repertoire, including The Magic Flute, Lucia di Lammermoor, and Cavalleria Rusticana, each production filtered through the company’s practice of integrating film, movement, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. The Avanti Festival Orchestra brings together amateur and professional musicians across a repertoire spanning Baroque to Modern. The Buffalo Beethoven Festival, now in its third year, drew more than 400 audience members in its inaugural 2024 season and expanded to two weeks in 2025; this production serves as its 2026 capstone. A second performance is scheduled for Sunday, August 16, with the same cast and production.
Venue & Logistics
Asbury Hall at Babeville is a historic music hall at 341 Delaware Ave in Buffalo — exactly the kind of room Sotto Voce gravitates toward. The company has built its identity around staging opera in venues chosen for acoustic character rather than theatrical convention, and Asbury Hall fits: large enough to carry a full orchestra and chorus, close enough that a work like Fidelio, intimate at its core even at its most dramatic, lands the way it should. It is one of western New York‘s more distinctive live performance spaces. Doors at 6 p.m., show at 7 p.m.
Tickets
General Admission Seated tickets are $50, available through TixR or in person at the Babeville Box Office. Cash purchases are fee-free; card transactions carry a 3% surcharge. Buy tickets