Recent Events
OCTOBER 2024
The elegant evening – hosted by Midge Woolsey of Thirteen/WNET and WQXR Radio - featured recollections and tributes as well as dazzling musical entertainment by well-known Musical Theatre personalities and stars of stage and screen. Natalie Douglas: Internationally acclaimed vocalist and Broadway World Cabaret Best Vocalist Award winner, Joseph Gray: Legendary "Set It Off" man at the Apollo Theater whose electric performances energize the crowd, Moipei: Award-winning Kenyan vocal trio known for their stunning harmonies and dynamic performances, Lee Roy Reams: Hailed by The New York Times as “Broadway’s song and dance man nonpareil”, Craig Rubano: Multiple M.A.C. and Bistro award-winning cabaret artist known for his starring role in Les Misérables.
Brian Stokes Mitchell presented Leslie Uggams with the Encompass Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award.
JUNE 2024
Sunday, June 9 – 3pm
The Greene Space
44 Charlton St.
New York, NY, 10014
Encompass New Opera Theatre hosted a dazzling musical afternoon at The Greene Space to celebrate the rich cultural tapestry that is the very fabric of America, whether you, your parents, or your ancestors from long ago immigrated here. Film, voice, violin, cello, flute and piano amplify their stories!
Unheard Voices: An Immigrant’s Dream featured world premieres from El Salvador and Argentina sung by the gifted Salvador/American tenor Oswaldo Iraheta, by composer Juan Carlos Guerra Gonzalez; and the riveting composer Richard Pearson Thomas with a tribute to his Great Grandmother sent to America in 1899 with only a note pinned to her jacket. Soprano MaKayla McDonald performed the compelling aria from The Consul. The international Ukrainian/Russian duo of Sky Caravan---Milena Dawidowicz, violin and Elena Panova, piano performed John Williams’ Theme from Schindler’s List and Melody by the beloved Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk. Cellist Valeriya Sholokhova and Flutist Jessica Aura Taskov performed premiere works on the program.
NOVEMBER 2023
On November 15th, 2023, we were honored to bring the powerful story of Sister Dorothy Stang on tour! With her perseverance, courage, and environmental awareness, Sister Dorothy Stang’s compassionate devotion to saving the rainforest and its people is vitally important today. Encompass Theatre performed Angel of the Amazon by Evan Mack at Notre Dame Academy in Hingham, MA for students of Emmanuel College and four Notre Dame Academy high schools in
their 800 seat theatre!
For more information on how you can bring Angel of the Amazon to a theatre near you, click here! We will be sure to reach out to you as soon as possible! Thank you for bringing this important story of courage and environmental awareness to audiences near you!
“May the message of this work be carried out of the theater and on to the streets.”
MARCH 2023
We honored and celebrated legendary cabaret and concert artist Marilyn Maye,
and Tony Award winning songwriters of Hairspray and Some Like It Hot,
Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman!
Thank you to the honorees and their remarkable talent
they've so graciously shared with us all!
November 2022
Angel of the Amazon is based on the true story of Sister Dorothy Stang, an American missionary who devoted forty years to helping the indigenous farmers and families of Brazil gain land rights and to protecting the Rainforest. In 2005, this 73-year-old nun was brutally murdered by assassins hired by the owner of a logging company, who felt her passion for the Earth and all of its gifts to be a threat. Angel of the Amazon depicts her life's work and the events that set her on a path to martyrdom.
A modern musical story of strength, devotion and sacrifice, was produced by Encompass New Opera Theatre, in 2011, at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. It is now being developed by Encompass for touring, to bring vital awareness of the importance of preserving the Amazon Rainforest, considered to be the lungs of our planet. Angel of the Amazon is a centerpiece of the Encompass Paradigm Shifts Festival, that honors people around the world who are preserving our Planet and is dedicated to bridging indigenous cultures and knowledge, women's wisdom, and environmental-social justice issues that explore our place in the universe.
JULY 2022
We visited Chicago for NATS 2022 to share outstanding songs
by living American composers.
JUNE 2022
Thank you to Christ & Saint Stephen’s Church for the generous donation of their space, to our speakers Counselor Natalia Mudrenko and Council Member Gale A. Brewer, and especially to our incredible performers for offering their talents for the benefit of the Ukrainian people.
August 2019
Encompass' Young Artist/ Education Outreach Program Presents
Vignettes from The Consul
by Gian-Carlo Menotti
About the Opera
THE CONSUL, an opera with words and music by Gian –Carlo Menotti, won both the Pulitzer Prize in Music and the New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award. Hailed by The New York Times at its Broadway opening on March 15, 1950, as “an opera…written from the heart with a blazing sincerity and a passion of human understanding….it is torn out of the life of the present-day world, and poses an issue which mercilessly confronts humanity today.” Indeed, the opera remains as timely today as when it was written seventy years ago, taking on a renewed relevance for contemporary audiences.
Gian Carlo Menotti wrote THE CONSUL in response to news reports and personal encounters he had with refugees fleeing Europe after World War II. He dramatized the despair, risk and loss of immigrants, and his own experience as an American immigrant with Italian citizenship labeled as an “enemy alien” during World War II.
Meet the Cast and Creative Team of
The Consul
Dr. Michael Eisenberg, Music Director/Pianist
Nancy Rhodes, Director
Andis Gjoni, Sets and Costumes
Click on Photos from the Performance
June 2019
IMMIGRANT FAMILIES TOGETHER is a rapid response group of volunteers who galvanized around the crisis provoked by the Zero Tolerance policy. Founded in New York City in June 2018, this growing network of Americans raise money to bond out parents and re-unite them with their children; they provide legal, medical, housing, clothing, and food for families as they proceed through their legal cases. They support over 100 reunited families while they recover from their detention trauma.
Summer Songs with Billy Stritch
March 2019
A Musical Salute Gala
Jazz Gala Honoring Tony Award-winning Luminaries Laura Benanti & Bartlett Sher
New American Opera Previews, Page to Stage
In this time of critical social justice issues such as immigration, walls, the me-too movement and the rights of women and children around the world, the rights of indigenous people worldwide, and the global climate crisis and need for earth ethics, we are inspired by a search for freedom through the lens of three women in new opera and Lord Byron.
