ACADEMY OF SACRED DRAMA LTD

Description

While in the Historical Performance program at The Juilliard School, Academy of Sacred Drama founder Jeremy Rhizor discovered the sadly neglected world of sacred drama and began to brainstorm how he might be able to champion the revival of the genre.

Of immediate interest was the Baroque oratorio genre that draws its stories from Biblical tales and the lives of the saints. Oratorio libretti tell stories that generally would have been familiar to European contemporaries regardless of their beliefs. Jeremy proposed to create a Baroque-style Academy for the present day that would make it possible for the stories of sacred drama to come alive for audiences of today.

And so the Academy of Sacred Drama was formed. We seek to revive one of humanity’s great art forms present in rituals, in liturgy, and on stage. The New York Times called us "striking" and listed our performance of Antonio Draghi’s late seventeenth century Oratorio di Giuditta as one of the top ten of the week-an honor that we shared for that period with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

In the 2022-2023 season, we're performing oratorios by the composer Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747), a contemporary of G.F. Handel, that deal with the theme of "Triumph Over Temptation." Performances are in Scarsdale, NY at St. James the Less Church and in New York City at St. Vincent Ferrer Church.