Locust Grove Partners With Kentucky Opera For Summer Thursday Concert Series

Locust Grove is pleased to welcome Kentucky Opera, the State Opera of Kentucky, to the Summer Thursday Concert Series at the historic site. This three-concert series brings the voices of Kentucky Opera to explore the history of Kentucky from its beginnings to the present date through song. Concerts will be held on Thursdays June 14, July 19, and August 30 at 6:30 pm. Each program will focus on a different theme, from traditional regional music, drinking songs, and opera favorites.

Music in the American Wild – Thursday, June 14, 6:30 pm
From the early farm beginnings in the 1790s, to the present day historic site, Kentucky Opera artists will explore the history of Locust Grove through the music of the region, featuring the evolution of spirituals, hymns, American art songs and opera. Featuring Kentucky Opera artists Christina Booker, David George, and Sankara Mitchell Harouna.

Cheers! Prost! À Votre Santé! – Thursday, July 19, 6:30 pm
Enjoy a toast…or several, with appropriate libations and your favorite opera drinking songs performed by Kentucky Opera artists. Come early to explore the distilling activities of early small-farm Kentucky with The Farm Distillery Project.

Locust Grove and Opera—A Musical Timeline – Thursday, August 30, 6:30 pm
Enjoy your opera favorites as explored through the history of Locust Grove. Settler William Croghan was calling Louisville home by 1784. That same year, Mozart became a Freemason in Austria, personally adapting ideals that not only influenced the American Founding Fathers, but would later embed themselves in his acclaimed opera, The Magic Flute. When The Magic Flute premiered a few years later in 1792, Italian opera legend Gioacchino Rossini was born in Italy, and back in Kentucky, William and Lucy Clark Croghan were building their home, Locust Grove. The Croghan family sold the land to riverboat captain James Paul in 1878, when productions of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S Pinafore premiered in the states, inspiring great interest in light opera throughout the country. When the site was purchased by Jefferson County and the Commonwealth of Kentucky and subsequently restored and opened to the public in 1964, Kentucky Opera was producing Bizet’s Carmen, Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte and Verdi’s Rigoletto.

Guests are encouraged to bring their own blankets and chairs for all concerts. Doors open at 6:00 pm; performance begins at 6:30 pm. Concessions will be available for sale. Tickets: $16/$14 for members.