What to see first is the biggest challenge facing those planning to take advantage of the full roster of events at this year’s 10th Festival of the Arts Boca, which opens Friday in Mizner Park and runs through March 16.
Conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos will open the festival by conducting the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music in John Williams’s score for Raiders of the Lost Ark as the popular 1981 adventure film screens in the background.
“It’s quite a thrill to hear a large, live orchestra playing John Williams’s wonderful score,” says Kitsopoulos. “It’s quite exciting and a great piece of music. If you haven’t heard an orchestra live and in person, this is a great way to experience it.”
Music is at the front and center of the 12-day festival with many big name musicians, including returning violin virtuoso Joshua Bell, who will conduct and perform in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with the Lynn Philharmonia on March 16.
On Saturday, Kitsopoulos presents The Magic Flute, the first performance at the festival of an opera, in a new, family-friendly, semi-staged 90-minute English version of the 1791 singspiel.
Directed by his daughter, Antonia Kitsopoulos, with a new, contemporary translation he did himself from the German, Kitsopoulos says he threw in a few local references and kept it kid-friendly.
“It’s very approachable for young folks,” he says. “It’s a way to introduce kids to Mozart with good storytelling and great characters.”
Fresh off rehearsals in New York, Kitsopoulos is including local performers such as the Master Chorale of South Florida in the production.
The music continues with legendary jazz trumpeter Herb Alpert and his wife, Grammy Award winning singer Lani Hall, on March 6; the Florida premiere of the Joey Alexander Trio, featuring the two-time Grammy-nominated 12-year old-jazz pianist, Joey Alexander, along with the The Symphonia Boca Raton and Kitsopoulos conducting, on March 11.
Kitsopoulos returns March 12 with Cirque de la Symphonie, the only cirque company in the world to perform exclusively with a live symphony orchestra.
The Festival of the Arts Boca is part music, part letters, and the festival’s Authors & Ideas programs offer audiences the chance to hear many noted authors and pundits up close and in person.
Fareed Zakaria, a Washington Post columnist and host of CNN’s weekend show, GPS, will speak March 7 about “Global Hot Spots and Trends: The Next Security Crisis.”
Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and a MacArthur Genius Fellow, is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University. His March 8 talk will be called “The Biology of Good and Evil.”
Laila Lalami, a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize and author of the novel, The Moor’s Account, will speak about her book on March 9, and Jay M. Winter, a just-retired history professor at Yale University, will talk about World War I and its impact on the 21st century on March 12.
Lastly, Irwin Stovroff, a World War II veteran who spent 13 months in a Nazi POW camp and who founded Vets Helping Heroes, an organization that raises funds to train assistance dogs for disabled U.S. veterans, will present “An Extraordinary Life, Gone to the Dogs,” in a talk on March 6.
The Festival of the Arts Boca runs from Friday to March 16 at the Mizner Park Amphitheatre, 225 NE Mizner Blvd., Boca Raton. Visit: festivaloftheartsboca.org and download their mobile app. Tickets: $15-225 per person; Info: (866) 571-2787