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Is This America? On Sale Now! A Not to be Missed Opera for Our Times

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5631″ img_size=”full” onclick=”link_image” css_animation=”fadeIn”][vc_column_text]Dear Friends of White Snake Projects: With summer just around the corner, we’re celebrating the longer days and sunlight with our new season. How wonderful! How exciting! This year, our theme of “voting as freedom”, in anticipation of the upcoming elections, is anchored by our season opener, “Is This America?,” a […]

White Snake Projects Announces Opera Performances and Community Events, Sep-Dec 2024

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5631″ img_size=”full” onclick=”link_image” css_animation=”fadeIn”][vc_column_text] “WE ARE AMERICA” 2024 ELECTION YEAR THEME SING OUT STRONG: Emancipated Voices (Sep 15) free musical showcase of citizens’ original songs – “What Does Voting Mean To You?” IS THIS AMERICA? Fully-Staged Opera World Premiere (Sep 20-22) composed by 84-year-old Black female composer Mary D. Watkins about civil rights activist […]

Domme & Giovanni Is A Triumph!

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Dear Friends of White Snake Projects: We closed our 2023-24 season with the irreverent, colorful, sexy dark comedy, Domme & Giovanni, a take-off of Mozart’s Don Giovanni! Those lucky enough to snag a seat to this one-of-a-kind show were treated to superb French food and wine at La Voile, Brookline and the artistry of […]

Announcing Ticket Sales for Monkey

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5285″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Dear Friends of White Snake Projects: Tickets are on sale TODAY for Monkey, A Kung Fu Puppet Parable. YAY!!! It’s an amazing show so be sure you get your tickets. We know it’s amazing because when do you ever see “MONKEY,” “KUNG FU,”, and “PUPPET,” all together in one phrase? I daresay, […]

Announcing White Snake Project’s 2023/24 Season

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5369″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Dear Friends of White Snake Projects: We are so proud to announce our second full season. YAY! And a special thank you to all who made our first season a success. We start off in September with the amazing, family-friendly opera MONKEY: A Kung Fu Puppet Parable. We know it’s amazing because […]

Major Funding from Creative Capital

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]So happy and proud that Brent Michael Davids, with the support and help from White Snake Projects, has won a major Creative Capital grant. We will be producing his powerful and moving Requiem for America. http://www.requiemforamerica.com/blog/major-funding-from-creative-capital[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Show Out Boston!

WOW! What a night! Boston showed up, showed out and showed off! We are so grateful to all our partners, audience members, and supporters who worked so hard to make this event a success. Big kudos to all. We’re planning next year’s Show Out Boston! now. Please join us again. Be safe, be well, our […]

Thanks for Celebrating with us 🥰

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5138″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Dear Friends of White Snake Projects: We are still heady from the gorgeous performances of Let’s Celebrate!, at WGBH’s Calderwood Studio. What a show! It was an occasion of many firsts for us – first time performing in a TV studio before a live studio audience, first time streaming live to a […]

Cerise Jacobs on All Things Considered

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Founding artist director of White Snake Projects and opera-maker Cerise Jacobs was featured on GBH’s All Things Considered this week with host Arun Rath. “What we want to do is to celebrate some of these diverse holiday traditions and introduce them to our neighbors and our friends and to the American audience so that we […]

We Did It!

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5059″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Dear Friends of White Snake Projects: We did it! We completed our three performance run of Cosmic Cowboy with no casualties to Covid-19 (thank you Sumerian gods, our Covid Health Liaison, Stephen Jackson, and our team who followed all the protocols). We only had to struggle, as always with our drive for […]

PROGRAM BOOK: A Survivor’s Odyssey

Dear Friends of White Snake Projects: It’s been an amazing week! We just completed our three part activist forums created with our partners as part of the ecosystem in which world premiere opera, A Survivor’s Odyssey lives.  Thank you audience members for coming on this journey of learning with us, and thank you dear partners for […]

Program Book: A Survivor’s Odyssey Online Forums

Dear Friends of White Snake Projects: Welcome back! We hope you had a wonderful summer! Hopefully September will bring some spectacular sunny days. It will also bring the excitement of our world premiere of A Survivor’s Odyssey: The Journey of Penelope and Circe. It’s the third installment of WSP’s Pandemic Trilogy and it’s live online […]

Tickets On Sale Now for “A Survivor’s Odyssey”

We’re excited to announce that tickets are now on sale for the third and final opera in White Snake Projects’ Pandemic Trilogy: A Survivor’s Odyssey: The Journey of Penelope and Circe. Like the first two operas in the Trilogy, A Survivor’s Odyssey will premiere LIVE in cyberspace, at 7:30pm, September 24, 26 and 28, 2021. For […]

PermaDeath: What Does it Mean to Die Permanently?

It troubled me that my son came to White Snake Projects’ productions reluctantly from obligation. I asked him one day, “What would it take for you and your friends to really want to come see opera?” He replied, “If the experience could be like the opera scene in the Fifth Element.” For those of you […]

Naga is an Opera News Critics’ Choice!

I remember back in 2014 when I first met Scott Wheeler. We had lunch together to talk about a potential collaboration on a new opera, Naga (Sanskrit for “protector snake.”) I told Scott that Naga was instigated by guess who? Charles, of course, who kept asking how the White Snake came to be. Charles’s questions […]

REV. 23, Following Charles Through Heaven and Hell

I have Charles to thank (yet again) for REV. 23, an opera which explores heaven, hell and everything in between. I was wondering one day about where Charles was. It amused me that my incorrigible, irascible and impossible husband wouldn’t be caught dead (pardon the pun) in heaven (not that he’d be welcome there) as […]

Ouroboros Trilogy: Following the Ancient Snake Who Eats Its Tail

What’s crazier than two neophytes making a new opera? Making three of course, all connected by the ouroboros snake in an endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Charles and I conceived of Ouroboros Trilogy – Naga, Madame White Snake, Gilgamesh – as a trio of grand operas to be performed in one day: One […]

White Snake Projects Awarded Civic Practice Grant from Opera America

Dear Friends of White Snake Projects: “A healing moment occurs for the person who has told you their story, but also for you as the one who has accepted the story,” said Murray Sinclair, Anishinaabe leader. We’re honored to share the news that White Snake Projects and its indigenous partners, including the United American Indians of […]

Madame White Snake, a Transformative Role Model

In 2005, I started to think about what I would give Charles for his 75th birthday. Charles never wanted “things;” but he was passionate about opera, so I commissioned a new music group to make a song cycle for him. The commission did not get off the ground. Panicked that I was going to miss his […]

White Snake Projects at Five Years

A Loving Retrospective on Charles, the Visionary Who Made This Happen It’s coming up soon — White Snake Projects will be five years old in September. Neither Charles (husband, artistic partner, visionary, daredevil, risk taker, raconteur, impresario — you get the picture . . .) nor I ever dreamed that WSP would become an activist opera […]

Just Announced: A Survivor’s Odyssey Premieres September 24, 2021

Following the resounding success of the virtual opera Death by Life, treating the subjects of long-term incarceration and systemic racism, Cerise Jacobs and her activist opera company White Snake Projects announce their third live virtual world premiere opera since the beginning of the pandemic. A Survivor’s Odyssey: The Journey of Penelope and Circe uses characters […]

“To Breathe” — A Virtual Exhibition Exploring Art & Imagination Inside Prisons

Featuring visual artworks by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists, this virtual gallery, To Breathe, is part of White Snake Project’s Death By Life series on “Understanding and Responding to Mass Incarceration” in collaboration with the Pozen Center Human Rights Lab. The title of our virtual exhibition, To Breathe, was inspired by Renaldo Hudson’s artist statement for his […]

Explore with us the intersection of mass incarceration & systemic racism

Dear Friends of White Snake Projects: We are thrilled to announce three upcoming forums presented in partnership with the University of Chicago Human Rights Lab as a prelude to Death By Life. Each session will be free to attend and streamed over Zoom. Read about about each forum, and follow the links to register below!  March 30 – […]

On Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dear Friends of White Snake Projects: I’ll never forget my visit to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN, a museum honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s in the Lorraine Motel where Dr. King was assassinated as he leant over the balcony in front of his room, #306. Dr. King was in Memphis to support striking […]

Q&A with Tian Hui Ng

For Tian Hui Ng, going digital has meant rethinking everything he knows about conducting. Find out how the Music Director of “Alice in the Pandemic” changed his techniques to bring Jorge Sosa’s music and Cerise Lim Jacobs’s libretto to life online. How has your work as a music director changed since everything became digital and […]

Q&A with Andy Carluccio

Andy Carluccio headshot

Meet Andy Carluccio, the video engineer for Alice in the Pandemic. Andy is the president of Liminal Entertainment Technologies, a company focused on providing industry-leading services to enable virtual theater, performances, and creative projects. Read his bio. Q: What made you want to be a Video Engineer? Is it something you studied in college? I […]

It’s Time to Get Your Tickets!

Alice in the Pandemic art

Dear Friends of White Snake Projects: Today’s the day! Tickets for Alice in the Pandemic are on sale NOW!  The premiere is October 23–27, 2020, and we can’t wait to share this show with you.   We’ve spent a lot of time since lockdown thinking about how to re-create a robust online opera experience which will […]

Activist Blog: “We All Have Learning to Do”

Boston Children's Choir performing in I Am A Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams. Photo by Kathy Wittman/Ball Square Films

I can’t think of any recent moment in which I have been more moved than I was while watching the premiere of I Am A Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams. It was truly a masterpiece; a work that was eye-opening and intimate in addition to its unquestionable beauty. Upon leaving, I felt shaken by its tragedy, but also empowered by its delivery, especially since it was done with a brilliant all-female cast.

Activist Blog: Thoughts About Dreamer

Members of the Boston Children's Chorus

Stories about Dreamers have dominated headlines in recent months due to the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. We are bombarded with statistics and it becomes nearly impossible to pick out the truth from the mess of “alternative facts”. One day, the public will be uplifted by the stories of undocumented immigrants who have met great success, and the next, there will be heart-wrenching videos of traumatized children sitting alone in cages.

Activist Blog: “I Am Not Your Typical Opera Patron”

Sonny (Maggie Finnegan) in wheelchair

I am not your typical opera patron. I’m a sophomore in high school, and although I often profess my love for musical theatre, it is in reference to the works of Lin-Manuel Miranda as opposed those of Verdi and Puccini.