Launch of the Raritan Players
The Raritan Players are pleased to announce the release of our first recording, "In Sara Levy's Salon," on the Acis label. This project was a long time in the making! Our first performance was at Rutgers University in 2014 at the conference "Sara Levy's World: Music, Gender, and Judaism in Enlightenment Berlin." Since then, we have presented versions and spin-offs of this program at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan and at the 2016 meeting of the American Musicological Society in Vancouver, BC. Now, with the support of grants from the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and the Center for European Studies and Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, we have created a recording of music that was played, collected, or commissioned by the remarkable Jewish salonniere Sara Levy, who had an important role in shaping German musical culture in the decades around 1800.
We are hopeful that this recording will be the first of many that presents new musicological research through engaging and creative performances!