Opera on Tap - DC Metro
Thursday, November 20, 2025 7-9pm
All shows are free!
The Wonderland Ballroom
In Series: 2025-2026 Season
PASSION PLAYS
A FESTIVAL OF WORLD PREMIERES
This festival brings new music-theater works to life, each exploring different aspects of human passion, suffering, redemption, each with a unique musical landscape, and all featuring world class artists using music, drama, and meaning to spark transformation.
J.S.Bach's St. Matthew Passion
March 6, 7,and 8, 2026
Dupont Underground
Washington, DC
For Women Serving Time
March 20, 21, and 22, 2026
Dupont Underground
April 10, 11, and 12
Baltimore Theatre Project
Upcoming
The Music of David Sisco
Recording to be released in 2026
Elizabeth Mondragon
Mezzo-Soprano
For Women Serving Time
Music by Adrienne Torf
Text by Fatemeh Keshavarz
Persian-American poet and scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz joins jazz pianist and composer Adrienne Torf come together to make a new piece of opera-theater that fuses Faure’s Requiem, jazz elements, and Brechtian theatrical traditions in a powerful contemplation of the human experiences contained in “ female incarceration in America”. This extended poem-opera sheds light on the lives and resilience of women in the U.S. prison system, their hopes, dreams, fears, and day to day experiences, offering a voice to a population often overlooked.
Only the Air
J.S. Bach: St. Matthew Passion with new Text by Joshua Borths and Shana Oshiro
Old music is given new meaning in an original theater piece that includes that searing and unforgettable arias from J.S. Bach’s masterpiece, and a new spoken re-languaging of the Gospel text that reshapes the work into an exploration of profound human loss and grief, and the promise of hope. This miniature approach to one of the repertoire’s largest works seeks to discover its essential emotional power in a ritual staging aimed at the soul of its audience.
Calendar
Elizabeth Mondragon is a Washington, D.C.-based mezzo-soprano. Her performance experience ranges from traditional operatic productions to new music premieres. Principal roles include Carmen, Rosina, Dido, Ma Moss, Giulio Cesare, and Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors. She has sung throughout the Northeastern U.S. with companies such as Opera North, Camerata Baroque, Amore Opera, One World Symphony, Maryland Lyric Opera, Regina Opera and In Series.
As much a lover of concert and recital as of opera, she has been a soloist with the Friday Morning Music Club, Central City Chorus, St. George’s Choral Society and the Astoria Symphony featured in the Verdi Requiem, Bach Christmas Oratorio, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solenelle, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor and Mendelssohn's Elijah. In addition, she has been a featured soloist with Ars Musicae Hispaniae Harp Ensemble, performing the music of Spain and Mexico, and has presented recitals of 20th and 21st century song with The Liederkranz Club, the Wiscasset Salon Series, and the UUCC Chalice Concert Series in New York and Maryland.
Her enthusiasm for new music and working with living composers has led to her performing and premiering works by several local composers, such as David E. Chávez, Elisabeth Mehl Greene, William Kenlon, Michael Oberhauser, Frances Pollock, and Erin Rogers, as well as having established a regular collaboration with award-winning composer, David Sisco.