Patrick Dupre Quigley will take the reins of Opera Lafayette in 2025.

Ryan Brown will step down as artistic director of Opera Lafayette July 1, 2025, following the group’s 30th season. Washington’s leading presenter of baroque opera announced today that it will appoint Patrick Dupre Quigley, founder and artistic director of Seraphic Fire, to succeed Brown as its leader.

The two-year transition period will afford Brown and Quigley time to ensure that the company continues its traditions while moving forward into a new era. “Opera Lafayette fills a unique place in America’s musical life,” said Brown in a press release. “Patrick brings all the qualities that can broaden the importance and significance of our work. He is an outstanding musician and conductor with an entrepreneurial spirit.”

For his part, Quigley looks forward to playing a part in the next stage of the company’s history. “It is an incredible honor to follow the revolutionary tenure of Ryan Brown and join the Opera Lafayette family as artistic director-designate,” Quigley said. “Opera Lafayette has been uncompromising in artistic quality and indefatigable in creative energy, while constantly pushing the boundaries of what it means to be an historical opera company.”

Quigley will join Opera Lafayette onstage as conductor during their 30th anniversary season, in 2024 to 2025. He will lead a performance of Morgiane, ou, Le Sultan d’Ispahan, an opera by Edmond Dédé (1827-1903), completed in 1887 while this free-born Creole composer from New Orleans was living in France.

Opera Lafayette will announce the details of its 2023-2024 season in the coming weeks.

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Gianandrea Noseda, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, received the Puccini Award this week at Italy’s Puccini Festival. In his summer away from Washington, Noseda concludes a tour this evening with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia at the festival in Torre del Lago, where the Italian composer died. Since the creation of the annual award, in 1971, laureates have included Renata Tebaldi, Mirella Freni, Renata Scotto, Grace Bumbry, Lorin Maazel, and Luciano Pavarotti.

“Puccini has always fascinated me for his unique ability to take the opera form from the great tradition of the 19th century to the modernity of the 20th century,” Noseda said in a press release. Noseda conducted many of Puccini’s operas during his eleven-year tenure as music director of the Teatro Regio Torino.

Hopefully, Washington National Opera will take advantage of his expertise with this composer at some point in the future.

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