Food Vendor during 2022 events

Picture, if you will, the immense challenge facing the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice in 2020, when COVID-19 was raging, all theaters were closed and, given the virus’ propensity for aerosol transmission, any gathering of singers seemed doomed to become a “superspreader event.” According to Festival founder Maria Todaro, plans to put on a live summertime performance of Puccini’s Tosca had been in the works for months before the severity of the pandemic became apparent, and she was determined not to give up on them. So, she made arrangements to produce the opera “with full everything” in an extraordinary format: live onstage, in front of a sea of parked cars on the former IBM site at Kingston’s Tech City.

The Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice has announced that this year’s live opera staging, typically the highlight of its annual summer music festival will be a drive-in performance of Puccini’s “Tosca.”

The performance, set for August 29,  will take place at Tech City in Kingston, New York. As with drive-in movie experiences,  audience members will drive into parking slots and turn on their car radios for sound. The venue and the technology will ensure that audience members stay safe in their cars while musicians and staff “socially distance” onstage or behind it.