It's a dark tale of sacrifice, forgiveness and redemption — and it's the centerpiece of the Cleveland Orchestra's 2025 Humanities Festival, opening Friday. This year's theme, "reconciliation," sprang from the orchestra's decision to perform Janáček’s opera "Jenůfa."
"Reconciliation comes when you least expect it," said WCLV host John Mills. "After Jenůfa's stepmother kills her infant child, and after the body is found, Jenůfa understands why she did it: To protect her future and her honor. Then, right at the end of the opera, she offers maybe not forgiveness, but a second chance."
It's the third year for the festival of cultural events that are loosely connected by a common theme.
“You could ask fairly, ‘What does the orchestra know about the humanities?’” said orchestra CEO André Gremillet. “In all modesty, being one of this country's great orchestras … we thought, ‘Let's use this platform.’ I just picked up the phone, called my colleagues and right away the answer was, ‘Yes.’ That's the kind of city we have.”
Gremillet enlisted organizations ranging from the Tri-C Jazz Fest, presenting Chucho Valdés and his Royal Quartet, to Ideastream Public Media. On May 20 at 6 p.m., as part of the “Sound of Ideas Community Tour," host Jenny Hamel leads a reconciliation-centered discussion on the challenges facing people after incarceration.
“In the humanities, this is something that we need experts for,” Gremillet said. “We are featuring both Global Cleveland and the Cleveland Council on World Affairs looking at different aspects of reconciliation. The intent is not to tell people what to think, but to present a certain point of view.”
In the foyer at Severance Music Center, Toussaint J. Miller is curating “Re-membering Community.” A Cleveland native currently studying at Harvard, he’s exhibiting six Ohio-based artists to create a narrative of the city’s “rich cultural tapestry.”
“I wanted to emphasize the fact that remembering not only suggests recalling or hearkening back,” he said. “It involves recording the different members of our community in a political moment that feels to be capitalizing on division.”
The exhibition includes pieces by photographers Ryan Harris and Amanda D. King, painters Rhonda K. Brown and Antwoine Washington, plus sculptors Oliver Frontini and Woodrow Nash. Miller said the work they're doing, and his vision in presenting it, is necessary to showcase "what it means to be in community with each other."
"I think that this time that we're in is dicey because you don't really know what's going to be left in two weeks, let alone the end of this current administration," he said. "I think it's important to safeguard these ideas and protect the values that we're looking at in this work so that there is something to pull from when we make it out on the other side."
Schedule
This year’s humanities festival takes place at Severance Music Center except where noted:
- A Symposium on Immigration & Reconciliation (May 16, 8:30 a.m.)
- The Moth Mainstage: Live from Severance (May 16, 7:30 p.m.)
- United in Song! A Community Choral Celebration (May 17, 2 p.m.)
- United in Song! A Community Choral Celebration (May 17, 2 p.m.)
- A Screening of Wes Anderson’s "The Royal Tenenbaums" (May 17, 4:30 p.m., Cleveland Cinematheque)
- Janáček’s Jenůfa (May 17, 7 p.m. / May 22, 7 p.m. / May 25, 3 p.m.)
- Opera Curious? The World of Jenůfa (May 18, 4:30 p.m.)
- Chucho Valdés and his Royal Quartet (May 18, 7 p.m.)
- The Women of Chicago’s Black Renaissance with Michelle Cann (May 19, 6 p.m.)
- Beyond Repatriation: Reconciliation through Cultural Cooperation with Cambodia (May 20, 12 p.m., Cleveland Museum of Art)
- Sound of Ideas Community Tour (May 20, 6 p.m., Cleveland Public Library Martin Luther King, Jr. branch)
- Reconciliation in America’s Museums: Understanding Cultural Patrimony & the Path to Rebuilding Trust (May 22, 11:30 a.m., City Club of Cleveland)
- Framing Reconciliation: Visual Art as a Tool for Collective Healing (May 24, 4 p.m.)
- Vox Humana (May 23, 7:30 p.m. / May 24, 8 p.m.)
