SPECIAL EVENT
Artemisia – Light and Shadow
Two nights: Friday, April 17, 2026 and Saturday, April 18, 2026
With the success of our opera and dinner production last September, we will once again be presenting a staged production with dinner at the Leonardo da Vinci Centre.
ARTEK presents an account, in drama and music, of the life of 17th-century painter and feminist heroine Artemisia Gentileschi.
A life more dramatic than an Italian opera: trained in art by her father, sexually assaulted as a teenager, Artemisia survived a sensational trial to become an internationally renowned painter, and the secret lover of a Florentine nobleman.
Sarah Chalfy Frei as Artemisia Gentileschi
Harpsichord: Gwendolyn Toth
Sarah Chalfy Frei portrays Artemisia, applying her impressive talents and experience in music and theatre to the role. Ms. Frei did her MM studies at Manhattan School of Music and her BM at the Peabody Conservatory. She was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, the Universität Mozarteum Sommerakademie, and the Académie internationale d’été de Nice. She studied acting/Meisner technique at the T. Schreiber Studio, and musical theater with Paul Gemignani and Carolyn Marlow. She is recipient of numerous awards, including top prizes in the Lotte Lenya, Rosa Ponselle, Canticum Dominum, and Bach Society of Baltimore competitions, and study grants to the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg and the Académie internationale d’été de Nice.
Ms. Frei is a keen collaborator with living artists in developing new works. Recent premieres include Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger’s Requiem for Fossil Fuels in a rare live performance at the Galerius Rotunda in Thessaloniki, Greece; the title role in ADA, Kim D. Sherman’s opera about Ada Lovelace Byron; Nellie Bly in David Friedman/Peter Kellogg’s musical Stunt Girl; and many others. With ARTEK, she created the role of Artemisia in Artemisia: Light and Shadow, and Ariadne in Let Me Die. She performs solo cabaret shows across the Eastern seaboard, and has released a solo album, Love.Sex.Death: A Cabaret. Most recently, she performed at BAM as Madeleine X in Richard Foreman’s acclaimed avant-garde show What to Wear, reprising the role she performed for the Los Angeles world premiere in 2006.
Recognized as one of America’s leading early music performers, Gwendolyn Toth is a conductor and early keyboard artist based in New York City. “Her interpretive skills are sensitive and intelligent, and she clearly has a gift for program conceptualization.” (The New York Times). She has conducted at Sadler’s Wells Theater in London, BAM in New York City, Skylight Theater in Milwaukee, Astoria Music Festival in Oregon, Carmel Bach Festival in California, Washington Bach Consort in Washington DC, and for the German Radio network in Cologne, Germany. Opera News has honored Ms. Toth as an “Outstanding Young Conductor” and she was the recipient of the Newell Jenkins Prize for excellence in early music performance. Ms. Toth is the Artistic Director of ARTEK Early Music, which, like EMSI is in its 41st season of producing and presenting early music.
The talk will be held at 2pm on April 11 at the University of Victoria MacLauren Building, Room D288
