Opening Night: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Friday, July 10 at 7:30PM
Opening Night: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Friday, July 10, 2026
7:30PM - 10:00PM
Gambrel Barn
7454 Wellington County Rd 21, Elora
$78/$72 Adult | $20 Student | $10 Child
Mark Vuorinen, conductor
Rachel Fenlon, soprano
The Elora Singers
Musicians of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony
Step into a world of drama, poetry, and radiant choral sound in this captivating program featuring soprano Rachel Fenlon. The evening begins with the sparkling imagination of Felix Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a work composed when the prodigious composer was just seventeen, brimming with fairy magic and orchestral brilliance.
Ludwig van Beethoven’s dramatic concert aria Ah! perfido follows, a virtuosic showcase for soprano that moves from fiery indignation to lyrical tenderness. The mood then shifts to luminous reflection with Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, a beloved tribute to the power of music itself, inspired by Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
The program culminates in Beethoven’s Mass in C Major, a work of profound humanity and expressive warmth. Both intimate and expansive, it reveals Beethoven’s deeply personal voice, bringing soloists, choir, and orchestra together in a moving celebration of faith, hope, and the transcendent beauty of music.
Program
Felix Mendelssohn: Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 2
Ludwig van Beethoven: Ah! Perfido
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music
Ludwig van Beethoven: Mass in C Major
Mark Vuorinen, Conductor
Mark Vuorinen is Artistic Director and Conductor of The Elora Singers and the Elora Festival and Waterloo Region's Grand Philharmonic Choir. He is also Associate Professor and Chair of Music at Conrad Grebel University College at the University of Waterloo. A recipient of many awards, Mark was the 2016 Laureate of the Ontario Arts Council’s Leslie Bell Prize, and received a 2016 National Choral Award from Choral Canada for his research on Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.
Mark holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Toronto and Master of Music degree from Yale University’s School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music. Mark’s research interests include the study of contemporary choral literature from the Baltic States, and in particular, the music of Arvo Pärt. Mark was an invited lecturer at the Arvo Pärt Project’s Sounding the Sacred conference in New York City in May 2017. He is published in Circuit Musiques Contemporaines, the Research Memorandum Series of Chorus America, and Principles of Music Composing of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.
Rachel Fenlon, Soprano
Known for performing self-accompanied song recitals as both singer and pianist, Rachel also appears widely as a chamber music and opera soloist. Her debut album Winterreise (October 2024) received widespread acclaim, named Album of the Week by BBC Radio 3, CBC, and Gramophone Magazine, and Album of the Month by Classic 106 FM. CBC praised it as “an outstanding new record... extraordinary,” and BBC Radio 3 called it “extraordinary and spellbinding.” Remarkably, it is the first self-accompanied Winterreise ever recorded.
Rachel has performed across Europe, the UK, Canada, Brazil, and the U.S., with appearances at Konzerthaus Berlin, Martha Argerich Festival, Juan March Madrid, Vancouver Recital Society, Oxford Lieder Festival, Music Toronto, Salle Bourgie Montreal, Settimane Musicali di Ascona, and the National Arts Centre. In March 2025, Rachel made her U.S. debut at SXSW Festival in Austin, bringing classical music to one of the world’s most influential pop festivals.
The Elora Singers
The Elora Singers, under the direction of Mark Vuorinen, has established an international reputation as one of Canada’s finest professional choirs. Founded in 1980, it is the ensemble-in-residence of the Elora Festival for three weeks eachsummer, in addition to presenting a regular concert series,producing recordings, and touring across Canada and internationally.
Musicians of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony
Since 1945, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony has been the premiere orchestra in Waterloo Region, programming illustrious concert seasons throughout the years. After bankruptcy was announced at the beginning of the 2023-2024 concert season, the Musicians of the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony immediately self-organized and began a successful GoFundMe campaign that received overwhelming local, national, and international attention. With this groundswell of support, they focused on their mission to continue enriching the cultural life of Waterloo Region. In October 2024, the Symphony announced their return from bankruptcy and officially became the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony once more, and they continue to program illustrious concerts for the 2025-2026 season.