“Music lovers, rejoice. You’ll soon be welcomed back to Severance Hall,” writes Zachary Lewis in Sunday’s (5/23) Plain Dealer (Cleveland). “The Cleveland Orchestra today unveiled a full slate of concerts for the 2021-22 season…. It also threw open the doors, removing audience size limits and requiring masks only for the unvaccinated [following] guidance from federal experts and the Cleveland Clinic that vaccinated people may gather safely in larger numbers without masks, president and chief executive André Gremillet said…. Along with the return to near-normal comes a bold, broadly inclusive artistic menu…. Some elements were held over from the current season, which was canceled, but most were specially conceived for this year…. There will be new or obscure works aplenty…. Four will be Cleveland co-commissions [by Joan Tower, Hans Abrahamsen, Bernd Richard Deutsch, and Thomas Adès]…. The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus will be back…. Music director Franz Welser-Möst will preside over his 20th season…. One prominent holdover from last season: a concert production of Verdi’s opera ‘Otello,’ along with a related festival celebrating music deemed ‘outsider’ for one reason or another…. 2021-22 will be the first year the Cleveland Orchestra offers both live and virtual events simultaneously.”
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