Opera Saratoga announced today that AMERICA SINGS, the company’s free concert series that was created to amplify the voices of artists from racial groups historically underrepresented on the concert stage, will return to Caffè Lena this month on June 19th for A Juneteenth Celebration, celebrating the end of slavery in the United States. The program was curated by bass-baritone Carl DuPont, a distinguished alumnus of Opera Saratoga’s Young Artist Program who is now on faculty at Peabody Conservatory where he teaches voice and a survey course on Art Song by African American Composers. AMERICA SINGS: A JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION is presented in partnership with Caffè Lena. The free concert will take place at 2pm ET, Saturday, June 19th, 2021. To access the concert, and for additional information please visit: www.operasaratoga.org/juneteenth.

Juneteenth, which is celebrated on June 19th annually, commemorates the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people were freed. The arrival of troops came two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court House two months earlier in Virginia, but slavery had remained relatively unaffected in Texas—until U.S. General Gordon Granger stood on Texas soil and read General Orders No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” Juneteenth honors that day – the end of slavery in the United States.