Behind the Curtain: Mining, Polishing, and Showcasing Lost Musical Gems

For over three decades, Musicians of the Old Post Road has delighted in their mission of uncovering, exploring, and performing the works of historically overlooked communities and individuals. Based in the Greater Boston area, the ensemble specializes in the period instrument performance of dynamic and diverse music from the Baroque to early Romantic eras, focusing on works that have been lost to audiences for centuries.

Back by popular demand, the fifth episode of Delving Deeper, airing February 4th, 2023 at 7:30 pm EST, is entitled “Behind the Curtain: Mining, Polishing, and Showcasing Lost Musical Gems,” and strives to answer audiences’ most frequently asked question: How does the ensemble actually find and revive these overlooked musical treasures?

The film takes viewers on a behind-the-scenes tour of the research, reconstruction, and editing processes, from discussion of the ensemble’s legacy of adding new voices to the canon of historical performance to an exploration of how research has changed over the years from brick-and-mortar adventures in libraries in a pre-digital world to research techniques of today. The presentation concludes with discussion about and a performance of a revived work by  Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the first known Classical composer of African descent. In keeping with OPR’s long-standing commitment to uniting historical performance with historical architectural sites along the Old Post Road, the ensemble performs the work in the period-appropriate house museum, the Salisbury Mansion in Worcester, Massachusetts.