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The Marcella Sembrich Opera Museum, 4800 Lake Shore Drive, will welcome singers from the Bel Canto Institute of New York City at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, August 13, at the museum. Tickets are $20.

Returning for their sixth season at the museum, the singers from the Bel Canto Institute’s summer program are known for their Italian-style opera with its Bel Canto-style of singing. Characteristics of the style include great flexibility of voice utilizing trills, arpeggios, and other florid techniques.

The Bel Canto Institute presents their finest aspiring young opera singers in a tribute to Marcella Sembrich. The Aug. 13 concert is a culmination of four weeks of summer study in Florence, Italy, this concert, featuring works from Sembrich’s repertoire. The concert will be preceded by a lecture/demonstration on the art of bel canto singing by the Institute director Jane Klaviter at 6:30 p.m.     

Opera composers such as Rossini, Donizetti, Mozart and Bellini wrote many of their works Bel Canto-style. Madame Sembrich received much of her acclaim from the Bel Canto-style roles she sang in such operas as "the Marriage of Figaro,” 'I Puritani,” "the Barber of Seville,” and her Metropolitan Opera debut role of Lucia in "Lucia di Lammermoor.”

The Marcella Sembrich Memorial Association, Inc., a not-for-profit organization founded in 1940, dedicates its existence and purpose to honor the life and career of internationally renowned soprano, Marcella Sembrich. The MSMA maintains Sembrich’s former teaching studio as a museum displaying Sembrich’s personal effects that reflect on her daily life of teaching and her career. The MSMA also carries on the fine tradition of music through a summer concert series presenting renowned international musicians in concert at the studio. 

Media Sponsor for the museum’s 2008 season is The Lake George Mirror. “The 2008 Year of Sembrich Summer Series” is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Program and Warren County, administered locally by the Lower Adirondack Regional Arts Council, the New York Council for the Humanities, the Warren County Occupancy Tax and the Town of Bolton.

The museum, at 4800 Lake Shore Drive, is open daily through Sept. 15. Hours are 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 2 to 5:30 p.m. Admission is by donation.

To purchase tickets, please call (518) 644-2431. For more information about the Marcella Sembrich Memorial Association, the Opera Museum or for a calendar of the MSMA's 2008 summer program please go to www.operamuseum.org or contact the MSMA at (518) 644-2431 (office) or (518) 644-9839 (museum).