Mission
View of The Theatre House after a snowfall.
The Châteauville Foundation was established at Castleton Farms in 1997 by Lorin and Dietlinde Maazel. The Foundation’s mission is to nurture young artists, foster collaborative artistic enterprise and create opportunities within the community for shared cultural experience. The private, state-of-the-art Theatre House is the focal point of the Foundation’s activities, and home to its most far-reaching programs, The Castleton Residency and a new Festival, which will be inaugurated, along with a second intimate but highly flexible performance space, in July 2009.
The Theatre House’s multi-purpose facilities make it ideally suited to a wide range of performances—recital and chamber music programs, jazz, world music, dance and theatre, in addition to the Residency program’s centerpiece chamber operas. The unique setting and intimacy of the space allow an unparalleled degree of communication between artists and audiences. To date, over 75 different performances have been offered at the Theatre House. The Foundation takes pride in presenting many of today’s most eminent artists (Emanuel Ax, Claire Bloom, Sir James and Lady Jeanne Galway, Itzhak Perlman, Pepe Romero, Gil Shaham, Randy Weston) alongside rewarding family programs (The Cashore Marionettes, Avner “The Eccentric” Eisenberg, Tomáš Kubínek) and new/young artists and ensembles, including Christopher Rothwell & Dietlinde Turban-Maazel’s Crescent Theatre Company, the Rincones Dance Company, percussionist Colin Currie, eighth blackbird, cellist Han-Na Chang, the Avalon and Attacca String Quartets, and many others.
The concept of The Castleton Residency & Festival emerged from tremendous creative energies unleashed by the Foundation’s first fully-staged chamber opera production in May 2006, Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw. The Castleton Residency is now a twice annual four- to five-week program designed to connect master artists with those who will carry the performing arts forward into the next generation. It is centered on a new, fully staged chamber opera production under the artistic leadership of Maestro Lorin Maazel. Up to 50 young artists—more than twice that number during the Festival period— (singers, instrumentalists, conductors, designers, stage directors, coaches and stage managers) are invited to live and work together intensively in the inspiring atmosphere of Castleton Farms. The artists rehearse and perform according to the highest professional standards, while receiving practical experience/training and career guidance from mentors and visiting faculty. The Festival will include additional recitals and workshops as well as a more formal program of coaching, master classes and workshops.
Outreach into the local community is an essential part of each season and Residency.