Reopened Central Park Bandshell Hosting Free Concert This Week

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — After a two-year renovation, the Central Park Bandshell reopened this month — and is set to host a free, outdoor concert to welcome New Yorkers back.

The Naumberg Bandshell, located near the center of the park at 71st Street, had been closed for renovations since 2019, as parked workers made structural repairs to the nearly 100-year-old limestone structure.

With renovations complete and the pandemic waning, the bandshell reopened on June 15 with a small chamber music concert. Its next big event: an open-air Italian opera concert on Monday.

The concert, from 7–8:30 p.m. Monday, will consist of more than a dozen Italian classics performed by "rising stars" in opera, as well as an orchestra with musicians and singers from the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, and students from Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music. The conductor is Alvise Casellati.

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It was organized by Opera Italiana is in the Air, a nonprofit series that previously performed at the bandshell in 2019, just before the two-year renovations began.

Built in 1923 next to the Central Park Mall, the bandshell has been a popular concert venue for decades. After partial restorations in 1991 and 2005, a routine inspection in 2015 found loose masonry that forced workers to install netting to stabilize it and keep it operational until a fuller renovation could begin, according to the Central Park Conservancy.

The now-complete renovations restored lost architectural features and repaired the limestone and concrete masonry, ensuring its stability "for years to come," the Conservancy said.

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The Opera Italiana orchestra is collaborating this year with the music therapy department at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, whose choir will sing the national anthem at the concert. Monday's concert is also sponsored by the Consulate General of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute in New York.