The directors of the Boston Early Music Festival invite their audience to the rehearsal of "Venus and Adonis" and "Acteon."

In 2003, Grammy Award-winning lutist and Boston Early Music Festival artistic director Paul O'Dette approached the festival's board of directors with a totally unknown German Baroque opera, Ariadne by Johann Georg Conradi..."Aren't these things unknown for a reason?" the board asked O'Dette, who is also the director of the Eastman School of Music's early music department. The assumption was that if it was unknown, it wasn't worthwhile.