It’s no Academy Ball, but Whoopi Goldberg will host online tribute to Philly’s Academy of Music

More than a year ago, notice went out that this year’s Academy of Music anniversary fete would go on hiatus so organizers could mull a fresh format for an event celebrating the building.

But the season won’t go by without some Academy love.

Whoopi Goldberg will host an online tribute to the 164-year-old opera house in mid-May, organizers announced Monday. Soprano Renée Fleming will perform with Philadelphia Orchestra music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin as pianist, with the maestro also at the keyboard leading the orchestra in a movement from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12.

Goldberg is engaged as host, says Philadelphia Orchestra president and CEO Matías Tarnopolsky, “because she’s fantastic. She is a huge champion of the arts, and we are so excited to have a chance to work with her.”

The event, dubbed “Fanfare for the Future,” is not an online replica or next generation of the traditional Academy Anniversary Concert. While segments were filmed in the Academy, the Mozart was recorded in Verizon Hall, with other segments captured elsewhere.

Still, the historic hall is the focus. CBS3 news anchor Ukee Washington will take viewers on a behind-the-scenes tour of the building.

Also on the program: Jessie Montgomery’s Voodoo Dolls performed by a string quintet, and Nézet-Séguin leading the orchestra in Johann Strauss Jr.’s “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” Waltz.

The Academy has undergone a massive restoration project that started in 1994 and has continued for much of the time since. Proceeds from this May’s online event will be shared by the restoration effort and the orchestra, which owns the Academy.

It was in February 2020, a few weeks after the Academy of Music 163rd Anniversary Concert and Ball, that orchestra and academy leaders announced a pause for the event, the public face of Academy fund-raising efforts for more than six decades.

Cancellation of the concert and ball already penciled in for Jan. 23, 2021, was unrelated to the pandemic (COVID-19′s presence in the U.S. amounted to a mere 13 confirmed cases in mid-February 2020). Ticket sales for the annual fund-raiser had become challenging, and organizers wondered whether a formal gala aligned with the message that the Academy really was for everyone.

In recent years, the anniversary bash often brought in a total sum in the low millions, but a long list of expenses — the dinner, guest artists, the Ball Book — lowered the net amount raised into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The financial equation for May’s virtual Academy event promises to be more favorable.

“We should net more money, we absolutely should,” said academy board of trustees chair Caroline B. “Cackie” Rogers.

» READ MORE: Philadelphia’s quirky Academy Ball must continue. Now let’s talk about how it needs to change.

Tickets to May’s online show are $50, but sponsorship packages with virtual interactive experiences beforehand start at $500 and range up to $50,000, a spokesperson said. Free tickets will be offered to the orchestra’s civic, education, and community partners.

As for the future of the Academy of Music Anniversary Concert and Ball or some other Academy celebration of another name and format, Rogers said no decision has been made.

Discussions had begun last year about perhaps holding a mix of free events and a high-priced one over a weekend. But then the pandemic shut down arts groups, and the social imperative around being more inclusive has only intensified in the 14 months since the announcement that the Academy Ball format was being reconsidered.

“What’s right — right now and moving forward?” mused Rogers. “We think about inclusion and we think about diversity and equity and I’m just not sure a white-tie, very expensive event is going to be representative of the Academy as a building that welcomes everyone.”

“Fanfare for the Future” will stream online May 13 at 8 p.m. and is available through May 20 at 11 p.m. Tickets go on sale at philorch.org/fanfare starting April 15.