VALENTINE'S DAY EVENT

"From Broadway With Love!"

Esther Tonea

Dashiell Waterbury

THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT!

Saturday, February 14, 2026

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

$75 Members -  $125 Non-Members

Join us for a Valentine's Day casual event with a romantic  artistic performance and a fun tapas buffet dinner reception in a lounge setting.

Produced by Cliftine Jones, Governor

Chair, Special Programs Committee

About the Artists

The San Francisco Chronicle praised Romanian-American soprano Esther Tonea for her “powerful, gleaming tone, effortless precision and expressive immediacy” in her rendition of Imogene’s mad scene from Bellini’s Il pirata, where she displayed the “sublime assurance of an established diva.” Esther is a recent Adler Fellow at San Francisco Opera and Grand Finals Winner of the National Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition. Among her performances this season are her European operatic and symphonic debuts with the Opéra Orchestre National de Montpellier.

Esther’s roles include Iolanta in Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus, Leonora in Il trovatore, Juliette in Roméo et Juliette, and Mozart heroines such as Donna Anna, Fiordiligi, and Contessa Almaviva. Her oratorio work includes performances in Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s The Creation, Mahler’s Symphonies 2 and 4, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, and Handel’s The Messiah. No stranger to new works, she has premiered the role of Diana in Jake Heggie’s If I Were You and workshopped his Intelligence as Callie Van Lew and performed the world premiere of Jonathan Leshnoff’s Warum hast du gelitten? She has performed with the San Francisco Opera, Atlanta Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Russian Chamber Art Society, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Washington National Opera Orchestra, Charleston Symphony, and Richmond Symphony, among other prestigious ensembles.

Dashiell John Waterbury has three decades of professional experience as a singer. His career began as a boy soprano, singing with symphonies and opera companies in the Los Angeles area and studying voice with his father, bass-baritone Robert Waterbury.

He has performed throughout the United States and internationally in opera, concert, and musical theater. A powerful lyric tenor with a “warm tone and thrilling expressive ability,” Dashiell's operatic roles have included the Rake in The Rake’s Progress, Rodolfo in La Boheme, Beppe in i Pagliacci, Tybalt in Romeo et Juliette, and Tamino in Die Zauberflöte. Theater roles have included the title role of the Phantom of the Opera and Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls. Concert work includes the tenor solos in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Mozart’s Requiem. As a professional choral singer, Dashiell has performed and recorded the major works of the Baroque Era with such groups as the Houston Bach Chorale and has sung for every living president except the current one.

Dashiell holds a graduate degrees in voice from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and in opera directing from Florida State. He has served as voice faculty and head of opera for Stetson University and as interim director of opera at Baylor University. He currently calls Washington, DC home.

Dress Code: Cocktail attire

Reservations are final after 5 pm the day before. Last minute cancellations and no-shows are charged a 50% cancellation fee.