By Francisco Salazar

The Accademia Verdiana has selected 12 singers in its VI edition to perfect the Verdi repertoire.

The academy selected singers out of 94 candidates and 20 countries. All singers were during auditions that were held during the course of three days by a jury that includes Francesco Izzo (Accademia Verdiana), Giannina Seccia (Fondazione Teatro Regio di Parma), Vincenzo De Vivo (Accademia d’Arte Lirica di Osimo), Damiana Pinti (Scuola di musica di Fiesole), Cristiano Sandri (Teatro Regio di Torino), Barbara Frittoli (soprano), and Annalisa Stroppa (mezzosoprano).

This year’s students are Zizhao Chen, Fernando Cisneros Oñate, Guan Bowen, Carmela Lopez, Sara Minieri, Galina Ovchinnikova, Licia Piermatteo, Matteo Pietrapiana, Anzor Pilia, Lei Wu, Bo Yang, and Litai Zhuo.

The program will include individual and group lessons as well as seminars that will total 1,000 hours. The program will begin on Feb. 20 and ends in October. There will also be work on stage movement and choreography and the students will have the opportunity to work in labs, seminars, and with directors, conductors, and singers from the Teatro Regio di Parma. The students will also get a chance to perform in the Verdi Off 2023.

By Afton Wooten
Canadian composer Ben Steinberg (1930-2023) passed away on Feb. 10, 2023.

Steinberg was born in Winnipeg to Jewish parents. His father Alexander Steinberg was a cantor and conductor. He went on to study music at the Royal Conservatory of Music and music education at the University of Toronto. Throughout his career, Steinberg focused on Jewish and Canadian music.

He served as the Director of Music at Temple Sinai beginning in 1970 and was appointed Composer-in-Residence in 1996. Upon his retirement, the Ben Steinberg Musical Legacy Award and the Guild of Temple Musicians’ “Young Composer’s Award” were started. Steinberg was the music director at Forest Hill Collegiate and head of the music department at Winston Churchill Collegiate Institute. He gave many lecture-recitals on Jewish music history and style throughout Canada and the U.S. He also conducted and lectured in Israel, Hong Kong, Australia, and Japan.

He composed both sacred and secular music including Shabbat services, choral and orchestral settings, instrumental and vocal chamber music as well as solo works. In addition to his musical works, Steinberg published two books on adult and youth choirs and contributed to the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada.

In 2001, Steinberg was awarded the “Eisendrath Bearer of Light” award – the highest honor from the Reform movement (then called the Union of American Hebrew Congregations).

A service in his memory was held on Feb. 12 at the Temple Sinai Congregation.

By Francisco Salazar
The Pittsburgh Opera is set to present Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” for the first time in 20 years.

The production, which will be performed between March 25 and April 2 at the Benedum Center, will star Jonathan Burton as Manrico and Alexandra Loutsion as Leonora.

Lester Lynch also stars as the Count and Marianne Cornetti sings the role of Azucena. Antony Walker conducts the production by Daniel Rigazzi. The cast is rounded out by Ashraf Sewailam, Emily Richter, and Daniel O’Hearn.

“Il Trovatore” was last performed at the Pittsburgh Opera in 1999 and features the famed “Anvil Chorus” as well as some of Verdi’s most memorable melodies.

By Afton Wooten

Mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili will star in the Greek National Opera’s (GNO) revival production of Massenet’s “Werther.”

Rachvelishvili will debut her role as Charlotte. Singing the title role of Werther is Italian tenor Francesco Demuro. The cast also includes baritone Nikos Kotenidis as Albert, bass-baritone Yanni Yannissis as the Commendatore, tenor Nicolas Maraziotis as Schmidt, baritone Marinos Tarnanas as Johann, and soprano Chrissa Maliamani as Sophie. Jacques Lacombe conducts.

This revival of “Werther” is a tribute to the late opera and stage director Spyros Evangelatos (1940-2017).

The opera will run March 23, 26, 28, and 31, as well as April 2 and 4 at the Stavros Niarchos Hall.

By Afton Wooten
Photo Credit: Tania Barricklo

Multi-talented opera director, fight choreographer, composer, singer, and conductor Maria Todaro spoke with OperaWire about revising the recent productions of “The Anonymous Lover” and her ‘love affair’ with the composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges.

In 2022 Todaro staged “The Anonymous Lover” for Minnesota Opera. Paying homage to Bologne, she set the opera in 18th century Guadalupe. Piggybacking off that idea, Todaro developed the upcoming production she is directing for Atlanta Opera this March, which she discusses below.

OperaWire: What’s the difference between the Atlanta Opera production and the Minnesota Opera version?
Maria Todaro: My pitch for the Minnesota Opera production was to celebrate joy, beauty, and resilience and to present the opera in the 18th-century Caribbean since Bologne was born in Guadalupe. So we opted for colorful sets and costumes that paid homage to the time. This was all to honor and create awareness about the composer. We kept it light, following how the opera was originally intended; it is about 90 minutes long and was written to entertain in the salon of Madame de Montesson, who was a patron.

I also thought of the audience of today. The subject of the opera is basically a woman who’s manipulated by a man. This is a big no-no. I made a suggestion to change the blocking in the duet so that would from the top of the show, the main character Léontine knows who the anonymous lover is. Without changing any text, in my version, she plays him as much as he plays her. I think it’s a little more clever and works for today.

The original libretto is very wordy, so for the product that we will present in Atlanta next month, we will use the more contemporary and accessible translation by playwright Harrison Davis. That was number one. As I got more familiar with Bologne himself and the more I discovered the riches of his life, the more it was begging me to create this version to bring attention to him. I was given the opportunity to add and change things. I incorporated the character of Bologne himself on stage, Madame de Montesson, and his lover Marie-Josephine de Montalembert.

It is very important to me to tell the story of the composer, so I incorporated an opening monologue where Bologne addresses the audience about what it means to be a Black man in the 18th century in an elite society. In writing this monologue, I request censorship of my Black friends to help portray this the way it should be. And then we see a mini scene where Bologne and Madame de Montesson interact, allowing us to understand historically what it meant to have a sponsor. There is also a small scene during the interlude where Montalembert, played by Maria Valdez, who is also playing Léontine, reads a letter from Bologne. During this, heard in the background will be the “Largo” of his concerto in G, which he wrote when his son died. There is also a small sword-fighting scene since that was a big part of his life. I really tried to put in as much historical context as I could with mentions of the French Revolution and people like Voltaire. By adding those three scenes, I hope to put light on Bologne’s amazing life and work.

OW: Since the opera will be performed at a Historically Black College, are there any extra opportunities for students?
MT: Yes, we are working with the French community in Atlanta as well as WQXR to create some extra opportunities. Hopefully, this will offer a lot of interest and motivation for young Black men and women to come to see this project.

OW: Is there anything you would like to add about Stéphanie Félicité, Madame de Genlis, who wrote the story?
MT: I was blown away by the fact that a Black man and a white woman worked together in the 18th century. It’s incredible that she’s remembered, and this poor man who wrote the libretto, François-Georges Fouques Deshayes, no one knows of. Genlis was a journalist and author, but this story, unfortunately for us, is the only opera left of Bologne, and I’m convinced that they wrote this on a napkin at the restaurant or something like that.

I can see Bologne flipping himself in his tomb, saying, ‘I can’t believe this is the only thing they know me for!’ I’m judging this with modern eyes. So getting to modernize it and do all these fun things with respect and integrity just to give it some layers is important to me.

OW: Tell me about the Joseph Bologne Chevalier de Saint Georges opera you have in store.
MT: So with my access to French texts that we don’t have here in the States, I’m reading those, biographies, and whatever I can find on Bologne. Me, playwright Harrison David Rivers and composer Daniem Geter are working together to put together a piece on his life and works. We are hoping to present scenes at the upcoming Phoenicia International Festival of The Voice.

By Francisco Salazar
The Operalia Competition has announced the venue for its 30th anniversary.

The organization said that the competition will be hosted by the Cape Philharmonic and the Cape Town Opera and will be held at the Artscape Theatre in Cape Town, South Africa.

Applications will be open until May 5.

The 2022 Operalia competition was held in Riga in Latvia and saw Juliana Grigoryan and Anthony León win the top prizes. Other notable winners of the competition include Lisette Oropesa, Ailyn Perez, Sonya Yoncheva, Aida Garifullina, Ivan Ayon-Rivas, Adriana Gonzalez, Xabier Anduaga, Adela Zaharia, Pretty Yende, and Lise Davidsen win.

Operalia was founded in 1993 by Plácido Domingo to discover and help launch the careers of the most promising young opera singers of today.

By Mauricio Villa
Vincent Huguet is one of the most promising directors of today’s operatic world. Since his debut with “Lakme” at the Montpellier Opera in 2012, he has staged the “Mozart Da Ponte Trilogy” at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin—conducted by Daniel Barenboim and with the three shows performed over four days during the Berlin Festtage, “Manon lescaut” for Paris Opera, and “Les contes d’hofmann” in Bordeaux with revivals in ABAO Bilbao and Palma de Mallorca. Vincent spoke with OperaWire two hours before the premiere of his new production of “Rigoletto” in Basel on the 21st of January, 2023.

OperaWire: You first studied arts to become a teacher, I believe?

Vincent Huguet: Yeah! In fact, I studied literature and history first and then I specialized in arts. At the beginning of my career, I was teaching History of Arts at university. That was my job for five or six years.

OW: How does a History of Arts teacher end up in the opera world?

VH: I think I might be one of the last of that generation whom you got a lot of about 50 years ago; the generation whose parents believed you had to have the same settled job your entire life. When I was about 20 years old, the economic crisis hit the world and things started to change. This was long before the pandemic. It is very common now that one might have many different jobs or live many different lives. It was more unusual then. But it became very clear to me that I was in love with the arts, history, and literature. I couldn’t see myself teaching at university my whole life, and at the time, there was no school for ‘stage directing’ in France. All the French stage directors came from different backgrounds and training. They were all expected to reach the same opportunity in their own ways. Most of them had to begin as ‘director’s assistants,’ that was the only way in. That happened to me.

I met an assistant who had worked with Patrice Chéreau: a famous French opera and theatre director, filmmaker, actor, and producer. He was a legend in France, maybe even worldwide. It was the end of his career, and he didn’t know he was dying at the time. He was invited to an event at Le Louvre Museum. He asked me to assist him with the exhibition and with some shows which he had to do at the Louvre. And then suddenly Patrice Chéreau became my life: I was spending all my days in rehearsals—remember, I came from a university background, so this was new to me—first in theatre and later in opera productions. For me, strangely, it seemed logical and easy. I think this was because of my academic background. There are specific techniques and knowledge that you have to learn in theatre. But having studied literature and history, I realized it was the same analysis you have to do when you have to examine a text, even when it is a theatre piece or an opera libretto. For example, to prepare for “Rigoletto” here in Basel, I read Victor Hugo’s ‘Le roi s’amuse’ which is the source of “Rigoletto.” I wanted to study the background: the original conception of the drama and the characters. And your job as a director is to see, to read, underneath and in-between, and to think about what you can do with this material today.

When I did my first assistant job for a play and I had to do an analysis of the text, I realized it was very close to what I had been doing all my life. The only difference was that now you actually had to ‘do’ something with the material, and someone might come up to you and say, ‘Ahhh! You did something with Victor Hugo that has never been done before!’ My job became more practical. I had to find the keys to give to the actor or the singer so that they could feel or perform something different. For me, it was natural to switch from one field to another. I had done many things before: I had been a teacher and an editor. I have written some books, put on some exhibitions, and done some radio. For me, it is always the same challenge: it is my job to transmit clearly to an audience whom I don’t know—depending on the country and on the kind of work I’m doing—the ‘theme’ of the piece. The theme can be very unique, often based on a very specific piece of cultural heritage. It is up to me to choose the light, the colors, and the framing that best gets this theme across clearly. Whatever I do, be it a book, an exhibition, an opera, or a theatre play, the challenge always is this: what can I do, being who I am, to present this to an audience today?

OW: How did you feel when you moved from assisting to directing? Your first opera production was “Lakme” in 2012 at the Opéra national de Montpellier.

VH: As an assistant director for Patrice Chéreau, I had done theatre before, but I had never done any opera before “Lakme.” It was by chance that I met the new Montpellier Opera intendant; I was born in Montpellier. He wanted to invite new directors to give new perspectives on opera. They didn’t have a big budget, so it was convenient for him to hire me for a new opera production. But even after my first opera, I continued to assist big opera directors like Peter Sellars and Luc Bondy. It was very good for me. Just because you have directed your first opera doesn’t mean that you know everything. As for the switch from assisting to directing… I currently have a young German assistant from the house engaged in “Rigoletto” here in Basel. He has already directed operetta when he was studying in Berlin. I can feel that he’s not really an assistant but a director. It’s cool to have another director in the room as well, especially when there are two different generations put together. For the first time, I feel kind of old because I am twice his age! And Sellars usually comes to see my productions. What I am saying is that there is this intergenerational community. All the assistants are directors, and every director can still learn from assisting. There is never really a switch. You are always learning more from your friends and colleagues, and they are always there for you. The directors I used to work for are still my friends, and they always help me when I need them. Sellars gave me some great advice when I was working on Mozart’s “Da Ponte trilogy” in Berlin. Barenboim and I had very different points of view on that production, and I had long conversations with Sellars. (Sellars was in L.A., but we still spoke a lot.) He encouraged me in my vision for the project. After weeks of fighting with Barenboim, I needed someone to tell me, ‘You’re not crazy.’ I was losing sight of my vision. Mozart was not the cruel, crazy guy he was becoming in the discourse with Barenboim. Sellars reminded me of that. Mozart was a fun guy who enjoyed life; he loved women and having sex. He was not a stern, ‘Karajan’ type of guy.

OW: Now that you have mentioned the “Da Ponte trilogy,” what was it like, getting to direct the three operas as a cycle? Some directors have directed the three operas, “Cosi fan tutte,” “Le nozze di Figaro,” and “Don Giovanni.” But it is very rare to stage them as a cycle, one after the other.

VH: The director of the Berlin Staatsoper knew he was getting older and wanted to do a new production of the tetralogy “Der ring des Nibelungen,” and Mozart’s “Da Ponte trilogy.” He was looking for directors and he proposed the Mozart operas to me. It was a great chance. For me, what would have been ideal would have been to stage them as a festival and perform them consecutively. But for artistic reasons, we had to do one opera per season, with a gap caused by Covid in the middle. After that, we did two cycles of the three operas together.

OW: Did you find any connection between the three operas? The stories and characters are completely different.

VH: No, for me, the characters are somehow the same. When Mozart and Da Ponte were creating these operas, they didn’t know they would become a trilogy. Mozart died after they had made three together, and Da Ponte left for New York. If Mozart hadn’t died, I am sure they would have done five, six, or even seven more operas together. Then it would have been impossible to think of them as a trilogy and stage them consecutively. But with only three operas, a narrative jumped out at me: it was somehow very obvious. It was very clear from the beginning that “Cosi fan tutte,” which was chronologically the last of the three operas Mozart composed, should be performed first. “Così” talks about what love is, what one’s first love feels like, and how it is the first time you have sex… It’s like a teenager’s opera. It was logical that this opera takes place when all the characters are young and enjoy sunbathing naked on the beach—in my production—and has this kind of ‘hippie’ atmosphere. At the end of the opera, they all marry. Then we meet them again ten years later in “Le nozze di Figaro.” Guglielmo becomes the Count, Fiordiligli becomes the Countess, and you can see in this opera that the conjugal situation is not ideal at the end of the opera; the Count is humiliated and is going to leave the house. Then we find him again, a little bit older now, as Don Giovanni. He has taken Figaro with him, who has become Leporello. The Countess becomes Elvira. They’re not together anymore, but she would still love him and help him, despite everything, to the bitter end. In the end, Don Giovanni dies. I cannot imagine the operas in any other order, for the finale of “Don Giovanni” is so spectacular and dramatic. It is the perfect finale for the cycle, so from there, I had the whole story laid out.

OW: On the subject of the “Don Giovanni” finale: there are two different versions that Mozart wrote. Which one do you prefer?

VH: The long one with the final ensemble. It’s true that in the beginning, this piece horrified me, and I wondered: Why did Mozart do that? It’s like when you stage “Turandot:” should we stop the opera at the point when Puccini died? But it became the logical ending. All the characters spend the whole opera chasing Don Giovanni, but when he dies, they’re left there empty, sitting on the stage totally desperate—in my production—and somehow they even miss him! In the end, I have come to love this finale.

OW: You have done Mozart. You’re also a French opera specialist, considering you have done “Lakme,” “La vie Parisienne,” “Les contes d’hoffmann,” “Manon Lescaut,” “Werther,” and “Roméo et Juliet.” You did “Don Carlos” here in Basel last year and you’re presenting “Rigoletto” today. What draws you to Verdi?

VH: Verdi is not so far from France. I started with the French version of “Don Carlos,” which was composed with Paris in mind. But I think that all opera lovers, like me, relate to Verdi. Maybe because his operas are among the first we see or listen to. We always experience “La Traviata” early in our journey with opera. I remember that for me, it was “Il trovatore.” I had a Callas recording when I was a teenager and I listened to it so much. The music of Verdi sounds very familiar to me; it sounds like home, even if I’m not Italian. I think it is in our genes. I have heard some directors say Verdi is very difficult to stage, but if I am being honest, everything is difficult to stage. The wonderful music aside, what makes Verdi so interesting dramatically, like Mozart or Wagner, is that he has great librettos.

OW: Do you think that “Il Trovatore” has a good libretto?

VH: Ha, ha, ha! No, exactement! There are a couple of other examples, like “La Forza del Destino,” which are also bad, but truly, the libretto of “Il Trovatore” is terrible. Yet the librettos for “Don Carlos” and “Rigoletto,” which are the two Verdi operas I have done, are amazing. Two literary geniuses, Friedrich Schiller and Victor Hugo penned their original source materials. Do you know what amazed me most of all concerning “Rigoletto?” When it premiered in 1831 as a theatre play written by Hugo, it was a complete disaster. It only had one performance. The public and the press hated it, and the next day it was forbidden by the censors. And then, 20 years later, Verdi—or his librettist— took this play and created an opera.

Verdi was not only a composer but a great humanist and philosopher. He was so bright and courageous. The story of “Rigoletto” is about who is an angel and who is a monster; and if you are a monster, is it because society makes you so? Because if you’re an angel, you have made yourself an angel. It’s very interesting the way Verdi looks at Rigoletto himself, this terrible, dark figure. Does he behave like a monster because of the way he has been treated because of his deformity? And what about the contrast with the character of Gilda, whom we could consider an angel? Rigoletto is always angry, locked into an endless vendetta. Meanwhile, Gilda says, ‘We can stop this. We can fix this.’ She changes things by sacrificing herself. When people say to me that Gilda is naïve or stupid, I answer, ‘Not at all! She is the wisest of them all!’ When she finally understands the Duke’s behavior, she ends it and brings about a change.

OW: Do you believe that by sacrificing herself, Gilda ends the Duke’s womanizing and promiscuous behavior?

VH: Yes, exactly! It’s like how the deaths of Romeo and Juliet give a chance for the two warring families to achieve forgiveness by facing the consequences of their actions. This happens in “Rigoletto.” He kills his own child, and I think this is one of the worst things that could happen in life. Parents would do anything to protect their children.

OW: What is your perspective on “Rigoletto?” What is the audience going to see?

VH: My perspective begins at the meeting point between Victor Hugo and Giuseppe Verdi and lies in the moral. I think it’s all about morals. What can Rigoletto do? Who is more monstrous: Rigoletto or the Cortigiani? And then we have the theme of la maledizione—’ the curse’—throughout the opera. What is a curse? What would be a curse today? Does the ‘maledizione’ comes from oneself, or is it given to you by someone else, somehow? I think that the greatest curse for Rigoletto is his inability to listen to what the people say to him. There are three duets between Rigoletto and his daughter Gilda in the opera, and they are all structured the same way. There is a moment when it seems like they are really together and that Rigoletto is finally going to listen to what his daughter is trying to say, but then he breaks it somehow. What I wanted to do was to show a clear narration. I have, for example, almost no props, taking away all the non-essential things in the story. I wanted a very minimalistic—yet symbolic—scenography, so you can really get into the fatality and tragedy of the drama.

The other day, after the general rehearsal, a woman came up to me and said, ‘I had never understood the story of “Rigoletto” so clearly.’ I was so proud. I wanted to isolate the essence of the opera. Like a father and a daughter talking in a car, there’s nothing else to do but focus on their conversation. The libretto of “Rigoletto” is so clear that you don’t need to do lots of things. Our lives depend on our father’s upbringing and relationships: that’s how our behavior and personality are formed. Nobody can escape the past. Gilda dies, haunted by the fact that she knows so little about her mother. She is obsessed with her lineage, and that’s why her aria ‘caro nome’ is all about a single name: Gualtier Malde. Gilda finds in that some justification and information to explain her loneliness. She finally has ‘a name.’ I think this is the only aria in the opera world which is about a name. In that name, she can find a new identity and the chance to form a new family, a new lineage, a new generation, where all the people can have names.

In the scene featuring Gilda in the first act, the only piece of scenery we have is a bed. I wanted there to be nothing else. This is just a story of the relationship between a father and his daughter. I think Verdi was very good at writing about familial relationships. When I did “Don Carlos,” it was all about the relationship between father and son, and then look at “Luisa Miller” and “Simon Boccanegra.” I think the idea of ‘family’ fascinated Verdi. He always tries to look at it in a positive way, in a way that the characters try not to hurt each other. I think “Rigoletto” is a very overwhelming story. Maybe this fascination with familial relationships came about because Verdi lost his wife and daughters very early. He is idealizing those relationships, trying to imagine how they could have been.

OW: Is there an opera you haven’t worked on that you would really like to stage?

VH: There are two operas that I dream of doing, that I promised Lorenzo Viotti we would do together; “Pelleas and Melisande,” and “Les dialogues des Carmélites.” All French repertoire, of course, but I love these two operas. I obviously want to do “La Traviata,” but if I can, I would do it much later in my career. This opera impresses me a lot. “Carmen” too, though I would prefer to do this opera in 10 years’ time

OW: Is there an opera that you really wouldn’t want to do?

VH: Yeah! “Faust,” for sure.

OW: Why? It is one of the most iconic operas in the French repertoire.

VH: I would never do it. I saw it recently in Paris and became totally convinced that it is not a good opera. There are musical moments that are brilliant and certainly form a part of the heritage of the operatic French repertoire, but the libretto is really scheiße: it is so bad. The beginning of the opera is very interesting, but then it doesn’t develop dramatically. I think the characters are plain and uninteresting, and I hate its libretto. I can’t bear this sort of ‘martyrdom’ of Marguerite as a poor, naïve girl. It is horrible. I can find no way to save this character. In “Rigoletto,” for example, I have tried to portray a strong, beautiful Gilda. But I just can’t see what I would do with Marguerite. But if I had to do an opera that I really don’t like, I would follow the advice Peter Sellars once told me about “Il trovatore:” ‘Don’t stage the libretto, stage the music.’

OW: Is there a future project which you would like to talk about?

VH: Yes, though I can’t say too much. There’s a project in Villenoir that I’m very excited about. We’re creating a new opera that will be staged outdoors, outside the village. It’s coming from one of the big operatic institutions and is being staged in a place that has never done opera before. I can’t say anything else, I am afraid, only that I am really looking forward to it, and I hope the audience loves it too.

By Francisco Salazar
The George and Nora London Foundation Competition has announced the finalists for its competition set for Feb. 17 at the The Morgan Library Museum’s Gilder Lehrman Hall.

The finals will be streamed at 4 p.m. on the organization’s website and facebook page.

The following are the finalists and their repertoire choices.

Alexander McKissick, tenor “Se all’impero amici dei” from Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito

Erika Baikoff, soprano “A vos jeux, mes amis” from Thomas’s Hamlet

Ricardo Garcia, tenor “Kuda, Kuda” from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin

Joseph Sacchi, tenor “Durch die Wälder, durch die Auen” from Weber’s Der Freischütz

Olivia Johnson, mezzo-soprano “O ma lyre immortelle” from Gounod’s Sapho

Matthew Cairns, tenor “La fleur que tu m’avais jetée” from Bizet’s Carmen

Elena Villalon, soprano “Ich bin Euer Liebden” from Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier

Jordan Loyd, tenor “Inutiles regrets” from Berlioz’s Les Troyens

Amber R. Monroe, soprano “Addio mio dolce amor” from Puccini’s Edgar

Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, countertenor “Inumano fratel…Stille amare” from Handel’s Tolomeo

Karoline Podolak, soprano “Je suis Titania” from Thomas’s Mignon

William Socolof, bass-baritone “Ves’ tabar spit” from Rachmaninoff’s Aleko

Michael Fennelly, piano

This year’s panel of judges includes soprano Harolyn Blackwell, mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer, mezzo-soprano Susan Quittmeyer, bass James Morris, and former Metropolitan Opera administrator Lenore Rosenberg.

The 2022-23 season of the George and Nora London Foundation at The Morgan concludes with a recital by 2018 George London Award winner Benjamin Taylor, baritone, with pianist Katelan Terrell on Sunday, April 16, 2023, at 4:00 p.m.

By Francisco Salazar
This week audiences will get to hear a new album by Sonya Yoncheva as well as a number of world premieres.

This Island
Avie Records will release American soprano’s Susan Narucki upcoming album. The collection of 20 songs also features eminent pianist Donald Berman, a longtime collaborator of Narucki’s. The album consists of a collection of songs, chiefly by women, written in the first half of the 20th century, some of them receiving their world premiere recording here.
14 Recitations
This new solo album features Georges Aperghis’ 14 Récitations, a concert-length avant-garde song cycle for an unaccompanied female voice. The album features Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea, who notes that the piece abandons the traditional use of text. Instead, the 14 Récitations set phonemes and vocal sounds with atonality, extended vocal techniques, puzzles, and repetitions.

Chants Nostalgiques
Marie-Laure Garnier (soprano), Célia Oneto Bensaid (piano), and the Hanson Quartet release an album inspired and molded by the theme of nostalgic love. The album features Ernest Chausson’s “Poème de l’amour et de la mer” arranged for voice, string quartet, and piano, Gabriel Fauré’s “La Bonne Chanson” and Charlotte Sohy’s “Chants nostalgiques.”

Lovesick
Signum album releases countertenor Randall Scotting’s second album where he is joined by lutenist Stephen Stubbs for a selection of ‘anti-Valentine’s’ songs from the 17th and 18th centuries depicting heartbreak and love-loss.

Passiontide
Simon Mold’s new setting is a triumph drawing deeply on the traditions of baroque Passion settings as well as such works as Stainer’s ‘The Crucifixion’ and Maunder’s “Olivet to Calvary.” Helen Bailey, Stephen Cooper, Jeremy Leaman, and Philip Leech star in the new album.

Le Dolce Sirene
Reference Recordings is set to present the dynamic all-­women force of Bach Aria Soloists with a new album that includes works by Monteverdi, Handel, Mendelssohn, and Bach.

Seattle Symphony
The Seattle Symphony releases a live performance of works by two brilliant American composers, William L. Dawson and Pulitzer Prize winner George Walker. Performed by the Seattle Symphony and recorded in the stunning acoustics of Benaroya Hall, this album features Asher Fisch conducting Walker’s pieces, and conductor Roderick Cox leading the Symphony for Dawson’s work.

Momenti
In their debut self-titled EP on Crossover Records, the genre-fluid, will be heard by global audiences for the first time, experiencing what makes their artistry unique. From the virtuosic nature of the first self-titled track, to the soulful cries of “I Don’t Know What Love Is,” from ‘A Star Is Born,’ to the smooth transitions and heartfelt message of Sondheim’s “Move On,” you will be taken on a true musical journey. Momenti is comprised of Leah Crocetto, Ronny Michael Greenberg, and Christian Pursell.

Momenti’s new EP will be available on Spotify, Apple Music, and Deezer.

The Courtesan
Sonya Yoncheva releases her fifth solo album on her own label SY11 Productions. The album will focus on the world of courtesans in opera. The album was recorded last year in Genoa, Italy with the Orchestra dell’Opera Carlo Felice Genova led by Marco Armiliato and tenor Charles Castronovo. Yoncheva performs duets from “La Traviata” and “Thaïs” as well as arias from Puccini’s “La bohème” and “Manon Lescaut,” Giordano’s “Siberia” and Mascagni’s “Iris,” Leoncavallo’s “La bohème,” Saint-Saëns’ “Samson et Dalila,” Massenet’s “Manon” and “Thaïs,” and Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.” The bonus track “In Trutina” will be from Orff’s “Carmina Burana.”

By Chris Ruel
The Book Guild Publishing has announced the upcoming publication of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” literary novelization by acclaimed writer Gary Davis. The publisher has set April 28, 2023, as the novel’s release date.

“Davis’ “Butterfly” is set after the American Civil War. When a man from Maine becomes a diplomat in Nagasaki, Japan, he befriends a geisha named Cio-Cio and attends her marriage to an American naval officer, Lieutenant Pinkerton. When they discover the marriage is a sham, devastating consequences follow.

In an official press release, Davis states, “There may be a special providence in the fall of a sparrow, but in the fall of a butterfly there can arise over time a play or two, an old novel and some short stories, a hit musical and of course a grand opera. My wife and I first saw ‘Madama Butterfly’ at Lyric Opera in Chicago in the mid-1980s. Since then, we have stayed in love with the music, of course, as well as the contemplative elements of the plot. Now with ‘Butterfly’ there is a new entry, a richly imaginative novel in the form of a memoir. It recasts the basic ingredients of the opera to construct a whole bildungsroman from the point of view of the baritone Sharpless, the American consul who, it seems, has his own American story to tell. Cio-Cio and Pinkerton are still there, to be sure, but so are a host of new characters. Altogether they flesh out the bare bones of the opera’s plot, illuminate unique aspects of Japanese culture, and help make Nagasaki circa 1890 a living, breathing character in itself.”

“Butterfly” is Davis’ debut novel.