November 16, 2011 at 6pm at the Professional Children’s School
As a prelude to The Collegiate Chorale’s performance of Moïse et Pharaon, Rossini scholar Philip Gossett will speak about the creation and performance practices of Rossini’s opera, as well as offer historical and musical insight on the work and its fascinating iterations. Immediately following the lecture will be a reception. The lecture will begin at 6pm on Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at the Professional Children’s School, located at 132 West 60th Street (between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues).
Tickets are $10 (free to Friends or Maestro’s Circle Members) and can be purchased at www.collegiatechorale.org or by calling (646) 202-9623.
Philip Gossett, Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Chicago, is a music historian with special interests in 19th-century Italian opera, sketch studies, aesthetics, textual criticism, and performance practice. His book, Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera, won the Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society as the best book on music of the year. One of the world’s foremost experts on Italian opera, Gossett has served as President of the American Musicological Society and of the Society for Textual Scholarship, as Dean of Humanities at Chicago, and as lecturer and consultant at opera houses and festivals in America and Italy.
The Collegiate Chorale presents Rossini’s Moïse et Pharaon on Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at 8pm at Carnegie Hall, 881 Seventh Avenue, NYC. The performance will feature James Morris, Kyle Ketelsen, Angela Meade, Eric Cutler, Marina Rebeka and the American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by James Bagwell. Single tickets start at $25 and are available online at carnegiehall.org, by phone through Carnegie Charge at (212) 247-7800 or in person at the Carnegie Hall Box Office.
This opera-in-concert presentation will feature Rossini’s lavish French-language version of 1827 replete with romance, intrigue, vengeance, and acts of God as Moses leads the Jews out of the land of Pharaoh and into freedom, by way of the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea. The story is impassioned and the music is gorgeous.
The performance is also part of The Chorale’s 2011 Gala Benefit. Gala tickets include pre-concert cocktails, a seated dinner in the Rohatyn Room, and prime concert seating. Gala tickets can be purchased by calling (323) 424-3345.
The Collegiate Chorale’s 70th season continues with Tippett’s A Child of our Time and Bruckner’s Te Deum on February 3, 2012 at 7pm at Carnegie Hall, with soloists Nicole Cabell, Marietta Simpson, Russell Thomas, and John Relyea, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado on April 10, 2012 at 6:30pm at Carnegie Hall, featuringKelli O’Hara, Jason Danieley, and Christopher Fitzgerald, directed and conducted by Ted Sperling. The season will conclude with a program entitled “Contemporary Voices” led by Maestro Bagwell on May 21, 2012 at St. Bartholomew’s Church. Highlights of the program include Copland’s In the Beginning – which The Chorale premiered under its founder Robert Shaw – the Poulenc Gloria, and the New York premiere of a work by Avner Dorman.
Subscription tickets can be purchased by contacting The Chorale office at (646) 435-9465 or online at collegiatechorale.org. Single tickets for all concerts can be obtained by via the website or by calling The Collegiate Chorale at (646) 435-9465.
The mission of The Collegiate Chorale, led by Music Director James Bagwell, is to enrich its audiences through innovative programming and exceptional performances of a broad range of vocal music featuring a premier choral ensemble. Founded in 1941 by the legendary conductor Robert Shaw, The Chorale has established a preeminent reputation for its interpretations of the traditional choral repertoire, vocal works by American composers, and rarely heard operas-in-concert, as well as for commissions and premieres of new works by today’s most exciting creative artists. The many guest artists with whom The Chorale has performed in recent years include: Bryn Terfel, Stephanie Blythe, Nathan Gunn, Kelli O’Hara, Victoria Clark, Renée Fleming, Thomas Hampson, and Deborah Voigt. Last season’s highlights included a Brahms program at Carnegie Hall featuring Stephanie Blythe, Eric Owens and Erin Morley, a critically acclaimed concert presentation of Kurt Weill’s Knickerbocker Holiday featuring Victor Garber and Kelli O’Hara which was recorded and released commercially in the first complete cast album of that work, and a celebration of Broadway featuring Deborah Voigt and Paulo Szot under the baton of Ted Sperling. In addition to The Chorale’s presentations, the chorus performed in five programs throughout the American Symphony Orchestra’s 2010-11 season, returned to Verbier in the summer of 2011, and will perform with the Israel Philharmonic in Israel and Salzburg in July 2012.
Music Director James Bagwell maintains an active schedule throughout the United States as a conductor of choral, operatic, and orchestral music. He has recently been named Principal Guest Conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra in New York and is Director of the Music Program at Bard College. At Bard SummerScape he has led numerous theatrical works, most notably Copland’s The Tender Land, which received unanimous praise from The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Opera News. He frequently appears as guest conductor for orchestras around the country and abroad, including the Jerusalem Symphony, Tulsa Symphony, and the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. He has also prepared The Concert Chorale of New York for performances with the American Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Mostly Mozart Festival (broadcast nationally in 2006 on Live from Lincoln Center), all in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. He has trained choruses for a number of major American and international orchestras and worked with noted conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Tilson Thomas, Louis Langrée, Leon Botstein, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Raymond Leppard, James Conlon, Jesús López-Cobos, Erich Kunzel, Leon Fleischer, and Robert Shaw.
Legendary bass-baritone James Morris is world famous for his performances in opera, concert, recital, and recording. With a repertoire including works by Wagner, Verdi, Puccini, Offenbach, Stravinsky, Mussorgsky, Mozart, Gounod and Britten, Mr. Morris has performed in virtually every international opera house and has appeared with the major orchestras of Europe and the United States. Considered one of the greatest interpreters of the role of Wotan in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, Morris has appeared in this role at the Metropolitan Opera, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Deutsche Oper, Berlin, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera and many others. He is also considered the world’s leading interpreter of the title role in Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer and has appeared as Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the major houses of the United States and Europe.
American bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen is in regular demand by the world’s leading opera companies and orchestras for his vibrant and handsome stage presence and his distinctive vocalism. His 2011/2012 season began with Teatro Comunale di Bologna’s Japanese tour as Escamillo in Carmen, sponsored by Fugi TV. He appears on the stage of the Houston Grand Opera as Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia and as Don Fernando in Fidelio, at the Metropolitan Opera as Mr. Flint in Billy Budd, and at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in the title role of Le nozze di Figaro. Concert engagements include appearances with the Philharmonia Orchestra in Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex under Esa-Pekka Salonen, his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Stravinsky’s Pulcinella under the baton of Pierre Boulez, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in Berlioz’ The Damnation of Faust under David Zinman, and Verdi’s Requiem with the Madison Symphony.
Soprano Angela Meade is the winner of the 2011 Richard Tucker Award. Less than four years after her professional debut, she has quickly become recognized as one of the outstanding vocalists of her generation. The New York Times said of Ms. Meade, “Norma counsels peace in “Casta Diva,” and Ms. Meade sang it beautifully, filling the long-spun lines with rich, unforced sound, shaping the phrases with bittersweet poignancy, gracing the melody with tasteful embellishments and lifting her voice to majestic highs.” Angela Meade excels in the most demanding heroines of the nineteenth century bel canto repertoire as well as in the operas of Verdi and Mozart.
American tenor Eric Cutler is the winner of the 2005 Richard Tucker Award and is hailed as one of the most promising singers of his generation. He has attracted the attention of the world’s major opera houses as well as gaining a notable following in both orchestral and recital repertoire. He is equally at home in the high lying roles of Bellini and Donizetti as with the major protagonists of Mozart and the French repertoire.
Her debut at the Salzburg Festival in a new production of Rossini’s Moïse et Pharaon (Anaï), under the baton of Riccardo Muti, staged by Jürgen Flimm, in August 2009, has established Marina Rebeka as one among the most interesting singers of the new generation, on the international scene. Her acclaimed debuts at Covent Garden as Violetta in La traviata (July 2010), and at Deutsche Oper Berlin as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni (October 2010) came after a rich 2009/10 season, during which she also performed Britten’s War Requiem with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Stéphane Denève, and two productions of Carmen (Micaela): at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, with Theodor Currentzis, and at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia, with Zubin Mehta.
When Leopold Stokowski established the American Symphony Orchestra 46 years ago, he broke new ground with a mission to showcase the talents of American musicians through “concerts of great music within the means of everyone.” Since then the company has expanded its mandate again to serve as innovators in our field by rebuilding audiences for orchestral music and ensuring the survival of classical music art forms. In the context of the ASO’s thematic concerts, rare and under-performed works have attracted deserved attention, earning audience approval as well as fresh performances by orchestras and opera companies around the world. Our performances reintroduce masterworks into the symphonic canon and allow them to become available to other orchestras for future presentations.
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