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Program
La Forza del Destino: Overture (orchestra)
Nabucco: "Va pensiero" (chorus)
Rigoletto: "La donna e mobile" (tenor
aria)
Ernani: "Ernani! involami" (soprano aria)
Otello: "Gia nella notte densa" (duet)
Aida: Triumphal March & Ballet Music (chorus)
intermission
Oberto: Overture (orchestra)
Falstaff: "Dal labbro il canto estasiato vola" (tenor
aria)
I Vespri Siciliani: "Merce, diletti amiche" (soprano
aria)
Un Ballo in Maschera: "Teco io sto" (duet)
La Traviata: The Matadors of Madrid (chorus) & Drinking
Song (duet & chorus)
Artists
 Barbara
Quintiliani, soprano
When
American soprano Barbara Quintiliani debuted at Washington
National Opera in 2002 as Elettra in Mozart’s Idomeneo,
it was heralded as the “start of a significant operatic
career.” She returned to Washington National
Opera in 2003 as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni under
the direction of Placido Domingo, and has sung Gulnara
in Verdi’s Il corsaro with Sarasota
Opera, the title roles in Lucrezia
Borgia and Luisa Miller for Opera
Boston, Liù in Turandot with Opera
Madison, and Leonora in Il trovatore with Austin
Lyric Opera, all to critical acclaim. For her
performance in Luisa Miller, The Boston Globe called
Ms. Quintiliani “the Verdi soprano the world has
been waiting for.” Ms. Quintiliani recently became
the first American woman in over 25 years to win First
Prize in the International Singing Contest Francisco
Viñas, and was also awarded
the Verdi Prize and the Public Prize. Following her success
in the competition, she made her debut with Gran
Teatre del Liceu as Elettra in Idomeneo.
She also appeared on the televised Washington Opera Gala
in the sextet from Don Giovanni under the
direction of Valery Gergiev.
Ms. Quintiliani recently appeared as
Elvira in Ernani with Opera
Boston, where critic David Shengold heralded her
as commanding “the most genuinely exciting and beautiful
Verdian soprano on the continent.” In the 2008-2009
season, she will sing Verdi’s Requiem with
Boston Landmarks Orchestra, join 2007 Cardiff Singer of
the World, Shenyang for a concert at The Music
Center at Strathmore in Bethesda,
Maryland, and bow in a concert gala with L'Opéra
de Montréal.
Equally at home in the
concert repertoire, Ms. Quintiliani has appeared in concert
with leading orchestras across the country. Recent appearances
include Beethoven’s Symphony
No. 9 with the National Symphony Orchestra and
the Madison Symphony, her Carnegie Hall
debut with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Houston
Symphony Orchestra’s New Years’ Eve
gala, and the Verdi Requiem with the Virginia
Symphony. Ms. Quintiliani’s
debut recording of the Three Poems of Fiona McLeod by
Charles Griffes with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra was
recently released on the Naxos label.
In 1999, Ms. Quintiliani was one of the
five national grand-prize winners for the Metropolitan Opera
National Council Auditions. In addition, she was the first
place winner of the 1999 Marian Anderson International
Vocal Arts Competition, the first
place winner of the 2000 Eleanor McCollum Competition
for Young Singers, and in 2001 was awarded a Sara
Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Foundation. A
native of Quincy, Massachusetts, Ms. Quintiliani is a graduate
of the New England Conservatory
of Music.
 Roy Cornelius Smith, tenor
American tenor Roy Cornelius Smith is fast becoming known
for his voice of great natural beauty, his compelling dramatic
interpretations, and his fine musicianship. He has already
been heard on some of the world's great operatic stages
including the Metropolitan Opera, Salzburger Festspiele,
Volksoper Wien, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the New Israeli
Opera. He has also appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
New York Philharmonic, Orchestra del Teatro Carlo Felice,
Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal
and with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.
His highly successful debut as Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly with
the Volksoper in Vienna led to an invitation to sing Calaf
in a new production of Turandot for which he received
rave reviews. Musical America exclaimed "his
voice is huge, dusky and Italianate, his phrasing and use
of dynamics generous and elegant, his stage presence endearing.
'Nessun dorma,' sung sweetly, passionately and thrillingly,
stopping the show cold (there is no cadence to the aria in
the original score, but the explosive ovation and accompanying
'Bravos!' were so deafening and prolonged, Hager had no choice
but to put down the baton)."
Roy Cornelius Smith's 2008-09 season currently includes appearing
as soloist in Verdi's Requiem with the Eugene Symphony; as
De Grieux in Manon Lescaut with New Orleans Opera;
as Calaf in returns to Volksoper Wien and Opera Birmingham,
also with Opera Carolina and the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra;
and as soloist in Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with
the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra. In 2007-08 he performed
Calaf in Memphis and Vienna; Erik in Der fliegende Holländer at
Opera Grand Rapids; Pinkerton at the Steyr Music Festival
in Austria and at the Aspen Music Festival; and Verdi's Requiem
at the Kennedy Center, and with Nashville and Spokane symphonies.
Recent performances include Canio in Pagliacci with
Toledo Opera, Radames in Aida with Opera Birmingham
and Hoffegut in Braunfel's rarity Die Vögel at
the Spoleto Festival, USA.
He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2000 in Aida and
since, has been heard in 11 different productions including Ariadne
auf Naxos, An American Tragedy, Aida, Tannhäuser, Le
Rossignol, Die Frau Ohne Schatten, The Merry Widow, Boris
Godunov, Salome, Lucia di Lammermoor, Nabucco, Simon Boccanegra, and Die
Meistersinger.
His international debut occurred in 1998 at the prestigious
Salzburger Festspiele, where he sang Fatty, the Bookkeeper,
in Kurt Weill's Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny.
(That performance is now available on Kultur DVD/Video with
Catherine Malfitano and Dame Gwyneth Jones, conducted by
Dennis Russell Davies). Later that same season he reprised
the role in English for the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Mr. Smith has made numerous debuts in the past few years
which have included performances of Pinkerton with Chattanooga
Symphony and Opera, Rodolfo in La bohème with
San Antonio Opera and Waco Opera, Don José in Carmen with
Opera Birmingham and the Sinfonia da Camera, Riccardo in
Verdi's first opera Oberto with Sarasota Opera,
Ismaele in Nabucco with Pacific Opera Victoria,
Laca in Jenufa with Long Beach Opera, Cavaradossi
in Tosca with Opera Memphis, Rodolfo in La bohème with
Opera Memphis, Triangle Opera and Augusta Opera.
Awards and honors include being a 1990 winner of the Metropolitan
Opera National Council Auditions, the 1999 MacAllister Awards
including the "Audience Favorite Award", the 1997
Licia Albanese/Puccini International Voice Competition, the
Houston Grand Opera Young Artist Awards, and the Eleanor
Steber Award from Baltimore Opera. Mr. Smith hails from Big
Stone Gap, Virginia, and received both Bachelor's and Master's
degrees in music from the University of Tennessee and a Doctor
of Musical Arts from the American Conservatory of Music.
Thomas Conlin, Conductor
 Thomas
Conlin is a regular guest conductor with symphony orchestras,
ballet companies and opera companies on five continents, most
recently in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Egypt,
Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway, Poland, Russia,
Spain, Turkey and throughout the United States. Many of Conlin’s programs feature works by Barber,
Bernstein, Copland, Gershwin and other fellow Americans, and
he is a champion of music of our time, but his international
career includes conducting Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov
in Russia, Beethoven and Brahms in Germany, Mozart and Mahler
in Austria, Debussy and Ravel in France, Verdi and Puccini
in Italy, Grieg in Norway and Sibelius in Finland. Last season
he led the Eastern European premiere of Bernstein’s West
Side Story at the National Opera of Croatia, in Zagreb.
Maestro Conlin’s recording of George
Crumb’s Star-Child, on which he conducts the
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, won the 2001 Grammy
Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. His music
video, Symphonic Wonderworks, won the Gold Award (1st
Prize) at the 1992 Houston International Film Festival and
was nominated for a Telly Award. His CD of Crumb’s A
Haunted Landscape was nominated for an Indie Award as
Best Orchestral Recording of 2002, and his latest CD on the
Bridge label, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Echoes of Time
and the River, was released in 2004 to great acclaim.
The first in a series of recordings of works by the Brazilian
composer Camargo Guarnieri was released on the Naxos label
last Year.
Conlin has collaborated in opera and concert
with renowned vocalists Kathleen Battle, Marilyn Horne, Robert
Merrill, Sherrill Milnes, Roberta Peters, Giorgio Tozzi and
Frederica von Stade, in ballet with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Edward
Villella and Violette Verdi, and with instrumentalists Emanuel
Ax, Alicia de Larrocha, James Galway, Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman
and Isaac Stern. For Toledo Opera he has conducted recent productions
of Romeo and Juliet, Don Pasquale, The
Turn of the Screw, La traviata, Sweeney Todd, Don Giovanni,
La bohème, The Crucible, The Barber of Seville, Faust,
Madama Butterfly, Pagliacci, Cavalleria Rusticana, Il trovatore,
Amahl and the Night Visitors, The Marriage of Figaro, Tosca and Così fan
tutte, and seven of TO’s Opera Galas: Three
Tenors! – the Next Generation, A Night in Old Vienna,
The Greatest Wagner Concert Ever!, Opera Goes to the Movies,
From Russia with Love, Richard Strauss: the Last Great
Romantic and From Broadway to the Met. |
