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Opera Stars of Today—Nino Machaidze

2012
05.04

Nino Machaidze [b. 1983] is a native of Tblisi, Georgia.  After completing her vocal studies in her country’s capital city, she performed in a number of productions at the Paliashvili Opera House there.  She was the first place winner in 2006 in the Leyla Gencer Voice Competition in Istanbul, having relocated to Milan and enrolled the previous year in the music academy that is an adjunct to the opera company based at Teatro alla Scala (La Scala).  Upon her graduation in 2007, Machaidze first came to the attention of operagoers in her La Scala appearance as Marie, the starring role in Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment.

Machaidze’s international breakthrough came as Juliette at the 2008 Salzburg Festival—tenor Rolando Villazon was Romeo—in the Gounod opera Romeo et Juliette.  Debuts at other opera houses around Europe soon followed, including a 2008 performance in Parma as Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto, a 2009 performance in Bologna as Elvira in Bellini’s I Puritani—Juan Diego Florez had the lead tenor role—and a reprise of her Juliette role at Venice later in 2009.

North America first saw Machaidze in Los Angeles in September 2008, where she sang the role of Adina in an L.A. Opera production of Donizetti’s L’Elisir, again opposite Villazon.  Her first performance in the title role of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, a must-sing situation for any coloratura soprano, took place in Brussels in April 2009.  Additional bel canto operas in which Machaidze has starred include Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia, Bellini’s La Sonnambula, and Rossini’s Le comte Ory.  She sang in this latter opera at the Met in New York, with Juan Diego Florez as the title character.  In 2011, Machaidze released a recording on Sony Classics titled Romantic Arias that featured material from the various leading roles she has continued to perform on the world’s stages.  For the 2012–13 opera season, she is scheduled so far to appear in Rigoletto at La Scala (Gustavo Dudamel conducting) in November, and back at the Met the following January in Le comte Ory (Maurizio Benini conducting).

Machaidze sings “Ah! non credea” from La Sonnambula in concert with the orchestra and chorus of Berlin’s Deutsche Oper [2007]:

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Famous Soloists—Hilary Hahn

2012
05.02

Hilary Hahn [b. 1979], from Lexington, Virginia, first took up the violin at the age of four.  She participated as a student of the Suzuki method for about a year, at which point her extraordinary skills were realized and she “graduated” to private instruction.  From ages 10 to 17, Hahn was taught at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music.

Hahn’s first full recital took place when she was ten; a year later she made her debut with an orchestra, playing the Haydn violin concerto with a Philadelphia-based chamber orchestra.  At 12 she played her first concert with a major ensemble, performing the third (final) movement of the Saint-Saens Violin Concerto No. 3 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.  Her international debut took place in Germany in 1995, when she played the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, led by maestro Lorin Maazel.

Sony Music signed Hahn to an exclusive recording contract when she was 16, but she switched her allegiance to Deutsche Grammophon in 2003 after the Sony contract ran its course.  Among her early recordings are a Grammy-winning Sony CD of the Brahms and Stravinsky violin concertos, performed with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields orchestra and conducted by Sir Neville Marriner.  Highlights of her material with DG include a 2008 double Grammy-nominated performance—winning for Best Instrumental Soloist with Orchestra and also nominated for Best Classical Album—of the Schoenberg and Sibelius violin concertos with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.  In 2007, she participated in the creation of a German TV production titled, “Hilary Hahn: A Portrait,” that DG subsequently released on DVD.

Hahn performs on a vintage copy of a 1743 Guarneri formerly belonging to Niccolò Paganini.  Violinmaker and restorer J.B. Vuillaume of Paris copied the original instrument in 1864 when Paganini had sent his Guarneri over for repair, and it is said that the famous violinist could scarcely tell the difference between the two.

Hahn plays the first movement of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (Gustavo Dudamel, conductor) [2007]:

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Composer’s Corner—Edward Elgar

2012
04.30

Edward Elgar [1857–1934] is considered among the giants of British classical music composition, as vital to the genre in his era as Henry Purcell was to the seventeenth century and Benjamin Britten to the twentieth.  Most people know him primarily—or perhaps exclusively—for “Pomp and Circumstance” [1901], the dirge-like march that is played perpetually at school graduations.  But Elgar’s music transcends that rather rigid piece, and one easily hears Continental European influences in much of his music despite his reputation as being a “typically English” composer.

Elgar was born in the Midlands region, near Worcester.  His father, William Henry Elgar, worked as a piano tuner and also ran a store that sold instruments and sheet music.  Raised in a Catholic household, Edward’s early exposure to music was at the local church, where he eventually learned to play the organ.  His first compositions were liturgical in nature—motets for a four-part chorus, among them—and he continued to compose choral music, although his more acclaimed pieces at this point in his career included Serenade for Strings [1892] and Three Bavarian Dances [1897], the latter a reflection of the time he’d spent in mainland Europe a decade or so earlier.

With the near-turn of the century came Elgar’s first major success, the Enigma Variations [1899], which continue today to be one of the more popular Elgar compositions for orchestra.  A year later Sir Arthur Sullivan died, and Elgar was seen as the man’s logical successor in British classical circles—even though the music Elgar was writing had nothing in common with the operettas Sullivan had composed to the lyrics of W.S. Gilbert.  Nonetheless Elgar had the attention of the royal family, as he was commissioned to compose material for the coronation of Edward VII in 1901, Victoria’s successor to the throne.  This became one of the first two “Pomp and Circumstance” marches.

Violinist Fritz Kreisler paid Elgar to write a violin concerto [1910], and this continues to be one of the composer’s most popular pieces in the repertoire.  In fact, his most productive years spanned the era from 1899 to 1920, a period in which he also wrote Introduction and Allegro for Strings [1905], his only two symphonies [1908 and 1911, respectively], and a cello concerto [1919], which was his final large-scale work.  He achieved knighthood in 1904 and was the recipient of many honorary academic degrees, including from the universities of Cambridge, Yale, Leeds, Oxford, Birmingham, and London.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Daniel Barenboim, conductor) plays a selection from the Enigma Variations in a 1997 concert:

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Opera Stars of Today—Gerald Finley

2012
04.27

Gerald Finley [b. 1960], born in Montreal, Canada, is a bass-baritone who is particularly appreciated for his work in contemporary opera.  He also specializes in baritone roles in the operas of W.A. Mozart, having appeared multiple times as Don Giovanni, the Count Almaviva, Papageno, and Guglielmo.  He began his singing career as a member of a choral group in Ottawa, and he studied voice in the U.K. at two separate venues—the Royal College of Music in Cambridge, and the National Opera Studio in London.

Among the roles Finley has originated in world operatic premieres are Harry Heegan in The Silver Tassie by Mark-Anthony Turnage [English National Opera; 2000] and the title role in Fantastic Mr. Fox by Tobias Picker [Los Angeles Opera; 1998].  His most famous creation, however, is the role of Robert Oppenheimer in the John Adams opera Doctor Atomic.  Its initial production took place in October 2005 at the San Francisco Opera, and he has sung the role a number of times since then.  When Doctor Atomic made its first-ever appearance at the Met in 2008, Finley was there to reprise the Oppenheimer character as well.  A subsequent recording with that ensemble won Finley a 2012 Grammy Award.

As his career has matured, Finley is taking on more challenging roles, not that contemporary opera isn’t challenging.  But by expanding beyond Mozart to perform in operas that span a number of different eras—Athanaël in Massenet’s Thaïs, the title role in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, and Iago in Verdi’s Otello—Finley is crafting a careful and well-received operatic career.  He also performs regularly in recital and as a soloist with various orchestras in the United States and Europe, a number of which have or will be captured as recordings.  For example, Finley’s current season includes an appearance with the Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam) for a performance of the Mozart Requiem, with the BBC Orchestra for a series of songs by Jean Sibelius, and with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for the European premiere of Songs of Love and Sorrow by Peter Lieberson.

Finley sings the aria “Batter, My Heart” from Doctor Atomic (Netherlands Opera):

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Masters of the Podium—Fabio Luisi

2012
04.25

Fabio Luisi [b. 1959] was born in Genoa, Italy.  He took up the piano at the age of four and eventually earned a keyboard studies degree in 1978 from the Conservatorio Niccolò Paganini—named for the 17th century virtuoso violinist—that opened in Genoa in 1830.  His interest in conducting led him to enroll at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria, where the renowned Croatian conductor Milan Horvat taught him.

After serving as an accompanist with the Graz Opera, Luisi’s professional conducting debut came in Italy in 1984.  He went on to serve as principal conductor of the Graz Symphony from 1990–1995, as artistic director and chief conductor of Vienna’s Tonkünstler Orchestra from 1995–2000, and as principal conductor of Geneva’s Orchestre de la Suisse Romande from 1997–2002.  Because the latter ensemble serves as the house orchestra for the Geneva Opera, Luisi enjoyed considerable exposure for his work in that genre.

Luisi’s American debut came in 2000, when he conducted a series of concerts with the New York Philharmonic and also led a new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto at Lyric Opera of Chicago.  His first performance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera took place five years later, when he conducted another Verdi opera—Don Carlo—in 2005.  Over the next several years he filled a dominant role there, taking the podium for such productions as Simon Boccanegra (Verdi), Turandot and Tosca (Puccini), and Elektra and Der Ägyptische Helena (Richard Strauss), among others.

His strong relationship with Met Opera management, as well as his success in stepping in for an oft-ailing James Levine, are two factors that prompted the Met—in September 2011—to name Luisi as Levine’s successor to the post of principal conductor.  His schedule for the 2011–12 season at the Met includes productions of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Wagner’s Siegfried, Massenet’s Manon and Verdi’s La traviata, but he hardly allows this schedule to prevent his appearances elsewhere.  The season also has him making his first appearance at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, conducting the Cleveland Orchestra at Severence Hall, and engaging in guest conducting appearances with orchestras in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Rome, Florence, Oslo, and back home in Genoa.

Fabio Luisi has recorded a number of operas; these have included the lesser known Verdi works Alzira and Alroldo, as well as La locandiera by Antonio Salieri.

Luisi conducts the Vienna Symphony on tour in Japan [Mozart's overture to the opera, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, 2006]:

Category Masters of the Podium |

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Modern American Composers—Carlisle Floyd

2012
04.23

Carlisle Floyd [b. 1926] is known primarily as an opera composer.  Even his non-operatic works have generally involved music for the voice, such as Citizen of Paradise [1984]—a song cycle for mezzo-soprano and orchestra based on the writings of poet Emily Dickinson—and A Time to Dance [1993] for bass-baritone, chorus and orchestra.  He also composed a piano sonata in the 1950s.

Floyd was born in Latta, South Carolina, and he attended Converse College in nearby Spartanburg.  When his piano instructor transferred to Syracuse [N.Y.] University, Floyd followed and received his bachelor’s of music degree there in 1946.  His first academic post was as a music professor at Florida State University, where he remained for 30 years.

Unlike most opera composers, who tend to write music set against someone else’s lyrics, Floyd has continually crafted his own librettos.  His first major triumph in the opera world—his third composition overall and the work that remains his greatest accomplishment—was Susannah, which received its premiere on the stage at Florida State in 1955.  Its first non-academic production was by the New York City Opera, one year later, with soprano Phyllis Curtin reprising her title role from the FSU debut, and with Norman Treigle enjoying his earliest success as the Reverend Olin Blitch.  The story is loosely based on a Biblical story transported to rural Tennessee, with lyrics sung in a Southern dialect.

Of Mice and Men, based on the Steinbeck novel of the same name, is Floyd’s other monumental opera.  It was a Ford Foundation commission that received its premiere at the Seattle Opera in 1970.  Floyd delved into classic literature for yet another operatic storyline, the Emily Brontë novel Wuthering Heights [1958].  This opera was first performed by the Santa Fe Opera and featured Phyllis Curtin as Catherine.  Houston Grand Opera has been a strong supporter of Floyd’s works.  In all, the company has premiered three of his operas, including Bilby’s Doll in 1976, Willy Stark in 1981, and Cold Sassy Tree in 2000.

Floyd has received a number of awards and accolades over the years.  He obtained a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1958 and was inducted into the Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001.  The White House honored Floyd with a National Medal of Arts in 2004, and in 2008 he received a lifetime achievement award for opera from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Renee Fleming sings “Ain’t It a Pretty Night” from Susannah [Richard Tucker Gala, 1995]:

Category Modern American Composers |

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