Lise Davidsen stars as Giorgetta in Il Tabarro in Barcelona
Lise Davidsen makes a major role debut this season at the Gran Teatre del Liceu as Giorgetta in Il Tabarro in Lotte de Beer’s production of Puccini’s Il Trittico under the baton of Susanna Mälkki. This marks her first Puccini role which will be followed later this season by Tosca in the opening of the Bergen International Festival (alongside Freddie De Tommaso) and Elisabetta in Verdi’s Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House.
Il Trittico runs from November 27 to 15 December 2022. For performance dates and tickets, click here.
Angela Brower debuts at Staatsoper Berlin
Composed by Mozart at just 14 years old, Mitridate, Re di Ponto was the first of his opera seria. This new production by Japanese director Satoshi Miyagi combines ancient Japanese culture with the Roman republic. Angela Brower makes her house and role debut as Sifare, under the baton of Mark Minkowski.
Mitridate, Re di Ponto runs from 4 to 11 December 2022. For more information and tickets, click here
David Butt Philip stars as Stolzing at Vienna State Opera
After making his debut at the Vienna State Opera as Laca in Jenůfa, David Butt Philip makes an eagerly anticipated debut on December 4th as Walther von Stolzing in Keither Warner’s new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg conducted by Philippe Jordan. He concludes his triple appearance in Vienna as Don Jose in Carmen, before making his debut at the San Francisco Opera as Der Kaiser in Die Frau ohne Schatten conducted by Sir David Runnicles and returning to the Royal Opera House as the Prince in a new contemporary staging of Rusalka by Natalie Abrahami and Ann Yee.
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg runs from 4 – 20 December. For more information and tickets, click here.
Lise Davidsen and Erin Morley Recipients of OPERA NEWS Award
We are delighted to announce that Lise Davidsen and Erin Morley have been revealed as the recipients of the 18th Annual OPERA NEWS Awards, which will be fêted at a black-tie gala on Sunday, April 16, 2023 at the Plaza in New York City.
The two artists can be seen together on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera this spring in Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier, which also marks Lise’s debut as the iconic Marschallin. Their most recent appearances at the Metropolitan Opera earned them each a Grammy nomination: Erin for title role of Matthew Aucoin’s new opera Eurydice and Lise for ‘A Concert for Ukraine’ conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Jamez McCorkle headlines the LA Opera premiere of Omar
Following the world premiere at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, Jamez McCorkle makes his debut at LA Opera in Rhiannon Giddons and Michael Abels’ opera Omar. McCorkle sings the title role Omar Ibn Said in this story inspired by the autobiography of a West African scholar sold into slavery in the United States. A vehicle for McCorkle this season, he will also perform the role at Boston Lyric Opera and Carolina Performing Arts.
Conducted by Kazem Abdullah, the production runs from October 22 – November 13. For more information and tickets, click here.
Gerald Finley premieres a new opera by John Adams
Seventeen years after the premiere of Doctor Atomic, Gerald Finley reunites with American composer John Adams to create a new opera, Antony and Cleopatra which opens in San Francisco Opera on 10 September. Based on Shakespeare's play, Finley plays the role of Mark Antony, a general whose love affair with the pharaoh Cleopatra triggers the collapse of the Roman Republic.
With a libretto by John Adams, Antony and Cleopatra will also be presented in future seasons at Grand Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, when Adams himself will conduct the piece and at the Metropolitan Opera.
Antony and Cleopatra opens the centennial anniversary season of San Francisco Opera on 10 September, with further performances on 15, 18, 23, 27 Septmber and 2 and 5 October. Amina Edris sings the role of Cleopatra and Music Director Eun Sun Kim conducts the production staged by Elkhanah Pulitzer.
For tickets and more information click here.
Three MWA artists star in The Magic Flute at Opera de Paris
Huw Montague Rendall, Brindley Sherratt and Michael Colvin join Opera de Paris for their upcoming performances of Mozat's ever so popular opera The Magic Flute which opens on 17 September.
Huw Montague Rendall makes his company debut as Papageno, a role he has performed to sensational critical acclaim for his debuts with Royal Opera House and Chicago Lyric Opera last season.
Michael Colvin is Monastatos, a role he performed together with Huw Montague Rendall last autumn at Royal Opera House. Colvin, who also sings Spoletta Tosca for the company, returns to Paris after having sung Basilio Le Nozze di Figaro and Duke of Cornwall Lear in previous seasons.
Brindley Sherratt also makes his company debut as Sarastro, one of his signature roles and a vehicle this season for his return to Royal Opera House and in future seasons to Metropolitan Opera.
This production of The Magic Flute runs from 17 September to 19 November. For performance dates and tickets please click here
Freddie De Tommaso: Open Air concert in Munich
Fresh from his debut at Arena di Verona as Alfredo La Traviata, Freddie De Tommaso kicks off the new season on 16 September with the open air concert of Bayerische Staatsoper, Oper für alle, joining star soprano Sonya Yoncheva
The concert, conducted by Daniele Rustioni, takes place at Mangfallpark in Rosenheim. The entrance is free. For more information and tickets please click here
Lise Davidsen: Last Night of the Proms 2022
One of the most celebrated classical artists today, the Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen is set to make a huge splash as the star of the much coveted Last Night of the Proms, the UK’s greatest classical music event. She will perform among others her signature aria: Dich teure Halle from Wagner’s Tannhäuser, the Easter Hymn from Masagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana as well as taking on Lady Macbeth’s entrance scene Vieni t’affretta from Verdi’s Macbeth as a nod the British culture and history. She is joined by star cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and conductor Dalia Stasevska.
Davidsen is currently the Artist in Spotlight at the Barbican, where her next appearance on 30th of May is a gala operatic evening together with none other than Freddie De Tommaso and pianist James Baillieu. For more ticket and more information click here.
Next season, UK audiences can also see Davidsen at the Royal Opera House as Elisabeth in Tannhäuser (29th January –16th February 2023) and her role debut as Elisabetta in Verdi’s Don Carlo (30th June – 15th July 2023).
https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/events/2022/prom-72-last-night-of-the-proms-2022/
Stanislas de Barbeyrac: Bastille Day 2022 - Concert de Paris
French tenor Stanislas de Barbeyrac joins the all-star line up of Nadine Sierra, Lea Desandre, Erwin Schrott and instrumentalists Alice Saraa Ott, Jérôme Ducros, Gautier Capuçon and Leonidas Kavakos for the biggest French celebration of the year, the Bastille Day Concert, which takes place every year in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The event attended by huge crowds of people, precedes the extraordinary firework display and is broadcast on national radio and TV.
For more information on the programme and the event click here.
Freddie De Tommaso's new album debuts at No 1
Freddie De Tommaso's newly launched album Il Tenore has debuted at No 1 in the Uk Classical Charts, with his interpretation of Puccini's Nessun Dorma attracting more than one million streams this year alone.
The album features a collection of arias and duets from famous operas by Puccini: Tosca, Turandot and Madama Butterfly and Bizet: Carmen. He is joined by fellow Decca artist Lise Davidsen (Tosca) and Natalya Romaniw (Cio-Cio-San) and Aigul Akhmetshina (Carmen).
MWA Artists across European Festivals this summer
We are thrilled to share that MWA Artists feature heavily in Summer Festivals both in the UK and Internationally in the 2021/22 season:
BBC PROMS
David Junghoon Kim: First Night of the Proms Verdi Requiem 15thJuly, 20:00 (cond. Sakari Oramo)
Lise Davidsen: Last Night of the Proms with cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason 10th September, 19:30 (cond. Dalia Stasevska)
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Erin Morley: Norina in Don Pasquale
Huw Montague Rendall: Malatesta in Don Pasquale, 22nd July – 27th August (cond. Ben Glassberg, dir. Mariame Clément)
David Junghoon Kim: Rodolfo in La bohème, 7 – 14 August (cond. Jordan de Souza (conductor), dir. Floris Visser)
Grange Park Opera
Ruxandra Donose: Laura in La Gioconda, 11th June – 13th July (cond. Stephen Barlow, dir. Stephen Medcalf)
Opera Holland Park
Thomas Atkins: Lensky in Eugene Onegin, 31st May – 25thJune (cond. Lada Valešová, dir. Julia Burbach)
Verbier Festival
Stanislas de Barbeyrac: Mozart Requiem with the Münchener Bach-Chor, 20th July, 19:00
Iulia Maria Dan: Beethoven Symphony No.9 with the Münchener Bach-Chor, 18th July, 19:00 (cond. Gábor Takács-Nagy)
Freddie de Tommaso: Riccardo in Un ballo in maschera 2th July, 19:00 (cond. Gianandrea Noseda)
Bayreuther Festspiele
Lise Davidsen: Sieglinde in Die Walküre 1st – 26th August (cond. Pietari Inkinen, dir. Valentin Schwarz) and Elisabeth in Tannhäuser 8th – 24th August (cond. Axel Kober, dir. Tobias Kratzer)
Iréne Theorin: Brünnhilde in Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung5th – 30th August (cond. Pietari Inkinen, dir. Valentin Schwarz)
Bayerische Staatsoper
Brindley Sherratt: Swallow in Peter Grimes 9th – 12th July (cond. Edward Gardner, dir. Stefan Herheim)
Angela Brower: The Fox in The Cunning Little Vixen 11th – 16thJuly (cond. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, dir. Barrie Kosky)
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
Jacquelyn Stucker: the title role of L'incoronazione di Poppea 9th – 23rd July (cond. Leonardo Garcia Alarcon, dir. Ted Huffman)
Kissinger Sommer
Lise Davidsen: Strauss Vier letzte Lieder with the Wiener Symphoniker, 9th July, 19:30 (cond. Patrick Hahn)
Turku Music Festival
Lise Davidsen: Recital with pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, 15th August, 19:00
Salzburg Festival
David Butt Philip: Boris in Káťa Kabanová 7th – 29th August (cond. Jakub Hrůša, dir. Barrie Kosky)
Festival Internacional de Musica Castell de Peralada.
Anna Pirozzi: Abigaille in Nabucco cond. Nicola Luisotti, 30thJuly, 22:00
Lise Davidsen: Recital with pianist Sophie Reynaud, 4th August, 19:00
Arena di Verona
Freddie De Tommaso: Alfredo in La Traviata cond. Marco Armiliato 20th August & 1st September, 20:45
Gerald Finley releases new recording in Hyperion
The Gramophone-award winning partnership of Gerald Finley and Julius Drake will release on 3 June Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin on Hyperion Records.
The duo's previous recordings of Schubert have been praised as faultless (Winterreise) and richly satisfying (Schwanengesang) exalted standard. This third and final release completes their survey of the great Schubert song cycles on the label.
Finley and Drake have won three Solo Vocal Awards in the Gramophone Classical Music Awards – for songs by Schumann, Britten and Barber, all for Hyperion.
Listen and order here
Anna Pirozzi signs to MWA Management
We are thrilled to welcome for exclusive general management the sensational Anna Pirozzi, the leading Italian dramatic soprano today. Shortly after making her debut in 2012 at the Teatro Regio in Turin as Amelia Ballo in Maschera, which prompted Corriere della Sera to write “an extraordinary dramatic coloratura soprano that in time will be able to place herself in the footsteps of Anita Cerquetti, the greatest dramatic soprano of coloratura from 1945 to today", she was invited at the Salzburg Festival to sing Abigaille Nabucco under the musical direction of Riccardo Muti. The rapturous success quickly led to appearances on all the great stages of the world: Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Metropolitan Opera, Teatro Alla Scala di Milano, Opera de Paris, Wiener Staatsoper, Arena di Verona, Teatro Real Madrid, San Francisco Opera, Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona and Bayerische Staatsoper Munich. In summer 2021 she celebrated at the Arena di Verona the anniversary of her 100th Abigaile to huge press and public acclaim.
Currently performing her signature role of Lady Macbeth Macbeth at Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, her many highlights this season include a double appearance at Royal Opera House Covent Garden as Tosca and Lady Macbeth, a role which she also returns to Wiener Staatsoper with; a concert performance of I due Foscari in Paris; Abigaille at Teatro Real; Tosca at Teatro Massimo di Palermo; Turandot at Bayerische Staatsoper; and Amelia Ballo in Maschera at Deutsche Oper Berlin and Teatro Regio di Parma. She also sings Elvira Ernani at Opera de Las Palmas and appears in concert in Trieste at Teatro Verdi; and in Ankara and Istanbul with gala concerts together with tenor Murat Karahan.
Future seasons see her revisit beloved roles such as Leonora La forza del destino, Amelia Un ballo in maschera and the title role of Norma, as well as role debuts as Minnie La fanciulla del West and the title roles of Adriana Lecouvreur and Madama Butterfly.
Brindley Sherratt joins MWA for general management
We are thrilled to welcome British bass Brindley Sherratt, one of today’s most respected singers to the MWA roster for general management. Noted for his extraordinary vocal and stage presence, his many career highlights include Sarastro Die Zauberflöte at the Vienna State Opera, Dutch National Opera and Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Claggart Billy Budd at the Aldeburgh and Glyndebourne Festivals, the BBC Proms, Teatro Real in Madrid, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and in New York at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Arkel Pelléas et Mélisande in Frankfurt and Zurich Opera; Sparafucile in a new production of Rigoletto at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Rocco Fidelio and Ochs Der Rosenkavalier at the Glyndebourne Festival; Bottom A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Festival d’Aix en Provence; Doctor Wozzeck at the Lyric Opera of Chicago; Pogner Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Welsh National Opera; Filippo Don Carlo for Opera North; Pimen Boris Godunov at English National Opera and Zurich Opera; and Fiesco Simon Boccanegra at English National Opera.
Highligths of the 2021/22 season include Oliver Mears’ new production of Rigoletto as well as Sarastro Die Zauberflöte , both at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Hunding in Richard Jones’ new production of The Valkyrie for the English National Opera; Swallow in Stefan Herheim’s new production of Peter Grimes at the Bayerische Staatsoper and a return to the Salzburg Festival. Concert appearances include Gremin Eugene Onegin with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Fabio Luisi and his role debut as Gurnemanz in semi-staged performances of Parsifal with the Orchestra of Opera North conducted by Richard Farnes. Future seasons see him return to Metropolitan Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence as well as making his company debut with Opera national de Paris.
He works regularly with the leading orchestras and conductors and recent engagements have included the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House with Pappano; the Philharmonia with Sir Andrew Davis; the Hallé Orchestra with Sir Mark Elder; the Mahler Chamber Orchestra with Harding; the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra with Bicket; the Monteverdi Choir with Gardiner; the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with Nézet-Séguin and the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen with Langrée.
Born in Lancashire into a family of strong singers, he initially studied trumpet at the Royal Academy of Music, of which of which he is now a Fellow and Visiting Professor.
Lise Davidsen and Leif Ove Andsens: new recording and tour
Lise Davidsen and Norway's foremost pianist Leif Ove Andsens join forces to capture for Decca Classics the beautifully haunting music of their fellow Norwegian Edvard Grieg. The recording, released on 7 January 2022, is centred around Grieg's Haugtussa and also includes the composer's Five Songs, Op 69, and the Six Songs, Op 48, as well as a well-chosen selection of other songs.
The two musicians can also be heard live this January in four European cities:
8 January in Madrid at the Teatro Real
9 January in Munich at the Bayerische Staatsoper
11 January in Vienna at the Konzerthaus
13 January in London at the Barbican
Freddie De Tommaso: "a star is born"
Freddie De Tommaso took the Covent Garden stage by storm when he jumped in as Cavaradossi in Royal Opera’s production of Tosca on December 8, thus becoming the youngest ever tenor to perform the role on the iconic stage and the first Brit since 1963.
De Tommaso, who was due to perform the role on the 11th, took to the stage after the first interval when the tenor originally scheduled became unwell during the first of the three acts, prompting Neil Fisher to write in his review for The Times: "How did he fare? I’ll let Cavaradossi answer that: “Vittoria!”
The real excitement, however, was for Cavaradossi, Freddie De Tommaso (...) He had upstaged himself already, days earlier, attracting rave headlines by jumping in halfway through for Brian Hymel, taken unwell during the other cast’s opening night. Half Italian but raised in Tunbridge Wells, De Tommaso – remember the name – is hurtling to stardom.
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Having trained at the Royal Academy of Music, first as a baritone, then switching up to tenor, he won the international Plácido Domingo Tenor prize in 2018 and was quickly signed up to Decca. Bright-toned in the Italianate style, but with heft to soar over the orchestra in mid-range, De Tommaso is not shy to show how loudly, how securely, how effortlessly he can sing. That prolonged, dazzling high A sharp on “Vittoria!” was, to tell it straight, milked. Why not… it was a rare thrill to hear a tenor voice of this ease and brilliance. The new Pavarotti? We’ve heard that before. This time it might just be true (The Guardian)
" A star is born as Freddie De Tommaso set the house alight" : Freddie De Tommaso is the real deal, a glorious Italianate throb animating a voice whose fate-sealing, defiant cries of “Vittoria!” in Act II set the house trembling.
Baritonal warmth at the lower end of the voice only adds to the sunburst-reveal of the top, and he’s just getting started (The Independent)