Join us on Sunday, April 15 at 3PM to hear a truly international group of rising young stars of the opera world. Coming to Stamford through the auspices of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, for the fourth year Friends of Music is honored to begin our 26th Season with a performance by such gifted musicians.
For people who think they do not like opera, this is a rare opportunity to hear world-class operatic voices in an up-close-and-personal setting, a very different experience from a venue like the Metropolitan Opera House which seats nearly 4,000 people. For those who are true opera fans, this concert is not to be missed.
Founded in 1980, The Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program identifies and nurtures the most promising young artists through training and performance opportunities. The selected artists are provided with specialized coaching in music, language, drama, and movement from the Met’s own artistic staff and from invited master teachers.
The Program provides an annual stipend for living expenses and funds private lessons with approved teachers from outside the Met staff. Participants also have access to rehearsals for all Metropolitan Opera productions.
The selected artists are offered a position with the Program for a period of one year with annual renewal for up to three years for singers and two years for pianists. During this period, the young artists’ engagements both inside and outside of the Met are at the consent of the Artistic and Executive Directors, and Friends of Music is grateful that they will once again send this musical gift to Stamford.
To learn more about the Lindemann Program, please visit the Met’s Web site.
To read more about the featured performers, please see below.
Program
“Largo al factotum” from Gioachino Rossini’s
Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Luthando Qave
“All idea di quel metallo” from Gioachino Rossini’s
Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Alexander Lewis
Luthando Qave
“Quel guardo, il cavaliere” from Gaetano Donizetti’s
Don Pasquale
Haeran Hong
Mélodies passagères by Samuel Barber
Puisque tout passe
Un cygne avance sur l’eau tout entouré
Tombeau dans un parc
Le clocher chante
Départ
Alexander Lewis
Selections Dichterliebe by Robert Schumann
Im wunderschönen Monat Mai
Aus meinen Tränen sprieße
Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne
Wenn ich in deine Augen seh
Luthando Qave
“La fioraia fiorentina” by Gioachino Rossini
Haeran Hong
“Venti Scudi” duet from Gaetano Donizetti’s
L’elisir d’amore
Alexander Lewis
Luthando Qave
“Saper Vorreste” from Giuseppe Verdi’s
Un Ballo in Maschera
Haeran Hong
“Ah, per sempre io ti perdei” from Vincenzo Bellini’s
I Puritani
Luthando Qave
“Là ci darem la mano” from W.A. Mozart’s
Don Giovanni
Haeran Hong
Luthando Qave
Blue Mountain Ballads by Paul Bowles
Heavenly Grass
Lonesome Man
The Cabin
Sugar in the Cane
Alexander Lewis
April 15, 2012 Performers
Soprano Haeran Hong, a native of Korea, was named the International Queen Elizabeth Grand Prize winner in the 201l Queen Elizabeth International Competition. In 2010 Ms. Hong was a finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and she won the Career Bridges Competition in New York.
Ms. Hong has performed various leading roles including Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro and Adina in L’elisir D’amore, and has also performed Gilda in Rigoletto, Pamina in Die Zauberfloete, the title role of L’incoronazione di Poppea by Monteverdi, Sister Constance in Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites and Dalinda in Handel’s Ariadante. Her 2011/2012 season includes joining the Metropolitan Opera roster as Crowned Child in Macbeth and to cover the role of Wood Bird in Siegfried. During the 2012/2013 season at the Met she will be singing Flower Maiden in Parsifal and covering Oscar in Un Ballo in Maschera and Sister Constance in Dialogues of the Carmelites.
Haeran Hong has played a number of roles in Juilliard performances, and in 2010 she played Barbarina (Le Nozze di Figaro) and Seleuce (Tolomeo) at the Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown in the context of the Young Artists Program. There is a close relationship between the Metropolitan Opera and the Opera Department of the Juilliard School, and Ms. Hong’s appearance in Stamford is thanks to that connection. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Korean National University of Arts and a Masters degree and Artistic Diploma in Opera Studies from the Juilliard School.
Tenor Alexander Lewis is in his second year of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. This season Mr. Lewis will make his Metropolitan Opera debut as the First Guard in Manon and he performed Artémidore in The Metropolitan Opera and The Juilliard School’s joint production of Gluck’s Armide. This summer he will reprise the role of Nemorino in L’Elisir d’Amore with the Chautauqua Music Festival. Last season he performed the role of Vašek in The Bartered Bride, the first joint production of The Metropolitan Opera and The Juilliard School, and he also performed Britten’s Serenade for Tenor and Horn, and Rossini’s Petite Messe Solenelle.
Mr. Lewis completed his Bachelor of Arts in Music Theatre at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, and was awarded the Lesley Anderson Fellowship. He also completed the Merola Opera Program in San Francisco where he performed Nemorino in L’Elisir d’Amore. Since then he has appeared as Frederick Barrett in Titanic-The Musical; Anthony Hope in Sweeney Todd with Opera Australia; Raoul and regular appearances of the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera; and has been featured in Rosie-The Musical, The Hatpin and Channel 7 of Australia’s Headland.
In 2006 Mr. Lewis won Opera Foundation Australia’s New York Study Award, and in 2007 he reached the semi-finals in the Neue Stimmen International Singing Competition in Germany. He won the 2009 Australian National Aria Competition, placed second in The McDonald’s Aria Competition, and was the winner of the 2010 Sir Robert Askin Fellowship, among other prizes. Mr. Lewis has made numerous other concert appearances in Australia and in the US.
Baritone Luthando Qave is in his second year of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. This season, Mr. Qave makes his Metropolitan Opera debut singing Prince Yamadori in Madama Butterfly and will perform Ubalde in The Metropolitan Opera and The Juilliard School’s joint production of Gluck’s Armide. Recent career highlights include Guglielmo in Così fan tutte with Drottningholmes Slottsteayer and Marcello in La Bohème with the International Vocal Arts Institute in Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Mr. Qave is originally from South Africa and completed his musical studies at Stockholm Opera College in Sweden. He was a member of the Cape Town Opera Vocal Ensemble where he made his debut as Marco in Gianni Schicchi, and performed Melchior in Amahl and the Night Visitors at Artscape Theater. In 2006 he made his European debut as Jake in Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess at NorrlandsOperan and Malmö Opera in Sweden and at Den Norske Operaen in Norway. In 2008 he made his debut with the same role at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 2009 Mr. Qave was part of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence Academy in France where he worked with Louis Langrée for the preparation of a concert with the Camerata Salzburg Orchestra.
Mr. Qave was recently a Semi-Finalist in the Neue Stimmen International Singing Competition and was a Finalist in the Hans Gabor Belvedere Competition in Vienna. While in Sweden, Mr. Qave won the Joel Berglund Scholarship and made his debut as Nardo in La finta giardiniera at Drottningholms Theater, and performed Orest in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride at the Rheinsberg Schloss Theater.
Natalia Katyukova, piano, was born in the city of Tschaikovsky Klin near Moscow, Russia and is in her second year of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. This season at the Met she will serve as the Assistant Conductor for the Metropolitan Opera’s productions of Don Giovanni and Khovanshchina. Ms. Katyukova participated in the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute this past summer, and was an apprentice coach with the Merola Opera Program at San Francisco Opera in the summer of 2010. She is a winner of the “Dino Ciani” International Piano Competition in Andorra, and Grand-Prix Laureate of the International Chamber Music Competition in Kiev.
Ms. Katyukova has given concerts in various cities in Russia, Germany, Italy, Finland, and Japan. In 1993 she was invited to perform a solo concert in the House-Museum of Liszt in Weimar, Germany. She has recorded numerous programs for All-Russian Radio, and has performed the unknown works of Tschaikovsky and the Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 18 of Sergei Rachmaninov with The Grand Symphony Orchestra of TV USSR conducted by Vladimir Fedoseev.
Ms. Katyukova studied at the Moscow State Conservatory and at the Conservatory of Bolzano, Italy. She received her Artist Diploma at Texas Christian University, and received a full scholarship for her Graduate Diploma in Collaborative Piano at The Juilliard School.
The April 15th concert will be Natalia Katyukova’s second performance for Friends of Music; her first was in April, 2011, also through the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.