We recently introduced Aaron Sørensen to readers when he was appearing with the Fort Worth Opera Festival. Now New Yorkers are going to get a chance to experience this gifted and sexy young bass. He'll be appearing at (le) Poisson Rouge in an evening of music including Purcell, Gounod, Britten, Verdi, Mahler, and John Adams.
Gotham Chamber Opera and composer-in-residence Missy Mazzoli's band Victoire will be featuring Sorenson along with soprano Angela Fout, mezzo-soprano Abby Fischer and tenor Matthew Tuell in a night of music spanning 350 years. The show is on Wednesday, May 22, 2013 at 7:30pm (doors
open at 6:30pm) at 158 Bleecker Street in New York City. Tickets
are $15-$25 and are available online.
Aaron Sørensen will be returning to the Fort Worth Opera Festival next season as the French General in Kevin Puts' Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Silent Night.
Gotham Chamber Opera begins its 2012-2013 season with GOTHAM @ LPR: ORIENTALE, a collaboration with Company XIV and MAYA, featuring the artists of Gotham Chamber Opera. The program will include Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, along with music by Rameau, Lully, Szymanowski, Delibes, Schumann, Bizet, John Hadfield, and traditional Armenian music.
Michael Kelly and Zach Altman, two barihunks who have been featured regularly on this site, will perform along with soprano Maeve Höglund and Jennifer Rivera (wife of barihunk and OperaNow! podcaster Michael Rice).
The show will be performed on Monday, October 1st and Wednesday, October 3rd at 8pm (doors open at 7pm) at (le) poisson rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, NYC. Tickets are $15-$25 and are available online at www.lepoissonrouge.com.
Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (SV 153) is an operatic scena for three voices by Claudio Monteverdi, although many dispute how the piece should be classified. The piece has a libretto drawn from Torquato Tasso's La Gerusalemme Liberata ("Jerusalem Delivered", Canto XII, 52-62, 64-68), a Romance set against the backdrop of the First Crusade. Il Combattimento was first produced in 1624 but not printed until 1638, when it appeared with several other pieces in Monteverdi’s eighth book of madrigals (written over a period of many years).
In Il Combattimento the orchestra and voices form two separate entities. The strings are divided into four independent parts instead of the usual five – an innovation that was not generally adopted by European composers until the 18th century. Il combattimento contains one of the earliest known uses of pizzicato in baroque music, in which the players are instructed to set down their bows and use two fingers of their right hand to pluck the strings. It also contains one of the earliest uses of the string tremolo, in which a particular note is reiterated as a means of generating excitement. This latter device was so revolutionary that Monteverdi had considerable difficulty getting the players of his day to perform it correctly. These innovations, like the fourfold division of the strings, were not taken up by Monteverdi’s contemporaries or immediate successors.
Zach Altman just wrapped up a run as Zurga in Bizet's "The Pearl Fishers" at Opera San Jose, where he is one of the resident artists. He will open as Dr. Falke in Johann Strauss' "Die Fledermaus" on November 10th.
On October 6th, Michael Kelly will be appearing at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in New York City in "Hommage a Debussy" - a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great French composer. On October 21st, he'll perform Durufle's glorious Requiem at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. before heading off for three performances of Orff's Carmina Burana with the Kansas City Symphony in November.
Barihunk David Adam Moore will join pianist Inna Faliks and Sandra
Beasley are featured at the Music/Words opening at Le Poisson
Rouge on Sunday, September 23rd at 7:30pm.
Moore will perform the world premiere of John Eaton's “Songs of Nature ... and Beyond,” a song cycle for baritone and piano. Faliks will also play Beethoven’s Sonata opus 111 in c minor and John Corigliano's
Fantasia on an Ostinato.
Le Poisson Rouge is located at 158 Bleeker Street in New
York City. Visit their website for additional information or tickets.
Moore can next be seen on stage at the Arizona Opera from November 10-18 when he will perform Mercutio in Gounod's Romeo et Juliette. Click HERE for additional cast information or tickets.
